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Feel free to contact me by email if you need explanation, cheers, pete

The DIY thing is tricky. Certainly the basic DIY thing is not going to work with both pickups and surprised that fernandes would suggest 2cm, that sounds way over optimistic and extreme skepticalism is advised on that. It could be,k technically (here are patents) possible and have even 'heard' one in a clip that was the middle driver...but be careful what you wish for. Reality is that the sound of the sustainer when on is not the bridge pup with sustain but it's own sound as it is driving the string at the neck position. The interferances are no small thing, the only thing that really protects the interaction of magnets is the distance. I've played enough with mine to get a feel for what would be achieved and it is nothing like as great as people imagine and if it were easily possible, people would be selling them already, no? That said, the DIY model can be made pretty compact...but you need to be good at this kind of thing and wiring tends to be uber tricky.... My tele here has it's driver surface mounted and is thinner than the already thin tele SCn neck pickup it sits next to. The switching is such that regardless of the selector, when activated the bridge pup is selected and the power turned on and all coils both hot and ground are disconnected as the sustainer driver will generate signals in any nearby coil especially, even the ground plane if not careful. If you can afford a commercial unit, I'd be doing that, same with making pickups, it seems 'simple' but it's not worth it for the hit and miss results and cost a lot more to tool up to do it well. There is an art to these things and the makers know what they are doing, there is an art to such things. I'd also caution throwing everything into some 'uber guitar' project, they rarely if ever live up to the dreams and can easily become a nightmare. I just happened across this so shy away from such threads, but if you'd like some more explanation or thoughts or want to float a few ideas I can be contacted by the email or PM on this forum. I don't make these things for others, but can give some explanations as to my ideas. The sustainer project from my side developed further still, being more compact (infact invisible) and low impact on the instrument, but that like many things are not DIY projects and has for the time being been abandoned as it's simply not a cost effective commercial proposition at this point in time. There are a lot more intersting things than sustainers too, but just making a really good guitar is enough, remember a lot more can be achieved in spending the hours on developing the playing side of things than anything that these technologies can offer and always there is going to have to be compromise. Anyway, the offer is there...pete

Take a washer that fits the pit, wire a ground wire to this and hwen you screw the pot into the guitar, this will ground it. Filing/sanding a bit of such parts will often make it easy to solder too, most parts will ahve some plating/grease/oxidisation that resists soldering, so doing this will make it nice and bright. If you dont have a 'washer' strip a wire right back (solid wire works best) to make a 'ring' that will fit and solder it to bnecome the ground wire.

Lovecraft is sadly missed...thanks a lot for bringing back these images. I recently had to go active and the guitar now has 4-5 pre-amps in it!!! I'm sure that this will not be such a complex build. As said, got to match the impedances and a buffer on the passive to make it active too, perhaps the pot/s will also need to be adjusted (I used 100K's on the volume for instance..or what the EMG wants). GN2 is a good forum for such things as well, here is a thread on some of some other buffer options and projects... http://guitarnuts2.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=schem&action=display&thread=3150

Many would be surprised at how 'acoustic' one can get magnetic pickups with low impedance and such, often very similar to the piezo effect. Bear in mind that piezos amped enough to be sensitive to say, the 'body wood' of a solid body guitar, is quite likely to pick up all kinds of 'handling noise'. You might want this kind of thing if you do some kind of 'percussive' guitar thing, or not. The guitar above was built to limit that in teh bridge design to pickup mostly the strings and not the body to limit that effect. It is hard to find clips that do sims and pickups justice to their potential...but bear in mind that these are running through amps set for the device or direct to recorders that can optimise the effect. The sims are essentially sophisticated filters and can't really 'add' to the sound. It is highly dependent on the sound it has to work with. Piezos too require that kind of thing to sound 'convincing'. You might be surprised at how 'acoustic like' some mag pickups could be...listen to the sound of a lace sensor clean and in such a mode...low impedance hi frequency range devices too can be effective... I think such sounds are towards the end of the clip. There are many magnetic devices that can do a 'good' job of creating acoustic like sounds. Bear in mind that the qualities in teh sustain and the way harmonics build and cancel and reinforce is a complex thing in an acoustic instrument while different in most electrics...this is not necessarily a bad thing, but they are different so anything really is a bit of a 'sim' in coparison...IMHO

I've helped many with the original design. This recent video showing a test in harmonic mode of a simple "blocked" stock single coil pickup (tele neck style) and using a 'Ruby' modded as suggested (not the F/R though that would work too) shows that the design is sound and works as one would expect. Testing was done, first with a speaker to be sure the circuit is working as a low watt battery amp, then hooked to the guitar with a 'y' chord out of the output jack of a strat, one to the sustainer circuit, the other to a 'pignose' amp for testing. Testing well away from other pickups ensures there is no EMI problems, but I've found, once installed and with proper and complete bypass of all otehr pickups, it can work even better than the tests. I've always suggested testing in this way before modifying the guitar in any way to ensure that the work on the project has been successful. If built as described and to high enough quality it will work very effectively. But, it is clearly not a project that suits everyone. Hope that assists people who have, are or wish to experiement with such things.

Building pedals into a guitar is nearly always a bad thing... Also, don't confuse 'piezo' with 'acoustic', it is more acoustic like certainly... The simulators are getting better but the quality of the sound is very much dependent on amplification and the type of guitar, pickups and style of play and setting the pedal appropriately. Mixing Mag pups and piezos can often be problematic due to impedance mismatches, you will need buffers and such. My latest guitar project has both mag and piezo and several different kinds of stereo and blend effects (as well as on board tuner and 4 band eq for the piezo)... But I have tried out and have perhaps the cheapest ($40 new) Behringer version the AM100 (effectively a Boss AC2 clone) and it can sound quite good. Things are improving and many multi effects pedals also include such things, I found I had a few. They are not quite 'acoustic' but some can sound better than a bad piezo system. I use it occassionally to make my acoustic with soundhole mag pickup sound a bit more 'acoustic'. The behringer does have several cool features though. It has two outputs so one can run stereo or multi amps, so can be a good splitter. It also has 4 sim types and other controls, I tend to favour the 'large' setting for my guitars. Looking for some kind of YT demo, they were all pretty bad and poorly represents what the things are capable of... I found this audio that is more impressive though...but unlike many, he clearly knows how to use it! http://www.juzp.net/Lpw2d_QOealRq But there are other options too, many...and more all the time. For most, these things may well sound as good or better in an electric guitar than the expense and work of a piezo, more options and as a pedal, can be added to any guitar. If however, either piezo or modeller, you run HB pickups say and into a conventional guitar rig set for a good electric sound and think at a push of a button or change to piezo you are going to get a gret sound, you will likely be pretty disappointed.