Suatainers (Sustainiac or Fernandes) - what do you think?

[ToneMonkey]

BEHOLD - The worlds longest topic on how to make a sustainer...

http://projectguitar.ibforums.com/index.php?showtopic=7512

About 160 pages at the minute, so there's a lot to get through.

[gingataff]

 It wasn't a sustainer, but a rather cumbersome device with a little speaker that you glued/screwed to the back of the headstock.  

Hmmm...
I remember taping the speaker from a portable cassette recorder onto the back of my headstock for some long forgotten reason (it was the 80s), but this may well be why. I can only remember that it didn't do anything.

[snipesace]

I recently saw def leppard and journey in concert, phil c. from def leppard as well as neil from journey both used the sustainers. they sounded just fine to me, mind you they have hundreds of thousands of dollars of gear to work with as well, but they sounded good in concert

[FELINEGUITARS]

i guess its like using a Whammy pedal
Used sparingly and tastefullly it is wonderful, but used constantly - maybe a bit of overkill

There are some ace effects to use with it - especially echo and using a volume pedal to swell stuff in as well

Could be mistaken for stuff a keyboard player does

[blue]

i'm looking forward to trying it combined with an electro harmonix P.O.G. and a digitech whammy pedal!  then gradually coming to my senses and just using it for the occasional cool bit.

[Adam.M]

Could you not put one of these sustainers in the middle of a H/S/S guitar?

[Adam.M]

actually looking at that model c... i'd rather have that.

easier to put it on and off between songs than to carry another guitar.

so, feline, what about kahler trems? i've never liked floyd's... are the new kahlers not up to scratch?

[blue]

Could you not put one of these sustainers in the middle of a H/S/S guitar?

if you follow Feline's link to the Maniac website, it explains why the driver unit needs to be in the neck position, as far as possible from the bridge pickup.

that clip on unit would be great for the studio where you could use it on any guitar, but i think it would be a bit cumbersome for live use.  although you could make taking it out and putting it on the guitar part of the show, if you were that way inclined!

[WezV]

While i am sure Tim could wind a sustainer driver - dont forget there are differences between a pickup and a driver unit.

Sometimes people get confused with pickups and drivers because theyare built the same way, i.e. a coil of wire around  metal/magnet.

The inevitable question people ask is 'can i use a pickup as a driver unit?'.  The answer is no because a driver unit is built with around 1-200 turns of relatively thick wire compared to the 5-10,000 turns of very thin wire on a guitar pickup.  The driver has very little resistance and can have a signal sent through it.  A guitar pickup has much higher resistance and will overheat and melt the insulation on the windings if you put a signal through it.  

when you see sustainer guitars with humbuckers in the neck, they are actually a seperate single coil and driver unit - it might be worth getting tim to rewind the single coil side of things! to improve the neck pickup sound.  Rewinding the driver wont affect the pickups sound

I am looking into putting one into a guitar soon for an experiment.  I made one myself but it isnt working properly yet so i may end up buying one.

[Fubar]

Neal Schon seems to get away with it though!

I read an interview with schon a while back in whih he said that, although he has sustainers fitted in his sig les pauls, he never uses them anymore!

I wouldnt mind having a crack at a guitar fitted with one but I doubt I'd bother buying one.

[Kilby]

Been away for a while (family stuff).

As I remember Fernades do 2 sustainer kits. One with the 'humbucker' driver and one with a 'single coil' driver.

I'd be tempted to go for the single coil one and mount a proper pickup close to it (with appropiate shielding).

The reason for using the neck positon is not to separate it from the bridge pickup but simply because it has to induce a large enough movement in the strings to get a reasonable volume.

Personally I'd love a sustainer of some form in a guitar (but then I love the drones sounds in eastern music and would be excellent for a freaked version of 'Venus in furs').

As for the Ebow theryre little buggers to take apart (lets say like some security equipment I work with it's fragile, so when it's taken apart it breaks / self destructs). I do have a diagram for one somewhere (uses the usual LM386 opamp to drive it).

Godley & Cream (spelling ?) ex of 10cc (euuugh) and video directing, produced the gizmo, which was a rotating wheel system down at the brigge that sounded really good (forgotten what tracks used it though).

As an alternate method, I was thinking it would be possible to use piezo transducers @ the bridge to induce string movement.

Yeah pog combined with a sustainer would be excellent fun :)

Rob...