Sustain Question

D

dandufour

Member
I have 2 great guitars. A PRS Custom 24 and Gibson LP Traditional.
I play thru a pa so I don't have the option of putting my guitars in front
of a cabinet to get some feedback going. Is there an effect that I can turn on that
will do this? I see a Boss pedal that does both compress and sustain, don't know
if a compressor will bring on sustain or not, thats how little I know about it. Thanks for any advice.
Dan
 
A Boss CS-3 is a compressor...
There are multiple great compressor effects in the Axe Fx.

You wouldn't get a better result.

A compressor just - compresses the sound-

so you set the levels- and it will take every note you play louder than a certain level down to the same level- or how most use it to sustain- it will take quiter notes and boost them all to that same louder level... doing this gives the impression the note is held/sustained/lasts longer---

all of which the axe can do on its own

Boss also makes two feedback simulators-an old orange one from the 80's and a new silver one (Boss DF-2 and Boss FB-2)
They're ok but nothing will beat the real thing- and the canned feedback etc won't ever make you happy- so don't worry about it-
 
You could consider installing a Sustainiac: Sustainiac Home Page
Steve Vai, Adrian Belew and others use them for not only sustain but feedback at different frequency fundamentals. It replaces your neck pickup and can be used as a regular magnetic pickup when turned off and has two different tones available. When turned on it uses electromagnetics to vibrate the strings. I installed one on the guitar in my profile picture and it's fun to play with.
 
I have a Fernandes Sustainer guitar, and I installed a Sustainiac in a Schecter guitar. The sustainiac sounds great as a neck pickup, and it can simulate the tone of a single coil or humbucker - I have a push/pull knob for my bridge pickup and for the neck sustainer as "coil tap" switches.

By comparison, the pickup in the neck of the Fernandes sustainer guitar sounds TERRIBLE as a neck pickup. Unusable.

I think that is why you see musicians like Neal Schon or Joe Satriani, install a stacked hum bucker beside the sustainer driver, and they never use the sustainer driver as a pickup. They just use it for the sustainer feature, and they use the conventional pickup they've installed beside it for their neck tones.

You wouldn't need to do that with a Sustainiac system. The pickup sounds great, and Alan at Sustainiac, gives great customer service. He called me back from the airport, on his way to NAMM, to answer a question I had about wiring the system, on the evening I was doing my installation.
 
rodzimguitar68 said:
I have a Fernandes Sustainer guitar, and I installed a Sustainiac in a Schecter guitar. The sustainiac sounds great as a neck pickup, and it can simulate the tone of a single coil or humbucker - I have a push/pull knob for my bridge pickup and for the neck sustainer as "coil tap" switches.

By comparison, the pickup in the neck of the Fernandes sustainer guitar sounds TERRIBLE as a neck pickup. Unusable.

I think that is why you see musicians like Neal Schon or Joe Satriani, install a stacked hum bucker beside the sustainer driver, and they never use the sustainer driver as a pickup. They just use it for the sustainer feature, and they use the conventional pickup they've installed beside it for their neck tones.

You wouldn't need to do that with a Sustainiac system. The pickup sounds great, and Alan at Sustainiac, gives great customer service. He called me back from the airport, on his way to NAMM, to answer a question I had about wiring the system, on the evening I was doing my installation.
Click to expand...

At the G4 Experience, Joe talked several times about how and why he has started using the Sustaniacs in his guitars... Primarily to get consistent, on-demand feedback at controllable levels.

However, he gave a LOT of praise to the usefulness of the pickup itself, too.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
You guys know you're a bad influence on me??? I just sent an email to the manufacturer of Sustainiac with a few questions, and then emailed my favorite local luthier to see if he has done them before, and asked him the same questions. I'll see what he says, but I have a feeling I may be out a few hundred bucks pretty soon. It might be fun to have one on my blue Strat.
 
I had a Sustainiac too. Bad sounding as a pickup, but the feedback feature itself itself was great. The installation is quite tricky.
 
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