Having Sustain Issues

Yeah, the sustain issue is the only reason I have to bring a FRFR speaker to my gigs. I run in-ear monitors so the ONLY reason I bring a speaker is to get some sort of feedback to the guitar, it just sounds weird not to have that interaction with the guitar (especially at high gains). By having the cabinet, it basically takes away the advantages of going in-ear. Maybe the mastermind can find a way?
 
I like the concept behind the sustainiac C. And I would definitely get one if it wouldn't look so damn ugly. For a 350$ device, could we not expect it to look a little bit more artistic?
 
Scott Abene said:
Danny... Great video. This will help me quite a bit

Really good advice. By the way People from NY, NJ don't have accents; the rest of the people do. I also by law have to ask "What Exit"?
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LMAO!!! Oh I know I have an accent...I'm one of the few people left that says "wooder" instead of water. I just can't say water..it sounds so....proper? LOL! Funny thing, I'm not even near any exit where I'm at. I'm right in between Philly and Atlantic City. The closest exit to me is like 40 minutes away and I couldn't even tell you what it was....38 maybe? LOL! :)

Glad it helped you. Yeah for me personally, the compression thing is enough. I'm not a very loud guitar player. As a matter of fact, I can't even count the times I've been asked to turn up. I usually show up with 4 greenback cabs and right away the sound dude (if he's new) has a heart attack thinking I'm going to be a loudness monster. A minute into my sound check and he says through the talk back "dude, are you serious? You use all that stuff and are that low? Like...am I on Candid Camera?" Hahaha! I just like being in stereo and sounding full for myself while on stage, so I don't really need much volume and have always been in the camp of "be just loud enough". When you sing in your band, the last thing you want is to fight over loud stage volume. You no longer sing, you scream and let me tell you...it sucks. So I'm a stickler for low volume on stage with my original band. My cover band....totally different story. They like to push up the volume....so I still stay low and let the sound man give me a little through my monitors.

That said, I get plenty of sustain and my tone doesn't die out at all with my Axe. It actually feeds back in key most of the time which is sort of eerie. I've never had that happen before with any rig. Usually you feed back and it compliments what you're doing, but this thing settles right in with me and is in key. But yeah, definitely try working the compression thing a little bit. If you use the pedal compression, you get even more sustain and cut down on cpu use. I like the studio comp a little better myself and feel it's worth the extra cpu, but for anyone just looking to get a little more gusto out of their Axe, put a comp first in line or check out the little video I posted. It will definitely help by at least 75% or more in my opinion. :)
 
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Sustainiac looks alright but I am certainly not going to retrofit potentially dozens of guitars. That is kind of ridiculous.

I will try the compressor a short term fix but I really do not understand why this has not been addressed from the Fractal point of view. Or did I miss that ?

Maybe Cliff will do some math on the subject and give us a fix.
 
I'll speculate the reason Cliff never addressed it is because the solution is not algorithmic, the solution is a matter of physical energy, hence the transducers involved.
 
I used to have Jackson DK-S with the sustainiac built in.It was ok for fun,but the feedback wasn't natural and I didn't like strings vibration ;)
 
Scott Abene said:
Sustainiac looks alright but I am certainly not going to retrofit potentially dozens of guitars. That is kind of ridiculous.

I will try the compressor a short term fix but I really do not understand why this has not been addressed from the Fractal point of view. Or did I miss that ?

Maybe Cliff will do some math on the subject and give us a fix.
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There is a thread somewhere I saw on here about a week ago. A guy has a sustainer system that attaches to a mic stand, so when you stand at your mic position, you can be in the sustainer transducer field and get it to work. So you can use it with any guitar and any pickup position. This is also the big advantage to the Sustainiac C - no guitar modification, you can use it with multiple guitars, and any pickup position. And the advantage the C has over a mic stand mounted unit, is of course the ability to move around on stage and still have the effect. The downside, is the power cable hanging off the headstock end of the guitar.
 
stink said:
I'll speculate the reason Cliff never addressed it is because the solution is not algorithmic, the solution is a matter of physical energy, hence the transducers involved.
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Technically, amps, cabs, and analog effects all use physical energy at some point. Eventually there can be an algorithm to mimic the properties of the affects sound waves generated from a cab/s has on metal strings with modifers of wood type, distance, room size/space, volume... just will take someone figuring it out and having the processor to achieve said effect.

Sent from my S4 using Tapatalk
 
armyguyenglish said:
Technically, amps, cabs, and analog effects all use physical energy at some point. Eventually there can be an algorithm to mimic the properties of the affects sound waves generated from a cab/s has on metal strings with modifers of wood type, distance, room size/space, volume... just will take someone figuring it out and having the processor to achieve said effect
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FractalAudio said:
Now... I've had this idea on paper for a few years for a device that attaches to your guitar that simulates the positive feedback. I just haven't had the time to build one.
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SUSTAINIAC MODEL C


FractalAudio said:
That's pretty much exactly the idea I had except I envisioned the input as a line-level input from the Axe-Fx.
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This particular effect requires energy to feed back into the strings to produce vibration. Cliff seems to think so too, just saying...
 
The idea of sustain with an electric guitar is a rather basic and needed function.

I hope that the Axe FXII offers something that will handle this soon. It is a bit of a game changer
 
Scott Abene said:
The idea of sustain with an electric guitar is a rather basic and needed function.

I hope that the Axe FXII offers something that will handle this soon. It is a bit of a game changer
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Just curious Scott....did you try the compression thing I mentioned? If that didn't quite work the way you hoped it would, you could always run a hardware stomp box first in line if using the AxeFx comp is not enough. Boss compressor sustainer or something with the output as high as possible until you hear hiss, no gain on the pedal, tone knob to taste. You could even use a Tube Screamer or over drive pedal to do this or anything that has an output. Just watch any pedal with loads of gain because that isn't what you want. If you use the right pedal, you can just leave it on, hide it in the back of your rack and never worry about it being left in the enabled position.

One thing about sustainiac systems and the like for me....they are really cool, but don't feel natural. They all sort of remind me of an ebow...or the effects of one. That's honestly not meant to talk down sustain units or anyone that has one...it just has always felt like over-kill to me. Most of us aren't looking for infinite sustain....just something "natural" that doesn't die out so quick. The hardware pedal option works well too...I tried it the other day. Though I really don't feel like velcro-ing a pedal to the back of my rack, it's nice to know that I can and it works VERY well. I tried it with both a compressor sustainer (CS-3) and a ts 808 that I have here.

Though it's a little more natural than the AxeFx comp block being first in line like I showed in my video, the Axe comp works well enough for me to where I really don't have to go the hardware pedal route. For those of you that want a little extra, try a real pedal first in line out of your guitar, into the pedal and then into your AxeFx. You may need to lower your AxeFx input gain. Just try not to use the gain/drive in your pedal if you can help it. Push the output up as high as you can without picking up obnoxious hiss. As soon as you get the hiss, back it down...all other controls on the pedal, you can tweak to taste...but try not to use any gain/drive unless you feel the need and can deal with any excessive noise it may present.

Honest both of these methods work well. You'll just need to decide if either of them are "for you" or not due to how you envision your sound to be. :)
 
Danny,

Thanks for that compression post.

I used your settings and both my clean and distorted tones have more "sing" to them. Especially the higher notes.

In the AC/DC You Shook Me All Night long solo for example, when he goes to the high octave G major scale. Those notes on the high E string of my Les Paul would always kind of fart out compared to the rest of the solo.

Your compression settings really brought those notes back into the ballpark.

Thanks!
 
I tried the sustainer thing mentioned in the video linked in the second post. It helped a bit, but unfortunately my guitar is not 100% noise free and the compression really ended up causing me more problems than anything else.

I think, as Fractal mentioned, it's just going to be one of those things you have to deal with when there's low stage volume. A good solution would be to build a pickup system similar to that used on the Moog guitar that would compensate for the lack of guitar-body sympathetic vibration by emulating the affect of that vibration and adding that energy back into the strings. That would cause a whole different set of tonal problems, though, as you'd have to use only one specific type of pickup.

I'm pretty sure whatever fix someone comes up with would have to be hardware related (as opposed to software related). Digital emulators are great at sculpting signals, but it's hard to manipulate information that just isn't there.
 
FractalAudio said:
Now... I've had this idea on paper for a few years for a device that attaches to your guitar that simulates the positive feedback. I just haven't had the time to build one.
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I've thought about this for years! You're a step ahead of me by having the idea on paper. ;)

I've been thinking of mini-ButtKicker that mounts to the guitar. Just need some way to convert electrical energy into mechanical energy.
 
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