Input gain and sustain question

Jeff B

Jeff B

Inspired
Hey all! Just wanted to take a moment to ask a question regarding input gain and sustain. I have a Dimarzio FRED in my bridge position and a PAF in the neck. I noticed a lack of sustain with some notes I was holding, so I decided to increase my input gain. It was at like 50%. I cranked it up to 100%. It stays in the yellow and only rarely clips to red for a second if I really pound on the low strings. Is that normal, as I was told once that I should have it much lower than that by a local user.

Also, if I want to increase my sustain, what is the best way to achieve that? Compression? I'm open to any tricks of using compression without having it squash my tone. I also lowered my pickup a bit to allow less magnetic pull which may kill sustain as well.

Thanks for any help guys.


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Hey Jeff, I've read that the input meter should just "tickle" the red when hitting your hardest notes, so it sounds like you have the input level set correctly. There are lots of options to increase sustain. Are you looking for clean sustain or lead sustain?

If you're looking for clean sustain, in my experience the best way is to add a Compressor Block at the beginning of your chain. I've also used the Esoteric RCB Drive Block with the drive level turned down below 5. Lastly, you can try adjusting the Drive level in your amp block up a bit.

If your looking for Lead Sustain, using a Drive block in front of your Amp block will help. BB Pre has lots of sustain, I also use the T808 OD quite a bit. Bringing the drive level down in the Drive block will help to avoid "squashing" your tone.
 
Make sure the noise gate is not killing your sustain... I personally just disable it as don't play high gain stuff.


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Thanks for the reply guys! Yeah, I make sure that my noise gate isn't too high, but still enough to keep some of the amp hiss down with my high gain amps (around -75db threshold).

Mrstrat... Thanks for your tips on using the drive pedals. I haven't really experimented much with those, being that I never really used them with my real tube amps. I always tried to work with the amp gain and MV settings to get that sustain rather than putting a pedal up front to drive the channel. I always hated dealing with the tonal changes that I felt many pedals did to the amp tone. Almost need a drive pedal without a tone knob so it just offers that "push" with a true tonal bypass. I will definitely experiment with your tips and see what I come up with.

Thanks again!


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Pinkycramps said:
That video is awesome. I learned some things from it, so thanks for sharing. I really like Danny's style. SO.. Danny, if you read this... GREAT job dude. You're a beast!
Click to expand...

one of best vids Ive watched, does create bunch of noise though.
 
Thanks so much for the link to that vid! I am watching it right now and definitely taking it all in. Gives me some good tips as to where to start with my experimentation with my presets. So far, I'm keeping my input gain at 100% since I'm just barely "tickling" the red only when digging in hard.
 
FractalAudio said:
Make sure Input 1 Mode is set to Left Only.
Click to expand...

Check! My input 1 mode is "left only". Is it odd that I'm ok at 100%? That's why I originally posted, as I felt it was too high, but I'm not in the "red", so I just assumed it would be ok there, but I don't want to inadvertently be adding in unnecessary noise or anything by it being at 100%.
 
The best natural sustain comes from playing at volume & the speaker pushing air & interacting with the strings.
 
All of the above mentioned is good advise I would also add that a fresh set of strings are a good place to start providing you haven't changed them in a wile. Another one would be Input Trim.
 
Jeff B said:
Check! My input 1 mode is "left only". Is it odd that I'm ok at 100%? That's why I originally posted, as I felt it was too high, but I'm not in the "red", so I just assumed it would be ok there, but I don't want to inadvertently be adding in unnecessary noise or anything by it being at 100%.
Click to expand...

You're fine. If the yellow LED comes on solidly then you're fine. I run 100% with my guitars with weak pickups. That's the whole purpose of the control, to compensate for differences in pickup output level.
 
Jeff B said:
Hey all! Just wanted to take a moment to ask a question regarding input gain and sustain. I have a Dimarzio FRED in my bridge position and a PAF in the neck. I noticed a lack of sustain with some notes I was holding, so I decided to increase my input gain. It was at like 50%. I cranked it up to 100%. It stays in the yellow and only rarely clips to red for a second if I really pound on the low strings. Is that normal, as I was told once that I should have it much lower than that by a local user.

Also, if I want to increase my sustain, what is the best way to achieve that? Compression? I'm open to any tricks of using compression without having it squash my tone. I also lowered my pickup a bit to allow less magnetic pull which may kill sustain as well.

Thanks for any help guys.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk
Click to expand...


You didn't give any background info about your rig or the firmware. But with the last firmware upgrade, the global noise gate needed to be reset, otherwise it would chop off sustain, until you adjust that setting back to something reasonable.

So, if you recently upgraded firmware, and did not check the global noise gate, you should do that.
 
FractalAudio said:
You're fine. If the yellow LED comes on solidly then you're fine. I run 100% with my guitars with weak pickups. That's the whole purpose of the control, to compensate for differences in pickup output level.
Click to expand...

Cliff... now that you mention it, that brings up an interesting question... what if you have multiple guitars with different pickups (one stronger than another)? Whenever you switch from one to another, will you have to manually dial in the new input gain? Is there a potential way to have a "self-setting" input gain so that it can maximize the signal automatically for all guitars, no matter the pickups, etc.??


rodzimguitar68 said:
You didn't give any background info about your rig or the firmware. But with the last firmware upgrade, the global noise gate needed to be reset, otherwise it would chop off sustain, until you adjust that setting back to something reasonable.

So, if you recently upgraded firmware, and did not check the global noise gate, you should do that.
Click to expand...

Is there a difference between the "global noise gate" and another noise gate? Where is the global noise gate found? My noise gate was set to around -75db threshold when I went to the page for noise gate settings.
 
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