Rail Pickup Bobbin...ever taken one apart?

[psw]

Hi there...first post so be gentle

I have a no name rail pickup...side by side HB in a single coil format...with chrome blades instead of poles (rated at 14k)

I was wondering if anyone has taken something like this apart...I need to know if it is possible to remove the blade...that is, is the coil wound onto a bobbin into which the blade is inserted, or is the coil wound around the blades themselves.

I was thinking of perhaps taking the magnet out and pushing them with a vice with some kind of jig maybe!

Any suggestions would be helpful, experience preferred... pete

BTW...I am psw from project guitar's massive DIY sustainer thread
http://projectguitar.ibforums.com/in...0&#entry295244
135 pages, 2000 posts, so don't try and read it all if you are interested in this stuff.

[madialex]

Depends on the bobbin

If it is a plastic bobbin , yes the blade will come out. Fiber bobbins, probably not. I have used fiber bobbins before and just wrapped tape around the blade, so in that case, it will ruin it.

[psw]

Yes, but does anyone know!

Hmmm...well they are plastic "bobbins" but they are very slim. It could be that they are plastic tops and bottoms on the blade and wound, perahaps a bobbin through which the blade is inserted and so not likely to be damaged....

To get 14k of wire on there they would have been seeking to save space so I am not sure if it is a real bobbin or not....I would have thought so for ease of manufacture, but without unwinding it, I couldn't be sure...

Also, are they likely to be glued in?

thanks pete

[David Schwab]

I've read through some of these sustainer threads, and I keep wondering why no one uses a speaker coil... you don't need a pickup. Just wind up an 8 ohm coil and use a small power amp IC. You wouldn't need a magnet either.

Why do you want to remove the rails?

[psw]

not quite that easy...

Well...there is a little more to it than that you would find. The basic idea of a sustainer is a pickup in reverse. You do effectively make an 8 ohm coil...it operates just like a speaker, and like a speaker (or a pickup for that matter) it does need a magnet, instead of a speaker cone it vibrates the strings, coupled by a magnetic field...to simplify it a bit...

But...not just any coil will do, you need to have a speed of response because any delay will cause phase problems so it will perhaps try to move the string up when it really wants to go down causing dampening instead of sustain!

My innovation in sustainer technology was to design a thin coil. My guitar features a 3mm deep sustainer coil on top of a standard single coil mounted in the neck position. This compact coil provides the required speed to work the higher strings (which are most suseptable to phase problems) and will operate as a neck pickup whith the sustainer off. It could be, and has been, made separate from a pickup with it's own magnet.

Here is my strats neck pickup after modification...


The blue bit is the driver coil...very thin as you can see...the poles have been replaced with a blade and there are full details/photos of it's construction at PG if interested...here...http://projectguitar.ibforums.com/in...howtopic=24211

I use fairly simple amplification to good effect but a more even response is being sought at present through a feed-forward compressor design as a preamp. You do need some kind of preamp to prevent pickup loading anyway, BTW.

The other thing about sustainer technology is that it emits EMI. This means that unless there is sufficient distance between the source pickup (bridge) and the driver (neck) you get feedback akin to sticking a mic in front of a PA speaker...not good! A poorly made driver will also produce similar effects as it will attempt to vibrate any loose windings.

OK...so the rail pickup...

The next generation of drivers adopts a hum-cancelling-like configuration to attempt to limit EMI. Due to the design requiring both a thin coil and a thin core...various people are using a rail style driver design with two 4 ohm coils of opposite winding and polarity (just like a HB). This will however open the effective core width from 3mm (single blade style) as on my guitar...to more like 10mm. Nevertheless, there has been some success in this regard.

Now there are many ways in which to approach this...several of them I have come up with require the building onto a rail pickup two bi-lateral coils and so the removal of the blades to be replaced with custom made ones...

From a pickup makers perspective, one may wish to remove the rails and have two half rails having each coil mostly picking up the low and high strings (similar to a P-bass or G&L Z-coil design)...SD have done a similar thing, I believe...so having a high output but thin appature as well as HB design...

From the sustainers perspective...running two coils helps draw the EMI across the strings more instead of back towards the magnetic field of the source pickup... This approach is used by sustainiac, but with a lot of significant differences to my thin coil, thin blade designs (they have gone the opposite way and tried to compensate with phase correction circuitry)...I am attempting to make this technology simpler with improved (and simple) driver designs rather than specialised and complex circuitry.

So...in order to modify a rail pickup without having to completely re-wind it, it would be adventageous if the rails could simply be removed and replaced with various different designs. Here is one simple example of many I have proposed...

This type of design would constitute a third generation of sorts...

A completely different means of obtaining the effect is with my so called HEX drivers...these incorporated 6 driving elements into a very compact package (5x5x70mm) and even had 5 LED's and switching in some prototypes...Unfortunately, after a year of development and moving away from DIY, they suffered from alignment problems, would require custom making for each guitar and bending strings through it off, so this technology has been abandoned for the time being...in favour of conventional coils.

My short term goal at this point is to design a pickup/driver that could work say in the mid-pickup slot in a strat (or a dedicated 3mm deep mid driver for other guitars perhaps) that could drop in and be used with either the neck or bridge (or both) pickups and to greatly simplify installation and switching of the device.

In order to do this we will need something that retains the speed of my current design but has significantly less EMI...

So...we have a team of people at present working on various refinements based upon my basic ideas to refine the device still further. Very active participation on the electronics side of things and me and another member have devised a simple method of making various bobbinless air coils that retain the compact, quick response in the smallest possible space...like this...


But there are other reasons that one may wish to screw around with the blade, and thus magnetic structure of this type of pickup...they are not known for their tone afterall, yet they do provide effective humcanceling...a split blade design may reap tonal rewards just from that point of view...as a pickup!

As far as making a sustainer...using a pickup as a base has worked well for me. I get a very neat and easy mounting, exactly the kind of magnetic structure I need and the pickup actually ended up sounding better after the modifications! There is no real need however...we have has sustainer drivers made from half humbucker and single coil bobbins blocked up to 3mm with some success, although you obviously loose the pickup and destroy it in the process...not my preferred option!

So...that is enough of sustainers and the work being done over at PG and my contribution to the design of these devices...

The question still is, has anyone actually taken one of these apart...perhaps to rewind it or something...before I attempt to remove the blade and destroy it! I am surprised that someone hasn't tried it and knows the simple answer...yes or no bobbin - removable blade...regardless of my reasons to want to do it...

BTW...I got side tracked into the DIY sustainer project from pickup making...I have a two faced winder of my own design with 4 digit counter and tachometer and a whole heap of wire that I am itching to use. If things work out, I'd like to make custom pickup/drivers and kits to allow more people to obtain infinite sustain, automatic harmonics and all the other things that this technology has to offer.

but first...what is under all that wire in a rail pickup my friends! pete

[corduroyew]

The problem with answering your question is that it is a no name pickup. Not knowing who made it makes it impossible to tell you how it was made.

[madialex]

Most are

Most of the plastic ones I have rewound have been solid with the blade through the middle, being able to take out the blade is not a problem. I said on most. All I can speak for is the ones I have encountered and have all been able to remove the blades. Go for it, hell you can buy another off flea bay if you ruin it right?

[psw]

true...however

True...but even if I said WSC or any other generic rail maker, they probably do use the same or similar components, quite possibly from the same korean moulding factory...

I would imagine that it is a slotted bobbin for ease of manufacture but the blades are an extremely tight fit and possibly glued (certainly around the magnet) and the plastic seems a little brittle too...

If anyone had rewound such a Pup then they would at least know if this is common, likely, or at least from their experience the case...

I honestly don't know the brand of this particular Pup but the question is generic. I can say that the blades have 2 holes in the sides immediately below the bobbins where the magnet sits...this could be to align the bobbins after winding to the blades, to help glue the magnet to them...or perhaps a means to attach the assembly to a winding machine, winding the "bobbin" with the blade already inserted...

Only someone who had taken one apart would know for sure...and be able to provide input as to how to proceed to do it....or not to...

In the end, though I'd rather not be the first (as I do not really want to rewind the device just now given the project I am working on) I may have to be the one to find out the hard way... pete

[David Schwab]

OK, I see what you are doing. I haven't had any experience with this type of sustainer, but I did invent one back in the late 70's. It was an electro/mechanical type device, like the Sustainic model that clamps to the headstock, except it didn't clamp to the headstock, and was completely contained in the guitar. I was going to get it patented, but at the time I worked for a large electronics company, and had to sign an agreement that said if I invent something while working there, they got the patent! Crazy. I had a working prototype in 1979.

After I left that place the Sustainiac was out (1986, the Sustainiac Model T), and was similar enough to make me not pursue the patent. I think mine was better though. Maybe I'll revive that idea.

I'm surprised you need a magnet, as the signal to the voice coil produces a magnetic field, but seeing that such devices as the Ebow have magnets, I guess it makes sense. The only reason a speaker needs a magnet is so that the voice coil moves in relationship to the magnet. But if the cone was magnetic, you could move it with a coil... probably wouldn't be as efficient, since the permanent magnet supplies a lot of energy.

I don't know if you are familiar with the original Roland guitar synth. It looked like a Les Paul. It had a large black square under the strings where the neck pickup would be. This was a permanent magnet. The bridge had plastic saddles, and the tailpiece was set up so the strings would not be electrically connected to one another. They ran a signal into the strings, as if they were a speaker voice coil, which produced a magnetic field around the string, which with the help of the magnet, produced sustain. I always thought that was a cool idea.

Speaking of the Ebow, I was reading the patent one day (4075921) and he uses two coils, one to pick the string up and the other to vibrate the string. Being as it's a closed loop system (i.e. not getting the signal from the regular guitar pickup) this might help in overcoming feed back problems.

So how exactly does the Fernandes Sustainer work? I haven't been able to find the patent number. I see the Sustainiac unit uses split coils. [edit, I see that the Fernandes unit IS the Sustainiac unit, as Maniac Music sold units to Fernandes, and showed them how to install them. Apparently Floyd Rose patented a similar device in 1990. The Sustainiac patent is 5,932,827, this shows the "bilateral driver" using two coils. ]

They state: [this] allows almost complete cancellation of the driver's radiated magnetic field that is sensed by the pickup. Consequently, for the first time, single-coil pickups can now be used to supply the input signal to the sustainer.

So it looks like this is already used and is a patented (1999) idea.

The original idea for the pickup type device was the Michael Brook Infinite Guitar, as used by U2. (I'm sure you know this...)

Alan Hoover of Sustainiac wrote in an interview:

The Infinite Guitar used a regular Duncan stack pickup for a driver. Since this is a high impedance device, it requires around 100 volts of drive signal to produce adequate magnetic drive into the strings. This seemed kind of crazy to me, so shortly after that the Sustainiac GA-1 was born. We made a low-impedance driver so that the sustainer would run efficiently on batteries. The driver could be used as a pickup by attaching a transformer or amplifier to its output in order to increase the voltage output.

The reason a split coil pickup sounds more like a single coil is because they lack the harmonic cancellation you get from having two coils close together wired out of phase. Since no string is picked up by both coils, they sound like what they are, single coils. Its only the composite signal that includes both coils.

This is all very interesting stuff... I'm off the read the PG posts.

Here's the "bilateral driver"

[psw]

thanks...that's the answer I wanted...

Yes...they are a fairly generic plastic bobbined pup...thanks for the assurances from someone who has rewound them...that's just the kind of reply I was hoping for.

If I ruin it, all would not be lost as I could strip it back and rewind it better than it is now (14k is excessive IMO) and probably fit two 2mm drivers on there too...

At the moment, the intention is to complete the sustainer project to the stage of a viable mid/driver and for me, altering a pickup is easier than custom making a dedicated driver...

The future may well be a dedicated driver with inbuilt amp so that all is required elsewhere is a preamp module and the battery...

Even now, the electronics for a DIY sustainer is smaller than the commercial units and more adaptable to ones needs. The fernandes unit is particularly bad in that respect and requiring a lot of routing...

Eventually the sustainer may be not much more difficult to install than a new pickup...and making one is already easier than making a custom pickup...

People should note that the sustainer device is not just about infinite sustain...I actually don't like the phrase. It has two modes...normal which sustains the note at pitch although on my guitar it morphs into a consistant octave above on notes below the b string in pitch. If you reverse the phase of the driver it will dampen the fundamental and drive the harmonics extending the range of the guitar 1-2 octaves on every note of the entire guitar. You also have control over attack and decay and a lot of other articulation options (you need only fret a note and it will drive from nothing for instance) and it is polyphonic (although the bass strings will predominate the sustain). There are various sound clips of the device over at PG if people are interested...

Thanks for your answers and I'll let you know how I go with it...if people are interested feel free to contactme through here or at PG...

I have learn't a lot by building these things that are applicable to pickup construction, and I hope to do some more work in this area in the new year... pete

[psw]

sorry...I missed your post David S...

electro/mechanical type device

I too have done variations on the "acoustic" sustainer...I think they call it the model C now...One common way of doing it DIY is to cut the cone out of a small speaker and attach a coin to the voilce coil...attaching that to the headstock to physically vibrate the instrument...

I tried other variations like attaching it to a strats tremolo system to vibrate the bridge and hence the strings...makes a bit of a racket...

I remember when I was very much younger...attaching a pick to an electric tooth brush...kind of a poor mans gizmotron...lol

The bi-lateral driver is just one way...the side coil driver is another interesting one in the patents that could have application in pickup making too. There are two coils on their side and three blades...fernandes used it for a while.

Here is the present commercial driver from sustainiac...


Compared to mine it is massive. What I have been attempting to do is create a driver style that will address the issues of speed and efficiency without having to resort to complex electronic correction...so that it is more as you suggest, just a coil and amplifier.

The circuitry for a sustainer is quite complex...the hoover/osbourne patent shows seven pages of schematics...a lot of which concerns itself with phase correction...

The guage of wire, the way the coil is built and potted and the core are all important elements in the design and it won't work too well without attention to those details...it took an enormous amount of trial and error to get to this point with a deceptively simple design...

So it looks like this is already used and is a patented (1999) idea.

OK...the bi-lateal design is one that sustainiac use now...I suspect a stacked design may be good too. But, there is a subtle difference between even what I am proposing with the rail driver idea I illustrated and something like what sustainiac uses. It are these differences that will make all the difference...

My designs are small enough that they can be put onto a pickup for instance...but with the concept I illustrated (only one of many) the non-driving rail blades and their magnetic fields serve as attracters/shields for EMI emmiting from the driver opposite and serve to limit the amount of stray EMI by keeping the drive force between the blades...

It is with strategies like this that I seek to be able to locate the driver into the mid position and regain pickup selection for instance...greatly easing the installation process in doing so...

I'm surprised you need a magnet

very much need a magnet...the coil is used to manipulate an established magnetic field that has the metal strings in it's sway. Without it, you would be asking the coil to establish it's own magnetic field (a lot of power) and to switch this field as fast as the speed of the highest frequencies with little phase delay...not possible!

Speaking of the Ebow

well...you could make a pickup that is dedicated only to driving and exist outside of the guitars signal path...but there are problems here too. Ebows are small and operate only on one string...once you make them bigger...the EMI is bigger and as a result the distances between the driver and source pickup need to be bigger...also, a magnetic pickup will sense the EMI signal and cause massive distortion if it is anywhere near the driver...

They state: [this] allows almost complete cancellation of the driver's radiated magnetic field that is sensed by the pickup. Consequently, for the first time, single-coil pickups can now be used to supply the input signal to the sustainer.

Well...they can say what they like in a patent...the truth is that this device is not made as described...nor is the bi-lateral device unique (the P-bass pickup way predates the '80's) but a conveiniant design of may the have tried...

You can make a device that effectively stops any radiation...of course it is the radiation that is driving the string...so it wouldn't do anything!!!!

The original idea for the pickup type device was the Michael Brook Infinite Guitar, as used by U2. (I'm sure you know this...)

Absolutely...but he built it because he couldn't get an ebow...and the ebow patent shows six built in ebows...but back in the late 1800's there was a patent for a valve operated piano that used electro-magnetc coils to produce sustain...so nothing new under the sun...

Patents are legal documents designed to cover all bases...the fernandes ideas post-sustainiac are interesting too...but many if not most never reached production, inluding the sustainiac patent you point to!

This is all very interesting stuff... I'm off the read the PG posts.

It is interesting stuff...conceptually it is very easy...as you say a coil and a small amp...but practically it is an intriguing enigma attempted by few with success...

What I have attempted to do is document what I have been doing, encouraging others in their explorations and develop simple ideas that work...perhaps taking the technology a little further in the process.

I wouldn't try reading the whole thing (over 2000 posts in the main thread) but listen to a few sound clips, get a general feel for it, and join in in the discussion at the end...

beware....these things do get addictive... pete

[David Schwab]

I too have done variations on the "acoustic" sustainer...I think they call it the model C now...One common way of doing it DIY is to cut the cone out of a small speaker and attach a coin to the voilce coil...attaching that to the headstock to physically vibrate the instrument...

Yep, I started with a small speaker cut down. Mine was built into the bridge... it was a tune-a-matic bridge. There were some other aspects about that were kind of interesting... I had to find ways to make the most efficient use of the speaker element. It was a lot of fun too!

I tried other variations like attaching it to a strats tremolo system to vibrate the bridge and hence the strings...makes a bit of a racket...

Yeah, I called it a buzzer! I found some tricks to quiet it down. It sustained quite nicely though.

I remember when I was very much younger...attaching a pick to an electric tooth brush...kind of a poor mans gizmotron...lol

lol I used a small electric motor.

The bi-lateral driver is just one way...the side coil driver is another interesting one in the patents that could have application in pickup making too. There are two coils on their side and three blades...fernandes used it for a while.

I'm sure there's a bunch of ways. Interestingly the guy from sustainiac said they didn't try and patent the whole idea of using a coil to excite the strings, since it wasn't their idea... they just patented some ways to do it. I think that was quite decent of them. I wonder what Floyd Rose's patent is like. I haven't looked it up yet.

Here is the present commercial driver from sustainiac...


Compared to mine it is massive. What I have been attempting to do is create a driver style that will address the issues of speed and efficiency without having to resort to complex electronic correction...so that it is more as you suggest, just a coil and amplifier.

You know those flat topped poles they are using look like part of Bill Bartolini's patents. He used flat parallelogram poles.

The circuitry for a sustainer is quite complex...the hoover/osbourne patent shows seven pages of schematics...a lot of which concerns itself with phase correction...

Yeah I was checking that out too.

The guage of wire, the way the coil is built and potted and the core are all important elements in the design and it won't work too well without attention to those details...it took an enormous amount of trial and error to get to this point with a deceptively simple design...

I bet!

OK...the bi-lateal design is one that sustainiac use now...I suspect a stacked design may be good too. But, there is a subtle difference between even what I am proposing with the rail driver idea I illustrated and something like what sustainiac uses. It are these differences that will make all the difference...

Yeah Brook used a stacked pickup. Your idea is quite interesting.

It is with strategies like this that I seek to be able to locate the driver into the mid position and regain pickup selection for instance...greatly easing the installation process in doing so...

That's a great idea. I see the patent shows it in the middle position, but for what ever reason they never did that. I can see where it's easier to drive the strings from the neck position.

very much need a magnet...the coil is used to manipulate an established magnetic field that has the metal strings in it's sway. Without it, you would be asking the coil to establish it's own magnetic field (a lot of power) and to switch this field as fast as the speed of the highest frequencies with little phase delay...not possible!

I kind of figured as much... you'd need a pretty strong signal without it.

well...you could make a pickup that is dedicated only to driving and exist outside of the guitars signal path...but there are problems here too. Ebows are small and operate only on one string...once you make them bigger...the EMI is bigger and as a result the distances between the driver and source pickup need to be bigger...also, a magnetic pickup will sense the EMI signal and cause massive distortion if it is anywhere near the driver...

Yeah the other thing is the ebow pretty much excites the strings as soon as you hold it over them. Heet said this can be adjusted, but he never made the under string unit, so who knows how well it worked. It looked overly complicated.

Well...they can say what they like in a patent...the truth is that this device is not made as described...nor is the bi-lateral device unique (the P-bass pickup way predates the '80's) but a conveiniant design of may the have tried...

Yeah, and that was part of Seth Lover's original humbucker patent, which has obviously expired.

You can make a device that effectively stops any radiation...of course it is the radiation that is driving the string...so it wouldn't do anything!!!!

I suppose focusing the field might help... but that's all conjecture on my part, since I've never messed with one of these. This has me interested now though... like I even have the time!

Absolutely...but he built it because he couldn't get an ebow...and the ebow patent shows six built in ebows...but back in the late 1800's there was a patent for a valve operated piano that used electro-magnetc coils to produce sustain...so nothing new under the sun...

Yeah he tried to get it patented too, but it was rejected for technicalities and he didn't know you could resubmit it.

There's a HUGE list of patent numbers for sustainers. I haven't had the time to look at any of them.

Patents are legal documents designed to cover all bases...the fernandes ideas post-sustainiac are interesting too...but many if not most never reached production, inluding the sustainiac patent you point to!

Plus... do they even work?

It is interesting stuff...conceptually it is very easy...as you say a coil and a small amp...but practically it is an intriguing enigma attempted by few with success...

I can attest to that, just from my experiments on my unit... it was always, "hey that kind of works..." lol

What I have attempted to do is document what I have been doing, encouraging others in their explorations and develop simple ideas that work...perhaps taking the technology a little further in the process.

I wouldn't try reading the whole thing (over 2000 posts in the main thread) but listen to a few sound clips, get a general feel for it, and join in in the discussion at the end...

beware....these things do get addictive... pete

Hey, it's very cool stuff you are doing! I've read a bit of it back when someone posted some stuff at the MIMF forum on this (was that you?).

Getting back to the blade pickup. You can make blade pickups very easily. I just started making blade pickups... poles where too much work!

I just use a piece of plain steel stock, and I make the bobbin flats from phenolic circuit board. I rout a slot on a drill press, and glue the flats to the blade with epoxy.

Here's a side by side humbucker, but I've done stacked pickups like this too.

[psw]

That's the spirit of DIY...

The poles work but the blade was used as there is a loss of sustain between the poles when bending strings...

You will see that we developed a way of making coils without bobbins which are solid epoxied coils of wire...this allows for a great deal of experimentation going forward...

In the instance of your HB blades, we would not need the bobbin pieces at all and can experiment with powdered iron cores and the like or simple steel blades (which is what I used too!)...

If an efficient and fast driver can be developed, as I think my thin coil thin core designs are, you do not need the complexity of the circuit described. The next generation of circuit is likely to be modular with the main amp built into the pickup (using it as a heat sink BTW) and a small preamp to stop loading probably featuring this "feed-forward" compressor to improve even-ness of response and reduce battery consumption too)...

A significant amount of time (over a year) was dedicated to my hex designs that had individual driving elements for each string...The exact working of them are secret, but was the basis for the thin coil ideas...here is a picture of one of very many that were made...

For this I got a bit of flak...I incorporated 5 LED's between the strings that lit up when it was switched on...some thought that it was the lights that made it work, some said it was over the top...and others suggested it was a fake...

This picture is about twice actual size...there are 12 magnets in there and was intended to be surface mounted and run from a box behind the tailpiece...here was a realization of the design by another contributor and designer...

Now...these devices were very different from the coil based sustainers and I did hope to mount the device near the bridge at one point...and I did get close...

Three things were a deterent to the success of these...they are not easy to make (certainly not DIY), required very accurate alignment (string bending caused some interesting effects if not mounted near the bridge) and the bypass wiring meant that a lot of wires had to go to and fro from the guitar to the box...

It may well be that in the near future, a similar sized device could be made to fit on a two humbucker guitar with an output from the output jack to such a box without much if any modifications to either the guitar or it's wiring...

I did make a testing thing called a "sustain box" that did work...

but it was not really permanent instrument as such...just a testing device or proof of concept...

So...from what I have said, readers will now be pretty much up to speed on what the thread contains and where it is headed...we always welcome more input and encouragement so feel free to join in...

I'll just add a few clips of what the thing sounds like as one disappointing aspect of sustainer technology is that it is so poorly promoted by the companies selling it. The most recognisable sustainer on record is from U2's With or Without You...supposedly Brook's guitar.

From me...beckistan.mp3
...is worth a listen, it is the first thing I improvised after properly installing the sustainer and is worth a listen for various effects...in particular the harmonic effect...most of these notes were played on the g string below the twelth fret, and demonstrates how this device greatly extends the range and tonal palette of the guitar, not just producing sustain...

You may also be interested in other stuff at... http://projectguitar.ibforums.com/in...howtopic=17852
a sounds thread...

Also there are two tutorials at PG...
http://projectguitar.ibforums.com/in...howtopic=16984
and this on the building of my guitar's pickup...
http://projectguitar.ibforums.com/in...howtopic=24211

So, you see there is a lot of stuff and a lot of work gone into it, and a lot more being put in by both me and a number of really talented people...

That probably sums up the sustainer Q&A and thanks for the welcome and answer to the original question ... pete

[David Schwab]

I'll just add a few clips of what the thing sounds like as one disappointing aspect of sustainer technology is that it is so poorly promoted by the companies selling it. The most recognisable sustainer on record is from U2's With or Without You...supposedly Brook's guitar.

From me...beckistan.mp3
...is worth a listen, it is the first thing I improvised after properly installing the sustainer and is worth a listen for various effects...in particular the harmonic effect...most of these notes were played on the g string below the twelth fret, and demonstrates how this device greatly extends the range and tonal palette of the guitar, not just producing sustain...

That's really cool! It does have that With or Without You sound.

Nice work!