More Sustain

E

eschatts

New Member
Hi folks - continuing down the road with the fractal. Last night we had a show and my buddy is also using a fractal now. The one thing he commented on the end of the show, he is used to more sustain and he wants to get put more drive into the patches for that. However our sound guy thinks it sounds good, if not a bit too much overdrive. What can I focus on to maybe be able to help with more sustain? It might be more of a feel for him since he is old school and always has used tube amps. Any tips would be great. Thanks
 
eschatts said:
Hi folks - continuing down the road with the fractal. Last night we had a show and my buddy is also using a fractal now. The one thing he commented on the end of the show, he is used to more sustain and he wants to get put more drive into the patches for that. However our sound guy thinks it sounds good, if not a bit too much overdrive. What can I focus on to maybe be able to help with more sustain? It might be more of a feel for him since he is old school and always has used tube amps. Any tips would be great. Thanks
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The gate in the input block may be closing. I've had good luck with lowering the threshold, and raising the ratio. The actual numbers depend on the amp and how much gain you're using. The key is to get the threshold as low as possible.
I dial it in by setting the threshold to OFF. Dial in your tone. With the guitar volume all the way up, raise the threshold until it starts to attenuate, then set the ratio until the tone is audibly quiet or quiet enough for you.

I've experienced a major improvement with holding out notes setting the input gate like this.
 
eschatts said:
what do you guys think about that Input Dynamic control? I have not messed with that too much yet.
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I've been experimenting with a tad of that compression for clean sounds. Worked pretty well, zero cpu i think. I don't use a lot of any conpression on cleans, and I'm picky about it sounding natural.
 
Rex said:
Volume, volume and volume. If he plays at the volume he's accustomed to with tube rigs, he'll get the sustain he's accustomed to with tube rigs.
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Yep. Volume is the key here. I can get notes to hang for as long as I want them to through the monitors I use with my band-as long as there is a physical interaction between the monitors and the guitar. And that interaction is very dependent on volume.
 
I have an FR-12 sitting next to the monitor tilted back pointed right at me and that goes a long ways to getting natural feedback/sustain and you don't really need excessive volume (we use very reasonable stage volume and never get complaints from the sound guy about being too loud). I adjust it up just enough so that it just starts to feed back when the guitar volume is all the way up standing about four feet back.

I also shut off the input noise gate and did it like this using the setting from this video as a starting point. That helped also (I could not get the input gate quit right, probably a skills issue on my part :laughing:) .
TONE TOUR: Trans-Siberian Orchestra 2024 AXE-FX Preset
 
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I started out with them behind me where I would have had my half stack (next to the bass rig) previously but found that I could get sustain and feedback at a lot lower volume with them right in front facing directly at me. I also get a nice amp thump hitting me at close range and that's what the shit is all about :laughing:
 
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