Cool Burst of Feedback

HereToday

HereToday

Experienced
Hey guys, been hitting the Axe with the Engle 120 pretty hard the past few days at ear bleed levels, so please speak up if you don't mind. :)

One thing I have noticed is occasionally I will get tiny bursts of feedback while changing chords. It sounds awesome, but unfortunately, its not repeatable. I can only get it sometimes and only on the lower end of the fretboard. Barre or Power will both do it, but seems to occur more frequently on power chord changes.

So far will only do it with humbuckers and the Engle. So, just to be clear, I don't want advice on how to get rid of it, I want to know how to produce it on demand, if possible. I also know how to produce "normal feedback" with my speakers, but this seems to be a wee but different.
 
FRFR speakers mounted on wall at about 5' to the bottom. DXR10s to be exact. Judging form your avatar, you are probably the guy I need to talk to!
 
Ha! Sadly no, I'm a strictly headphone player (only real speaker I have is my tube amp that hasn't been turned on since a jam session at another location a few months ago).

However, I know that FRFR speakers are highly directional, moreso than guitar speakers, so where you're standing relative to the speaker plays more of a role than usual. Experiment with where you stand, that's the secret to feedback, maybe one place gives you a high fifth, another an octave, you'll have to find out.

And of course, louder is always more good for feedback.
 
Thanks! I have tried move around, moving closer, facing the speakers, etc. Funny thing is, it seems just as likely to occur if I am facing away as it is facing the speakers, which kinda threw me.
 
Feedback can occur for two reasons, either acoustic-coupling or magnetic coupling.

Magnetic coupling can come from being too close to the speaker's tweeter, which directly affects the pickup and is a high pitched shriek. It's not something you'd want to reproduce, so I'm thinking you're talking about acoustic-coupling.

Acoustic-coupling is the result of the speaker moving enough air to shake the guitar, either the body or the strings, which is then picked up by the pickups and passed back to the preamp to the amp to the speaker, etc. Adding gain helps some because it'll amplify lower volume notes which helps the feedback along, well, it helps until everything goes out of control but turning down the guitar's volume or moving or turning away from the speaker will help. The guitar's body construction affects the ability too. A hollow-body guitar will usually jump to uncontrolled feedback because it reacts too well to the acoustic-coupling. A semi-hollow will react more slowly to the coupling than a hollow-body so it's a bit easier to control but I find they get overly fat sounding as the coupling kicks in so I have to really ride the guitar's volume or adjust the guitar's orientation to the speaker, and even then, the coupling can shake the body sufficiently to cause a stray/undesirable harmonic and the feedback heads in the wrong direction. My solid bodies work the best and I can usually pick a note and it'll continue or maybe jump to the octave, and minor changes in the volume or orientation control it nicely. This is something you can practice so you can reproduce it more consistently, but it's still going to be a dynamic interaction so it can do unexpected things, which is what makes it fun.

Hendrix used feedback, but Santana is the guy who seems to do it best. He'll walk the stage after sound check and have them mark the spots where the guitar feeds back best and consistently so he can control it.

There's not a setting or effect that'll recreate the effect of acoustic-coupling perfectly because it's physics in action. Search the forums and the Factory Presets Wiki page for "feedback" and you can find some tricks that'll imitate it but I haven't found one that sounds like the real deal. YMMV.
 
Greg Ferguson said:
Feedback can occur for two reasons, either acoustic-coupling or magnetic coupling.

Magnetic coupling can come from being too close to the speaker's tweeter, which directly affects the pickup and is a high pitched shriek. It's not something you'd want to reproduce, so I'm thinking you're talking about acoustic-coupling.

Acoustic-coupling is the result of the speaker moving enough air to shake the guitar, either the body or the strings, which is then picked up by the pickups and passed back to the preamp to the amp to the speaker, etc. Adding gain helps some because it'll amplify lower volume notes which helps the feedback along, well, it helps until everything goes out of control but turning down the guitar's volume or moving or turning away from the speaker will help. The guitar's body construction affects the ability too. A hollow-body guitar will usually jump to uncontrolled feedback because it reacts too well to the acoustic-coupling. A semi-hollow will react more slowly to the coupling than a hollow-body so it's a bit easier to control but I find they get overly fat sounding as the coupling kicks in so I have to really ride the guitar's volume or adjust the guitar's orientation to the speaker, and even then, the coupling can shake the body sufficiently to cause a stray/undesirable harmonic and the feedback heads in the wrong direction. My solid bodies work the best and I can usually pick a note and it'll continue or maybe jump to the octave, and minor changes in the volume or orientation control it nicely. This is something you can practice so you can reproduce it more consistently, but it's still going to be a dynamic interaction so it can do unexpected things, which is what makes it fun.

Hendrix used feedback, but Santana is the guy who seems to do it best. He'll walk the stage after sound check and have them mark the spots where the guitar feeds back best and consistently so he can control it.

There's not a setting or effect that'll recreate the effect of acoustic-coupling perfectly because it's physics in action. Search the forums and the Factory Presets Wiki page for "feedback" and you can find some tricks that'll imitate it but I haven't found one that sounds like the real deal. YMMV.
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I feel like you could copy and catalogue this post, Greg, so you don't have to retype it every other week. :)
 
Repartee41 said:
I know that FRFR speakers are highly directional, moreso than guitar speakers,
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You might want to check on that. FRFR are usually less directional. Mine have 90ºx90º coverage.

Close Miking in the Wiki talks about this…

"You're never going to get a full-range monitor to sound like an amp in the room regardless of the IR used. One reason for this is dispersion. A traditional guitar cabinet has a beam pattern that decreases with increasing frequency. This means less high frequencies when listening off-axis. A full-range monitor will have more highs. Now some will argue that if you capture the traditional cab off-axis in the far field then you'll get the same thing but you won't because the monitor is not interacting with the environment in the same way. The traditional cab will send less frequency content to off-axis which is then reflected off the floor, walls and ceiling. The monitor will send more highs off-axis that are reflected. Our hearing relies a LOT on the spatial cues of reflection and the reflections will not be the same. Compound the above with the fact that 99.9% of IRs are near field captures which sound nothing like the far field. I believe trying to get a monitor to do amp in the room is a lesson in futility. If you really want that sound use a traditional guitar cab." [79]
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I'll see if I can't capture one tomorrow, but you are exactly right, it is happening when I unfret. "Chord change" lacked some specificity.
 
la noise said:
I can get controllable harmonic feedback at will when playing with the band. It's pretty
f'ing righteous.
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Yup. 😉

la noise said:
My fave is to start a song with that feedback---preferably in the same
key as the song we are about to break into.
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My fave trick was faux-backmasking. Nailing backwards guitar parts in real time. Got a lot of 'nipper dog' looks from anyone who was paying attention while doing that....
 
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