Sustainer/Resonator/Ebow/Sustainiac devices

[Rick Turner]

The best sustainer devices that I've seen were one that Bob Wolstein (Highlander Musical Audio) designed for Ned Steinberger. It had compression and limiting circuits that helped it grab on to the string quickly, but then not overdrive it; it was very controlled. The other one was an electromagnetic driver built into a bass bridge; Michael Manring has one. It can drive the strings so strongly that your fingertips on your fretting hand can be damaged. It, too, has elaborate electronics for controlling it all.

I screwed one of those wall driving transducers to the peghead of a guitar in the early '70s. It worked...kind of...

[Mark Hammer]

One of the things I've always liked about mahogany necks is that you can feel the note more through the neck than with a maple one, or some equally dense material or composite. Personally, I find I like what it does for my finger vibrato when I have that tactile feedback.

So if mahogany necks can be more resonant (and I fully understand that one can make resonant and nonresonant necks out of anything), do they also impact on the functioning of Sustainer devices, or are they necks-don't-matter kind of things that only address strings?

And I guess that comes to the second question: are there string compositions/properties that are optimal for use with sustainer devices? For example, we often hear about the risk of lighter strings being sucked dry of sustain by strong magnets that pull them back into place. Then does the use of a sustainer device, where the pickup magnetic is supposed to exert influence on the string, point to use of light gauge strings as desirable for that application? Does one shoot for strings with optimal magnetic properties rather than tonal ones?

[David Schwab]

I screwed one of those wall driving transducers to the peghead of a guitar in the early '70s. It worked...kind of...

I was doing something similar, but with the transducer at the bridge. I was modifying small speakers to use as drivers. That worked very well. At the time I was working for ITT, so if I patented it, they would have owned the patent. So I didn't pursue the idea much. Then the Sustainiac unit that clamped on the head stock came out. I liked mine better because it was self contained.

[peskywinnets]

I've not actually conducted tests with different necks, but sustainers are somewhat blunt instruments.

In 'normal mode', pretty soon after after it takes 'hold' of the strings (like 500ms), just about all of the natural harmonics drop out, so I'd imagine this would be the case no matter whatever the neck/body. The biggest effect on the harmonic tonal/content of a sustainer is the placement of the 'source signal' pickup.

Sustainers source their signal from the bridge pickup - for no other reason than it's the farthest signal source away from the driver coil (to avoid squeal) - as I'm sure most who have dabbled with pickups have already found, the bridge pickup is the one that - due to its physical placement - picks up the most harmonically 'rich' signal.....the upshot being - particularly with the lower fret positions - often its not the fundamental that gets sustained (but an octave higher).

Re the second question, the heavier the string gauge & the higher the ferrous content the better (I use Rotosound "British Steel - which are reputed to have the highest ferrous content of any string) .....I use gauge 10s ....the sustainer needs to have sufficient 'meat' to act upon.

Fortunately there are synergies with tonal qualities here (in that heavier gauge strings - by and large - have better tonal properties)

[Mark Hammer]

Thanks. Useful information.

[Zhangliqun]

The original purpose was I had a customer asking about some pickups that he would put in the guitar next to a sustainer (an odd design) and I was wondering what effect the sustainer mag(s) would have on the magnetic field of the immediately adjacent pickup.

[peskywinnets]

The original purpose was I had a customer asking about some pickups that he would put in the guitar next to a sustainer (an odd design) and I was wondering what effect the sustainer mag(s) would have on the magnetic field of the immediately adjacent pickup.

There are a few 'it depends' here.

From Sustainiac's website...

"Placing a single-coil pickup next to the driver: This does not work well. The Sustainiac works fine, but the side-by-side permanent magnetic fields of our patented bilateral driver "bend" the field of a single coil pickup. The result is that the sound of three of the strings will have about 6dB lower output level than the other three strings. Same for a humbucker with "stacked" coils. A mini-humbucker with conventional "side-by-side" coils pickup doesn't exhibit this problem as much."

(source - Stealth Pro Overview ....tpowards the bottom of the page)

But that's with their driver .....it would depend on the type of 'odd' driver in play (particurlarly the type of magnets the driver uses & their strength), how close to the pickup, the type of pickup it's going alongside,