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Help With My Sustainer


Joghurtgumi

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Well, if you have a distortion circuit feeding the driver, this is a poor strategy...you want to have a clean efficient signal driving the strings and with just enough power...likely you are getting EMI into the pickups...in testing, are you getting clean sustain without any effects or distortion or unusual noise...generally the aim is for the clean guitar sound not to change with the sustainer on or off, other than the effect of the string driving...you can add distortions and such all you like to this.

You will also want to adjust the gain and power of the circuit to achieve this goal.

Each guitar can be a bit different as well, the pickup feeding the circuit obviously has an influence on performance, the distance between the pickup and the driver, characteristics of the circuit...if you put a distortion unit in the circuit to the driver you are creating a huge compression, cutting off the top of the wave forms, and boosting every single frequency, not just the dominant tones of the guitar and pickup combination...which could explain a lot if that is the arrangement you are trying.

Mostly it is about efficiency and that is why a very good driver coil is important, then less power so you stay clean and under the EMI threashold. Other circuits work, I still tend towards and have gotten very good results form an LM386 type circuit...the preamp or buffer stage is almost entirely there to avoid loading, there should be no change of tone or volume for switching the circuit in or out other than the effect of driving the strings.

So...

#1 hard to tell exactly what is going on there, however, the harmonics will change over the fretboard rising as you get to about the 12th fret and reverting back again there after...you may need to adjust the 'bias' of the circuit, I change my output cap to 100uF to get great high string fundamental sustain but the lower notes tend to become harmonics, potentially you could switch such components for a variety of 'effects' or responses. In ahrmonic mode, I get harmonics on all strings, all the way up...but as I say, they will alter with the overtone series and the arrangement of the guitar. If you are using a distortion of overdriven circuit, you will be boosting the harmonic content and so it may be having trouble driving the fundamentals alone with all this other 'stuff' in the signal.

#2 Cant speak to sustainiac, my design is very different in many ways so not a fair comparison. In particular, sustainiac has onboard electronic swithcing, half power may just be switching electronically any number of variable and it isn't the 'power' at all that is being altered, just he switches control signal.

#3 Not quite following this, the volume knob of the entire guitar? A volume knob loads the guitar and circuit, that's how it works. How it interacts with pedals, to hard to tell, as for the direction of the knob...that could be a wiring issue. Sounds like there are 'issues' and perhaps it is in your strategy of using distortion or something. As I say, aim to adjust the circuit so that you can get clean sustain with minimal noise (or none) with a clean signal on the amp. The volume control will operate as an intensity thing as loading this will also generally load the signal into the circuit driving the strings...it depends a little on how it is wired though...ideally you should get exactly the same sustain even with the volume to zero so you can do volume swells into note and such, the signal to the driver should be taken directly from the bridge pickup and remember that all other pickups need to be completely bypassed (hot and grounds) to avoid issues there.

I would really need complete details of wiring and symptoms, but this is a DIY project where you may need to do a lot of experimentation to get things just right.

I had my sustainer guitar with me yesterday on my weekly jam and haven't played it for a while, the battery is fairly old now as well, but the thing still works perfectly with your basic 3mm coil and fairly simple LM386 circuit. When I talk about 'clean' I am not making a value judgment on the kind of tone people might choose, it sounds great distorted, but this comes from the amp or pedals and you can go nuts with all kinds of effects, but the signal coming out of the guitar should remain the same and certainly shouldn't suffer for having this device in it...the only way you are going to be able to hear what is going on is if you use a clean signal for testing, and to get predictable and superior results, a pretty 'straight' signal driving the strings, something akin to the vibration of the strings themselves...hope that makes sense and is of use...

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Good...sounds like you are well on the way if you are getting sustain with that coil...just follow the guidelines, make it solid as you can and close to 8 ohms (7.5 is fine).

Winding such coils is not hard, but it is something that people don't do a lot of, so extra care and or a few goes may be necessary. Fortunately the wire should only work out to be a couple of bucks per coil and take about 10 minutes to wind once things are prepared.

Test the circuit with a speaker to get an idea of it's sound, it is an amplifier after all, and add and learn to adjust things to get a reasonably clean sound and you can adjust things. A 1K trim pot between pins 1&8 of the LM386 adjusts gain in the power amp, the preamp volume pot adjusts the volume going into the power amp. If your preamp power is too hot, you will overload the input (perhaps strong pickups or too much gain) ... it is exactly like a master volume amp, and you need to be able to adjust things and know what they do...of course with the sustainer coil on it, you will not be able to 'hear' it, only the effect, so you do need to understand how this works to get the effect you want.

Again, the easiest and probably cheapest way to build a driver is to use an old SC pickup (or even half an HB)...block it up to leave 3mm at the top to wind on to, use plenty of glue. This provides a neat end product, height adjustment, the bobbin and a suitable magnet structure all in one, all you really need to worry about is the winding and potting. A guitar store may even give you some cheap or broken pickups to play with if they know what you are doing.

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Yea I'm still waiting for my wire. Couldn't find any locally so I had to order. With the wire I had before I ended up winding about 4 coils. They never got up to 8 ohms though. I would wind and wind but realized every few winds I was losing resistance. It would read lower than before. Highest I was able to get was between 5-6. I can only think that the wire was shorting. Checked the wire and the enamel coating was shotty since I could just clip on alligator clips to the wire and get a reading without scraping off the coating. Even tried the test probes in case the clips were cutting into the coating, same thing. I looked up the chemical datasheets for the glue I have and it is PVA. Even asked a friend studying chemistry to see if the coating and glue might be reacting. So think I'm safe there. I've been on hold for about a week and a half now. Even if I get the wire by the end of the week I don't know when I'll continue. Have some midterms coming up next week. Maybe on the weekend as a break from studying.

My new guitar has an HSH config. PSW, how does your dual coil mid driver work? Can't seem to find the thread where you wrote a bit about it. Could you share some insight on your design as my new guitar does not have enough space to mount the driver anywhere. A very thin driver might work on top of the neck pickup.. but I would have to lower them and I'd rather keep my setup the way it is. I don't mind losing the mid pickup though. This will of course have to wait until I can get one working successfully for my old guitar. Which I wanted to sell but this project gave me a reason to keep the guitar. At least for experiments. I doubt I'll b playing it much since its so heavy and the licensed floyd was the reason I got it (wanted to get into trems without buying an expensive guitar in case I totally ****ed it or it wasn't my thing). My new ZR feels like butter in comparison.

BTW, the sustain I mentioned earlier with my weak coil wasn't very good. The tests were done with me holding the coil above the strings. Yes it was sustaining since the sound did keep 'going' and would stop if I moved the driver away. This was only present on the 5th and 6th strings. Could not hear anything conclusive on the other strings.

Edited by dark_1
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Not sure what has been going on with that wire, but enamel coated wire is a pretty tough coating that generally needs sanding or scraping off to get any kind of reading. Can't think how more turns or length could reduce resistance unless shorting except more common is perhaps not using a multimeter properly. You must have the settings in the correct range, remember 8 ohms is very low...so you don't want it set to Kohms or 1,000 of ohms for instance (as in a pickup), this might give such readings as you start winding into it's range. Generally about 160 winds will get you into an 8 ohm region but it depends on the winding and the bobbin to be sure, reading is necessary. Test you reading ability by taking readings of speakers that you know the value of...say 8 ohms...so you know you are doing it right.

I would hold off on your HSH conversion thing...this is not an easy guitar to do...no, a mid pickup will not work for you, so do not even think about it. Many of us tried that, the mid driver of mine was close but nowhere near good enough and very difficult to make...no one quite got it working, certainly not in an HSH guitar, possibly 24 frets...you just don't have the distance. The details are hidden in the huge thread, but in the end I abandoned it through lack of performance and the newer 'wafer' coil designs that are now in that guitar.

Your best bet for an HSH is perhaps to get an old HB pickup and wind a driver to the neck most coil...you will be losing your neck pickup though effectively. With an HB you don't have the throw to lower them too much and get any decent sound and again, technically difficult to piggyback on to...my LP experiments might be in the sustainer threads thing, it can work a bit, but certainly not 'good enough' and you lose the neck pickups effectiveness completely lowering it that much.

The thicker 5 and 6 strings are the easiest to drive, relatively slow moving with lots of metal in them. What you are trying to create is an electromagnetic device with enough force at low power to move even thin strings (10's are better with any sustainer guitar, see sustainiac, et al) at all frequencies which will be several thousand times a second it needs to be able to change states. If your magnets are too strong, they are going to be working against that, too much power and it is going be hard to reverse the flow quickly, any loose coils will create unwanted signals and effect performance...and of course there are so many factors like resonance and inductance...a lot of these things are taken care of in the basic simple design and specifications, which is why they are important.

PVA btw will not effect the enamel insulation on the wire, but it will' repair' the occassional reading spots. You may even get a faint wine from even the best potted coils (like my completely solid tele driver if you turned up the power and listened very closely acoustically)...there is a lot of energy in these things.

Take your time and try one at a time. A small coil will likely make 4 drivers, it really isn't that much wire or turns, easily done by hand. Building on top of pickups can be tricky and you risk wrecking the pickup if not confident, but it is possible on single coils.

Once you get into anything 'exotic' like dual coils and such, there is potential, but no formula to work from...what is the ideas to get the qualities you want in such a design, what wire gauge, series or parallel, how to avoid leakage into the very nearby bridge pickup if you put it in the middle right near it? Many if not all of these have no definitive answer. Sustainiac holds a patent on the concept for strats, but no product...that might be a clue...I am sure it could be done with enough money and determination and time and a lot of ingenuity...but in all this time, nothing has come too close. My last one was a compact bi-lateral on a standard tele between the pickups...but no dice...so, feel it a bit of a lost cause...and not all guitars are suitable you know.

For an HSH guitar, sustainiacs solution is to use a compact HB coil sized HB...like a JB Jnr with their driver right up close to the neck...possibly a scheme to consider...or move the neck pickup back a bit...if you ahve the nerve and wood skills and a small enough driver that works.

That said, test everything till you have it working before getting too far ahead of yourself or anticipating success with something like a mid driver...best of luck

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"Each guitar can be a bit different as well, the pickup feeding the circuit obviously has an influence on performance, the distance between the pickup and the driver, characteristics of the circuit...if you put a distortion unit in the circuit to the driver you are creating a huge compression, cutting off the top of the wave forms, and boosting every single frequency, not just the dominant tones of the guitar and pickup combination...which could explain a lot if that is the arrangement you are trying.

Mostly it is about efficiency and that is why a very good driver coil is important, then less power so you stay clean and under the EMI threashold. Other circuits work, I still tend towards and have gotten very good results form an LM386 type circuit...the preamp or buffer stage is almost entirely there to avoid loading, there should be no change of tone or volume for switching the circuit in or out other than the effect of driving the strings."

my circuit is 4558 feeding the 386,the buffer is still exist between them but i think its useless...with very high signal boosting there...likely 100 times. combined with 386 gain might be too much...but i do like pushing the circuit...thats why i put the driver in the neck (routed last fret) for more extra clean headroom.

so it is no ideal to shove distorted signal to 386 other than the effect the signal become dirty and noisy? if it does cut high frequencies and stuff i now had to build a new circuit.

"#1 hard to tell exactly what is going on there, however, the harmonics will change over the fretboard rising as you get to about the 12th fret and reverting back again there after...you may need to adjust the 'bias' of the circuit, I change my output cap to 100uF to get great high string fundamental sustain but the lower notes tend to become harmonics, potentially you could switch such components for a variety of 'effects' or responses. In ahrmonic mode, I get harmonics on all strings, all the way up...but as I say, they will alter with the overtone series and the arrangement of the guitar. If you are using a distortion of overdriven circuit, you will be boosting the harmonic content and so it may be having trouble driving the fundamentals alone with all this other 'stuff' in the signal."

yes i know youre using different stuff for the circuit i have built an 386 circuit with 100uf cap and 10 uf bypass cap...with 10uf at the gain control too,the zobel also get changed a bit... sounds familiar right? 386 is great but the annoying thing is that its very unstable and can oscillates realy easily...even with

buffer and preamp stages there.

in your circuit is it have any additional gain stages like mine there? opamp or transistor? what is the exactly the dramatic effect of changing output or input cap? other than harmonic bloom

"#2 Cant speak to sustainiac, my design is very different in many ways so not a fair comparison. In particular, sustainiac has onboard electronic swithcing, half power may just be switching electronically any number of variable and it isn't the 'power' at all that is being altered, just he switches control signal."

so are mine..... well, minus the driver of course. so just reversing the lead can change sustain content right? so it has nothing to do with stuff i mentioned. cheers.

#3 Not quite following this, the volume knob of the entire guitar? A volume knob loads the guitar and circuit, that's how it works. How it interacts with pedals, to hard to tell, as for the direction of the knob...that could be a wiring issue. Sounds like there are 'issues' and perhaps it is in your strategy of using distortion or something. As I say, aim to adjust the circuit so that you can get clean sustain with minimal noise (or none) with a clean signal on the amp. The volume control will operate as an intensity thing as loading this will also generally load the signal into the circuit driving the strings...it depends a little on how it is wired though...ideally you should get exactly the same sustain even with the volume to zero so you can do volume swells into note and such, the signal to the driver should be taken directly from the bridge pickup and remember that all other pickups need to be completely bypassed (hot and grounds) to avoid issues there.

no...not wiring.... im good at it i can tell you. maybe i just described it wrong. sustainer input attached to one of the bridge pickup's lead all the time right? i have tried solder it to lug 2 of volume pot,but it just robbing sustainer's strenght the rest of the circuit is just grounded,including mid and neck pickup too just to provided something i called "side shielding".

"I had my sustainer guitar with me yesterday on my weekly jam and haven't played it for a while, the battery is fairly old now as well, but the thing still works perfectly with your basic 3mm coil and fairly simple LM386 circuit. When I talk about 'clean' I am not making a value judgment on the kind of tone people might choose, it sounds great distorted, but this comes from the amp or pedals and you can go nuts with all kinds of effects, but the signal coming out of the guitar should remain the same and certainly shouldn't suffer for having this device in it...the only way you are going to be able to hear what is going on is if you use a clean signal for testing, and to get predictable and superior results, a pretty 'straight' signal driving the strings, something akin to the vibration of the strings themselves...hope that makes sense and is of use..."

"clean" sustain is hard....i always get a bit of hum even at the point when the sustain is very weak.... maybe because it just natural having active circuit there and leak some unwanted noise.

actuallly the only problem to be solved now is why my sustainer dont work with certain pedals.... either its distortions or modulations.

can you provide me some links to the page where there are enough info about col's circuit design? cant seem to find in that huge thread.

peace!!!

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Well...you could check this old thread at GN2 GN2 4real Link...cols circuit might have been included there, or in the tutorial, before it closed I added things into there as they developed from the original thread. My understanding is that it went through quite a few different developments, and certainy the aim was for a different response and tested with an HB driver as well...

I don't recall what a 4558 is, but I assume it is an op amp. All the "power" is coming out of the LM386, all the preamp stage is doing is overloading the input creating distortion and square wave compression and noise. However, if a general preamp design, you can adjust this to zero or even less to a theoretical infinite (power allowing) gain...but this is not preamp gain, not actual raw power that a power amp designed to run a speaker or driver requires.

The idea of pushing the circuit and distortions were well and truly discussed and tried in various forms but again and again it comes back to a clean signal close to the signal of the vibrating strings themselves (strings don't actually vibrate in a distorted square wave you understand). Don't mistake distorted with loud or power, it is actually the opposite in many respects...

Well...I'm not sure at all about "familiar"...the LM386 should be very stable especially with those extra caps and such, and a proper zobel (if you have messed around with that there could be a problem)..of course if you send a signal into the input with a gain or 100 times, especially with any decent powered hot pickup, you will just get 'mush'...attach a speaker to the circuit in place of the driver and listen to the thing!?

"My circuit"...well there have been so many. The more recent versions are a typical LM386 100uF output cap kind of thing and pretty much a buffer only stage and a light adjustable AGC that can be defeated or gives a preamp gain down to zero or "off"...so, no gain at all in the preamp stages for maximum clean and efficiency...but I make a darn good driver! I don't give away my current circuit, but details and pics of previous circuits exist and are based on the basic principles. It is not as 'magic' as people assume and the driver is the heart of things, but I can tell you it is and unusual discrete transistor and contains a novel design...the zobel is only coincidentally associated with the AGC and runs in parallel. There were some interesting ideas floated about on different values, but I can't speak to that. The main purpose of the 'preamp/buffer' is to prevent loading (which you seem to have) and I have a pickup input impedance into the buffer stage of 1Mega ohm...if you have cribbed designs form ordinary audio circuits you might have 10-100K ohm and this may be too small!

No...no gain stages at all, it's all power amp and clean no gain in the preamp with no loading at all on the pickup.

Well, if you have a different design and wont tell me, I cant speak to that either.

The principle of reversing the phase of the driver (or in fact the signal in) is that the sustainer will attempt to stop the fundamental and drive the next loudest harmonic. As you can tell from natural harmonics, these change throughout and start again after the 12th fret and although musical, is not always intuitive.

Well I don't know what side shielding is, but you do realize that copper shielding wont help with electromagnetic interference. You need to pull all ground and hot pickup leads out of circuit (usually by pulling the entire selector from the guitars circuit) and directly attach the bridge hot and ground directly to the circuit input (this can be a permanent connection)...I've published the 4pdt switch to achieve this around and you can see it in the tele thread.

"clean sustain" is what you need to aim for, you can add distortions as much as you like in effects or amps. I ahve no idea why you should be getting problems with effects unless you are getting a huge signal from the driver into the pickup and running into the input of a digital effect or something...so hard to tell because you mention so many variables and no details for me to assess it.

To get clean sustain, you want low power and no signal being picked up by the bridge pickup causing fizz.

Now, think about it. If you plugged your guitar into a 100x preamp booster before your amp, it would turn to much....well, not clean! This is exactly what you are doing to that little LM386 which itself isn't known to be that 'clean' especially if driven at hi gain...this will cause oscillation and distortions because everything is overloaded, presumably in the false premise that 'more power is more better'. In fact, it sound like you are getting micro-phonic feedback which can sound like oscillation and definitely what you don't want. Thin k of a PA and microphone, if it gets too close or too loud or too distorted or compressed, it is going to 'whistle' till you turn it down and or move the microphone away from the speaker...this is exactly the same as the pickup and driver in this system...the feedback you want is regenerative not oscillating and your strategy seems to be begging for such problems.

Col's circuit, well...see first paragraph, maybe send him an email....but it is a completely different thing. Similar principles but even more 'control' and mild effect than mine...basically you have very little gain in both the LM386 and the preamp stages for clean, filters and AGC for control...so even goes further than mine.

My suggestion is before you go off exploring seemingly 'good ideas' build the most basic clean design and slowly modify it to improve performance so you can hear the effect of each strategy. When you do this, I think you will find that lower power is better, clean is better and watch those impedance's.

did i forget anything?

in your circuit is it have any additional gain stages like mine there? opamp or transistor? what is the exactly the dramatic effect of changing output or input cap? other than harmonic bloom

Output cap is to give a bit more of a treble bias to drive the high strings a bit better. However, the result is that it struggles, especially at higher powers, to drive the lower tones (below C 5th fret g string) at the fundamental...it will bloom into a harmonic usually an octave and a 5th above on these notes. If you use a bigger cap, like col did, you may find that high strings struggle, it is in part to compensate for the characteristics of my driver though, he used a completely different driver with his circuit.

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Well I didn't think the sustainer would work well in the hsh config. Will leave that thought for now. I will be going into computer engineering in the near future so maybe I will revisit the whole sustainer thing and see if there are any improvements to be made. I received my wire today but got home past midnight so no winding tonight, have to work early. I'm confident I know how to set the multimeter. I've tested hundreds of resistors.. For the coil, I set my multimeter to the lowest range which is 0-200 ohms. The next step up is 0-2Kohms.. I will try to make some time over the weekend to wind a new coil.. as for why it was shorting.. well the wire I had came coiled and glued already.. A coil with no core.. the wire read fine..only I had to unwrap it from the original coil as I wound my driver coil. I think the glue that was used was too strong as it seemed to be stripping the coating or maybe it was just **** coating.. basically the wire read properly on the original coil and even on my coil.. If i unwrapped some wire after getting a lower reading, the reading would jump back up.. I tried coating spots I thought might by shorting only to find out pretty much the entire length of the wire seemed to be missing coating since I could easily get a reading from it without scraping any coating.. The wire I received today looks promising.. It is solderable wire. Only kind I could find. Will that be a problem? I unwrapped the last coil I did a few minutes ago and it really was rock hard. Was left for about a week or so without me touching it. I had to use some water to loosen up the glue first or the wire would keep breaking. Still waiting for 4pdt switches. The most I could find locally were 3pdt but they were rocker switches..

I'm not sure who the volume knob statement was directed at.. I didn't fully read all the posts.. Its about 1:30 in the morning.. Heres how I want my setup to basically work.. pickups go to 4pdt.. in the on mode it splits the bridge to go to circuit and go to 3 way lever switch and lifts both hot and ground of the neck pickup and also powers on the circuit..off mode everythings normal, both pickups going straight to 3-way switch..then to volume and tone.. This way the guitar will have volume and tone pots..the third pot (originally tone pot) I will be replacing with a 100k push pull to use as the 'volume' of the circuit and the dpdt switch on it will be used for fundamental/harmonic sustain switch.. This way I only need to drill a hole for the 4pdt switch..

Hope that all makes sense. Its been a very long day..

by the way the vertical space on my bobbin is a tad over 3 mm..tad under 4..will that cause significant problems?

Maybe I'll get around to posting some pics..

Edited by dark_1
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Ok well that was easy... Just finished winding with the new wire and first time I checked I got a reading of 8.5 ohms..undid a bit of the wire and its now sitting around 7.9..put some clamps on while it dries and its giving me a little higher reading (8.3). I'm going to leave it and see how it is when it dries and clamps come off.

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Sounds good, the 3mm thing is mostly so that the bulk of the coil is near the strings and the profile is thin limiting the spread of EMI...but yeah, 4mm is probably ok...the 3mm should easily hold a hand wound coil with plenty of overlaps and is a guide.

Sounds like that wire you had was a losing deal, never heard of such a thing, but no doubt the coating was being stripped.

7.9-8.3 ohms, ideal...just let it set...good to hear from someone that took their coil apart and found it to be solid, there are a lot of people that doubt the suggested glue and technique, but 'glue winding' is the only way to get that kind of saturation and it 'does' gap fill...and as you found, there is the option of pulling things apart.

There is the length of the wire and at times the amount of overlapping and such can effect readings a little...clamping while drying as I showed, especially on the sides where the coil can bulge creating air gaps...and there is a fair bit of tension in such a coil, especially at the ends you might have noticed, the slower gluing time allows things to 'settle' a bit and over time there is some give. Plus, it's safe, sure, cheap and works!

I probably have some pics of the switch wiring, and that seems like a decent enough plan. Basically, a 4pdt switch is 4x spdt switches ganged together...each with three terminals. In more recent guitars like my tele, I have connected the bridge pickup directly to the circuit...hard wired. Two of the 4pdt switches I use to lift the entire selector and short together, ground and hot. Another connects the bridge pickup to the controls (so around the selector) and the last one generally connecting the batteries ground to turn on the circuit.

The upshot is that when you turn on the sustainer, the bridge pickup is connected automatically regardless of the selector position, and it returns to whatever the selector is at when turned off. All other pickups are completely disconnected from the guitars circuit. The power is only connected when the sustainer is on, saving power and keeping the guitar stock...as in, it will work without the battery as it used to, not a feature in commercial units, and prolongs battery life quite a bit.

It can take a while to dry, but generally as long as it is basically 'set' you can bind it up with PVC tape and test it out.

When planning wiring or testing, you need to keep the wires relatively short...remember the leads coming off of the coil is an extension of it and will be giving off a bit of EMI...twisting it together can help a bit and when laying it into the guitar, try and keep it away from signal components as best you can.

The harmonic switch is just a simple 'phase switch' that reverse the leads.

just thought also, the magnet really needs to be 'glued on' as it may try to vibrate :D

...

On the improvement thing...there is some scope but there is more to these things that some expect and a lot of work exploring areas that are not profitable, or are just based on some faulty ideas. It can be a long road. Always, the best approach is to try to achieve the best possible response from a simple system. There are also 'value judgments' about what you actually want the thing to do, respond and sound like. Col's circuit was particularly aimed at low power and a very 'mild' controlled sustain and good fundamental response on the lower strings...mine is a very dynamic system generally, the newer ones have a different kind of 'drive control' as well. That is not to say one approach is 'better' just a choice...so be careful on the notions of 'improvements'. Also, you need to set some strong criteria for things, and in my case there has always been a lot more criteria that I tried to meet and generally achieved than just 'performance'...for instance, my homemade circuits are 1/4 the size of the commercial units. they are significantly smaller and adaptable to many types of guitar, combinations with pickups or stand alone drivers, various driver designs adaptable to different situations, power only required when the guitar is on, conservative in power use for increased battery life...etc.

Now, some have gone for "improvements" and often just come up with bigger power hungry circuits that require guitar modification, power on all the time, even some requiring remote power as a battery isn't practical...all these kinds of things of course break my personal criteria and so couldn't be regarded as an improvement...and they don't sound significantly better either...but each to their own in that regard, as long as you have something to aim for and if you want it enough, if you can create custom circuit designs (and not just crib together other known circuits that are not for this purpose specifically which has some unique qualities) there is some scope. However, the basic design accredited to me is that of a coil that will run from just about any suitable amplification that can power it...no phase compensation or agc and such are absolutely necessary. It is one of the reasons that circuits are kept 'secret' in that some may take a design such as mine that took a few months to develop, change a few none critical components or replace with a virtually identical op-amp and call it their own...which of course is not the case. The driver coil is the heart of things anyways and took quite a bit to develop despite it's simplicity, the circuit is virtually incidental by comparison. It is not the only design that could work, but to develop those, you'd have to go all the way back to scratch and test and retry everything...and to be really impressive, get a demonstrably better result for the effort. You will notice that I only used muti coil designs, like the bilateral, rails and even hex things...in an effort to install say into the middle slot or even by the bridge on some...or in the pickup ring in others. When tested as if a single coil, they generally worked, but were so much harder to make and some were darn right quirky! So, some scope with 'improvements' but it is a crap shoot and you need to ahve a good idea where you are headed and prepared to forge your own road I suspect.

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"I don't recall what a 4558 is, but I assume it is an op amp. All the "power" is coming out of the LM386, all the preamp stage is doing is overloading the input creating distortion and square wave compression and noise. However, if a general preamp design, you can adjust this to zero or even less to a theoretical infinite (power allowing) gain...but this is not preamp gain, not actual raw power that a power amp designed to run a speaker or driver requires.

The idea of pushing the circuit and distortions were well and truly discussed and tried in various forms but again and again it comes back to a clean signal close to the signal of the vibrating strings themselves (strings don't actually vibrate in a distorted square wave you understand). Don't mistake distorted with loud or power, it is actually the opposite in many respects..."

4558 is dual opamp,just as old as 386...of course the power that driving the string coming from 386 and 4558 is just making the signal hotter... the main purpose of addinng distortion or comperession is just to help lengthen the signal coming to 386....buying a little bit more time to create infinitum..... which i think in the past,just to cover the fail of the driver. but in my built is just so that the sustainer is compatible with any pickup...even super output one (well,in case one day i need to change to crap low output pickup)

"Well...I'm not sure at all about "familiar"...the LM386 should be very stable especially with those extra caps and such, and a proper zobel (if you have messed around with that there could be a problem)..of course if you send a signal into the input with a gain or 100 times, especially with any decent powered hot pickup, you will just get 'mush'...attach a speaker to the circuit in place of the driver and listen to the thing!?

"My circuit"...well there have been so many. The more recent versions are a typical LM386 100uF output cap kind of thing and pretty much a buffer only stage and a light adjustable AGC that can be defeated or gives a preamp gain down to zero or "off"...so, no gain at all in the preamp stages for maximum clean and efficiency...but I make a darn good driver! I don't give away my current circuit, but details and pics of previous circuits exist and are based on the basic principles. It is not as 'magic' as people assume and the driver is the heart of things, but I can tell you it is and unusual discrete transistor and contains a novel design...the zobel is only coincidentally associated with the AGC and runs in parallel. There were some interesting ideas floated about on different values, but I can't speak to that. The main purpose of the 'preamp/buffer' is to prevent loading (which you seem to have) and I have a pickup input impedance into the buffer stage of 1Mega ohm...if you have cribbed designs form ordinary audio circuits you might have 10-100K ohm and this may be too small!"

it IS very unstable....many 386 circuit are a pit of death....can be very frustating when you think that its done but when you fired it it doesn't turned out good.... smokey amp,grace,big daddy,little gem,smash drive,,,etc,etc but at least there is a little secret on how to make it better.

last time i checked input impedance in it is 505,3 komh.... even if it doesnt great enough ...theres still buffer stage in there which will smoothed out the whole thing.

AGC= automatic gain control???? i dont know that thing and why is it so important? to safe a battery life when no string is sustained?

so no gain stages at all? ****.... how it ...have enough power to drive the guitar? what is actually the wide of the core in that tele? that is bar magnet isnt it?

"Well I don't know what side shielding is, but you do realize that copper shielding wont help with electromagnetic interference. You need to pull all ground and hot pickup leads out of circuit (usually by pulling the entire selector from the guitars circuit) and directly attach the bridge hot and ground directly to the circuit input (this can be a permanent connection)...I've published the 4pdt switch to achieve this around and you can see it in the tele thread.

"clean sustain" is what you need to aim for, you can add distortions as much as you like in effects or amps. I ahve no idea why you should be getting problems with effects unless you are getting a huge signal from the driver into the pickup and running into the input of a digital effect or something...so hard to tell because you mention so many variables and no details for me to assess it."

of course can't shield the driver....but you CAN shield the pickup. not copper,but i wrapped the bridge pickup with a few layer of aluminium foil...actually can use conductive paint and spray it all over it. but it would turned out more ugly....

now,wiring. i myself use 4pdt switch to. just a cheap slide switch... but it looks strong and made entirely from metal....so it can take the job... the tab is from the metal too. what i did is just poke a litte rectangle on the pickguard for the tab to pop out. like the hole for 5 way lever switch..

you say to compeltely disconnected uninvolved pickup. but i don't do that,instead i just connect them all to ground. (middle pu,neck pu,selector,etc) basically just to save wires and make the connection easier. and as the mid and neck pickup lies in the same height as the bridge and driver (and its grounded), it performed big bar side electomagnetic shield that might be leaked to picvkup (if ever worked that way....but no squeal caused by this kind of wiring)

"Output cap is to give a bit more of a treble bias to drive the high strings a bit better. However, the result is that it struggles, especially at higher powers, to drive the lower tones (below C 5th fret g string) at the fundamental...it will bloom into a harmonic usually an octave and a 5th above on these notes. If you use a bigger cap, like col did, you may find that high strings struggle, it is in part to compensate for the characteristics of my driver though, he used a completely different driver with his circuit."

speaking of driver design...what is bilateraL? two coil,out oif phase,different polarity (like sustainiac ,just curious)???? im planning to commercialized my sustainer for other fellow guitarist here. therefore i need to came out,with my own design both driver and circuit,for the circuit i think its done just use the preamp as signal booster for the pickup....definetely two roles, just wiring game.

now driver....how can i encounter electomagnetic unefficient problem that is founded in normal single coil bobbin size drivers? maybe i'll face it with different wire gauges and magnet strength.

but luckily i have a fully functional sustainer now....so i don't need to rush chasing those concept. the performance of the sustainer is pretty nuts too. the guitar becoming so sensitive i have to be very careful at playing it. can't play any solo properly!

but my favorite is just inserting the cord in the late of night and hear the harmonic without the amp. damn...sometime life is does good.

peace!!!

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Oh for goodness sake...how many times must this come up like this...

im planning to commercialized my sustainer for other fellow guitarist here. therefore i need to came out,with my own design both driver and circuit,for the circuit i think its done just use the preamp as signal booster for the pickup....definetely two roles, just wiring game.

Over seven years I have openly developed and shared and answered the same questions over again, only to hear that the whole plan was not to enjoy the bounty of my good will, but to 'commercialize' the concept for financial gain!!!

My design, the most basic of many, is a driver with the characteristics to run from simple amplification. I have not been specific about the actual circuit design because any compatible design will work with the driver design, it is that simple...that is the design. So, any design that matches my own and therefore works, and runs of basic non-loading amplification is essentially my design, not yours, and unethical to call your own by simply changing a buffer stage and suggesting it is your own. Now if you can make up your own that doesn't violate my work and fernandes, floyd rose, sustainiac and all the rest out there at the USPTO...well, you might be onto something...though it would still be riding the back of my work and others here like me!

Plus, there is so much you clearly don't understand...and that is misleading to potential customers.

of course can't shield the driver....but you CAN shield the pickup. not copper,but i wrapped the bridge pickup with a few layer of aluminium foil...actually can use conductive paint and spray it all over it. but it would turned out more ugly....

Things like this are rediculous!!!

Aluminium, copper, shielding paint...any of this stuff is 'non-magnetic'...electromagnetic interference EMI will pass right through this as if it isn't there. Worse, it could induce the EMI signal in the conductive material, right around the actual pickup. Such materials are designed to combat RF signals....sigh...

And then, well...I'll just boost the signal and it will be my own...distortions don't lengthen anything...they just turn the signal into a square wave...have you ever seen a string vibrate in a square wave?...no, because it is not possible. So, the signal driving it, is completely different from what you are expecting the string to do. It is the right frequency, but saturated. It might work, but is it efficient, does it reduce EMI and noise...no, it makes everything worse! ANd, it is not 'original' to think so....dozens have made this mistake!

Grounding everything is not a solution either...not at all adequate...but...

AGC= automatic gain control???? i dont know that thing and why is it so important? to safe a battery life when no string is sustained?

1,000s of words have been written on this, it is the basis of cols design work on circuits as well. No...it isn't just about battery life. When you regenerate the signal, it gets continually louder, the sting vibrates harder, creates a louder signal, and round it goes till the limits of the battery to produce amplification and the strings physical limits of vibration are met. AGC provides control so that it doesn't just run away with itself...

How are you 'designing' circuits if you don't understand the basic concepts of such designs imperative to these systems? Are you just patching together other peoples designs...oh, here's a buffer, here's an amp? Is that your own work or theirs?

Has no one noticed that the closer things get to the tolerances I set out, the better and more successful it is? Make a solid driver, suddenly it is more efficient...use the correct specifications and build with a bit of quality and positive results start emerging.

I'm sorry, but this kind of gratuitous use of ideas and years of research to 'call ones own' really pisses me off. Where is any of the 'original work' that would be required to call something your own? Where is the understanding to even know the direction you should be going in...am I supposed to nurse you through to financial gain without even acknowledgment?

So far, you have made significant errors and have a lot of misconceptions still and required a lot of help. I am glad that you have some results, but I suspect they would be even better if you followed the scheme even closer and acknowledged the work that went into getting it to that stage.

but luckily i have a fully functional sustainer now....so i don't need to rush chasing those concept. the performance of the sustainer is pretty nuts too. the guitar becoming so sensitive i have to be very careful at playing it. can't play any solo properly!

but my favorite is just inserting the cord in the late of night and hear the harmonic without the amp. damn...sometime life is does good.

Yeah, life is good...but consider the moral implications and give some credit before you start 'selling' off another persons concept...and definitely know what you are doing. I help people make their own, I encourage people to take things further if they wish...but all you have done is use my design, add some substandard ideas and misconceptions and called them your own...now really, is that fair?

So...I put this to people here, should I be helping you guys at all if this is what it is all about? Someone designs and builds an original guitar and you start marketing and selling it as your own...and you defend this 'ownership' because you used a different wood or pickup...come on...the forum would have an opinion on that, and it would not be positive I am sure!

So...I do know the answers to all these questions and in fact answered them numerous times and specifically. What is lacking is peoples ability to take this information and put it into practice without going off on their own tangents because they feel they know better, or in fact plan to make it 'their own'...complain when it doesn't work, alter things to be closer to mine...then as soon as you get any result, suddenly you have your own 'product'...

as I say...pisses me off...all my designs and concepts are publicly documented 'prior art' even if given freely...contrary claims of ownership will be vigorously argued should they emerge.

And people wonder why I keep some of my designs under wraps...this is the reason, because I am tired of months of work being stolen under the guise of a different component here or there...the real work was getting something that worked at all...I doubt that you would be sustaining away without the treasure trove of work on this forum and in the case of this specific design, my help and design work.

Think about it! This is exactly why all mention of this device has been shut down removed and carefully monitored in recent times...I'm just sorry I got suckered in to helping you if you had another agenda all along!

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first off,remember to breath...slowly.

second.... i will NEVER sell YOUR design or anything associated with it. did i say anything about using this forum or sustainer ideas here for my own benefit? financial gain???? damn,that's rude. no....not even a word from this forum.

here we fellow lonesome musicians taught ourselves to respect any other people properties,opinions and each other work. piracy and anknowledge other people's property as mine is definetely not what am i going to do. i still got some dignity.

when i said planning something...yea its still a plan!!! (how COULD you think about me going to make money out of so-called sustainer things consisted out of ruby amp and oscillated distortion circuit? man,that's crazy .surface mount driver is definetely not my style either) maybe it could be happen after 5 or 6 more years from now,after i passed so many "research" and many bugs here and there about it...and learned so many things, if ever....i successful and it does has some slight likeness,it is unintended,and maybe you just missed the part where i wrote "therefore i need to came out,with my own design both driver and circuit"

what did i'm gonna use is some common circuit fragments....cutting/amplifying frequency signal (high pass filter,low pass filter),inverting opamp gain stages,diode clippers,voltage biasings,etc which none of it would be related to any circuit in the net or anywhere as i would built it from zero....eventough there is some likeness to them,it is not intended,and possibly coincidences. and 386 would forgotten,as i said i dont really has any good experience with it,and possibly other chip that is more easier to tame. and basic principle of "bridge pickup feeding the driver" is maybe in use too, if those things are forbidden,just forget i would create anything. and maybe some circuit i have from zero should be abondoned too.

i respect that you are the pioneer of this sacred diy sustainer thing,and has working intenesively to it. no wonder if you pissed when someone "stealing" it. but i don't sell your design. and will never. how could you find a thief begging a permission to steal something from someone to be stealed? even tried to discussing it?

what actually happen is just you judge (me) people too fast,and its dangerous as it could offend them. i'm definetely not a blood sucking retard draining life out of weak people.

i don't care being "ridiculous" or misunderstood what fail or what succes.as the world is being built by many ridiculous persons. eventhough i finally realize what i trying to do is just bullshit and in the end i would finally ended up with the things you told,its okay, what matter is the process. so i will not be falling in the same hole. as i have felt falling in it.

so are we clear? don't be afraid for someone selling your design or col's or fresh fizz's or any body here (or maybe it is already happened by someones around the globe), cause i ain't gonna do that.

just forget it cause it is harmful and vatal.

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second.... i will NEVER sell YOUR design or anything associated with it. did i say anything about using this forum or sustainer ideas here for my own benefit? financial gain???? damn,that's rude. no....not even a word from this forum.

im planning to commercialized my sustainer for other fellow guitarist here. therefore i need to came out,with my own design both driver and circuit,for the circuit i think its done just use the preamp as signal booster for the pickup....definetely two roles, just wiring game.

Your words, and I appreciate that you said that you would need to come up with your own design and and driver before selling it (aka commercializing it) and then proceeded to ask a lot of questions from me to help you along that path...despite there being thousands of pages already covering it...

I'm sorry that you can't see my perspective or that you can't see that I have spent hours helping you and others to achieve the goal of having a pretty cool device for your own use. I am glad you have achieved that...

Words like...it's just a wiring game...you have already been using the idea that your circuit, for which there are no details really even while you ask details of mine, as 'your circuit' and as if it was somehow unique...

how COULD you think about me going to make money out of so-called sustainer things consisted out of ruby amp and oscillated distortion circuit?

Because as soon as you have the thing working, your first thoughts are about commercializing the thing...

maybe you just missed the part where i wrote "therefore i need to came out,with my own design both driver and circuit"

No, I didn't miss it, but I have seen it before, perhaps you don't realize that you suggested that some of this at least is "just wiring game"...

it IS very unstable....many 386 circuit are a pit of death....can be very frustating when you think that its done but when you fired it it doesn't turned out good.... smokey amp,grace,big daddy,little gem,smash drive,,,etc,etc but at least there is a little secret on how to make it better.

See...lets reel off a whole list of generic LM386 circuits (by other people), all the same thing basically and built to distort and run a speaker...a completely different project...and make a judgment of the single component on that...the LM386 is the "pit of death"...well design something else, I didn't say that you needed to use an LM386 to anyone, I just suggested people could run my driver on any suitable amplifier (that's my project, I've never built any of these generic systems or endorsed them, even the F/R was someone elses idea taken straight off of RoG)...and I have said and shown details that in fact, that is what powers mine, and detailed the output caps and stabilizing filters.

Now the last person suggesting this kind of thing had all kinds of grand plans, but in the end started promoting the tillman on an Lm386 (so, no original work there) with actual pictures of what others might expect to purchase...and the driver morphed closer and closer to the simple design....my design.

Surface mount, well some copy that, or the combination pickup driver kind of thing...there is a lot of stuff in that sustainer thread of devices actually built. And, I am all for people working out something of their own...but more and more the questions are abut me explaining why 'wrapping aluminium foil' around something wont help with EMI or what do I actually use in my circuit, the secret must be there...or what are the dimensions of the tele pickup when it is repeated ad-infinitum...non of these questions actually are going to help people build their OWN designs....what it leads to is the idea that it is 'just a wiring game' and substituting a few different parts here and there, a slight alteration of the wire gauge (perhaps) or amalgamating a few ideas taken from other peoples work say from the stompbox world...then, bob's your uncle, there's your design.

Surface mount is not the design, the design is based on specifications and performance...that it can be surface mounted or applied in other ways (say, on top of a pickup) is completely incidental.

I stopped sharing when the first response to the latest 'wafer coil' which is only 1mm thick was along the lines of "I could knock those off" even though it took me a year to get it to that stage...easy to do things when someone has the concept, does the work to make it reality and shows it to work isn't it?

...

here we fellow lonesome musicians taught ourselves to respect any other people properties,opinions and each other work. piracy and anknowledge other people's property as mine is definetely not what am i going to do. i still got some dignity.

Yes, but not empathy...

first off,remember to breath...slowly.

patronizing remarks aside, there is no hint of acknowledgment in what you were actually saying.

what actually happen is just you judge (me) people too fast,and its dangerous as it could offend them. i'm definetely not a blood sucking retard draining life out of weak people.

Really, well I don't know where you are from or anything about you (though you clearly know me far more)...but certainly you have been quick to judge me even though I have been helping you in quite good faith for some time and actually got the kind of results (or towards them) that you were seeking...that's quite a chunk of work on my part you got without cost...hmmm...and I still haven't heard much of a 'thank you' in all your vitriol aimed at me for taking offense at what you did say.

now driver....how can i encounter electomagnetic unefficient problem that is founded in normal single coil bobbin size drivers? maybe i'll face it with different wire gauges and magnet strength.

Almost impossible english aside, do you think that I am going to help you in this when your stated aim is to commercialize your own design...clearly you are asking me to invest my time and expertise in helping you with such concepts...so, more of my work? Oh, different wire gauge, a different magnet...so many times a little tinkering on the concept and it is born anew as suddenly 'completely different and completely my own work'...even to the 'pit of death' sentiments about the LM386 which was your choice to use...a different amp or buffer (usually cribbed from some other source, not your own) and it's suddenly your idea...or someone just like you. Then, when all sustainer subjects are removed from the internet, there will be the complaints that the information is necessary for your success, so bring it all back! Along with personal attacks towards me and how I am 'judging' people or you don't like my response or are rude about it.

You don't complain when I am hand feeding you for free and little gratitude, perhaps it is a cultural thing...maybe you are like this with your parents (whom I am perhaps even older) and teachers or just generally in life. However, since you are specifically asking me for information and my time, it all comes of a bit rich...and ungrateful...and potentially exploitative.

...

So, what would be nice, since 'life is good" would be that you, instead of heading straight for the personal ambition thoughts and sharing that with me (along with a big post of further questions to help you on that road) and not sharing 'your work' with others as I clearly have done now for years...is to show some appreciation...

But instead, it is just a diatribe of personal attacks and getting all upset that I might think something of you and how I rush to a judgment on what you actually said and question that...and a bit of hokum superiority "here we taught ourselves to be..." and a nice follow through as to how despicable you find me personally, which you held back while you were getting what you wanted from me...

Perhaps a bit of acknowledgment and gratitude would have been in order...perhaps instead of asking more questions so that I do the work to craft 'your design' further in the appropriate direction and clear up your misconceptions for you. "round here" it would be the appropriate response. Or perhaps sharing your original work, that would be good too, give back to the community that helped you along.

But, I read back, and I don't see acknowledgment or gratitude, I see a lot of questions and re-quotes from me patiently trying to explain some things in good faith.

Now, you wonder why I might be 'pissed off' at this kind of attitude, and attitude repeated again and again. Not a hint of empathy or understanding of my position, not a word of gratitude just personal attacks and patronizing remarks.

i don't care being "ridiculous" or misunderstood what fail or what succes.as the world is being built by many ridiculous persons. eventhough i finally realize what i trying to do is just bullshit and in the end i would finally ended up with the things you told,its okay, what matter is the process. so i will not be falling in the same hole. as i have felt falling in it.

Again, difficult expression to understand aside (I appreciate that english is not your native language, but I have worked extensively with non-english communities, so don't even think about playing a racist card, ok), you have a hint at the 'process' being important, but what you don't seem to get is what the 'process' is. The process is work, actually learning and doing stuff independently and openly in front of peers, many of whom may well have done more work and acquired more knowledge and even been prepared to put this out there to help you.

The process is to take on board this, and work it with your own ideas and prove it experimentally, to open those things up to scrutiny and to take criticism and not head straight for the personal attacks and swear words and self deprecation (contextualized as if I were thinking that way of you, then accusing you of judging you for your own words).

...

Look the process is this...1% inspiration, 99% perspiration...and peer review and results.

Now, you could start with research, obviously I have given here 10's of 1,00's of words and information and photos and design ideas over many years...but have a look at the patents...all cross referenced showing all the other ideas that it was derived from and how it differs, that's one place I started...and lucky for many, linked a lot of that work so it could be replicated.

But, you could go back further to basics, what are you trying to achieve, what are the forces at work, what influences these things...that's when you start getting proper textbooks and reading still more about the basic concepts.

Then, you set about putting some of these ideas into action. Wind some basic coils, build some basic circuits, get some results. Now, analyze those results, learn what makes a circuit work, know what happens if you run 100x the power into the front end of a chip like the LM386...think about alternatives, learn about what makes a circuit or component unstable and how to stabilize it...

Then, see what you have got...is it demonstrably different from what has come before enough to say that it is 'your idea' or just a variation on an existing idea? Then, you can perhaps start thinking that you have something that you can truly call 'your own' and start refining it.

Only then could you in all good consciousness even mention words like "im planning to commercialized my sustainer for other fellow guitarist here"!

...

Look, empathy is important, and gratitude...neither is in evidence really...just words like 'retard' and 'bullshit' and '****' and the rest...bad spelling and obscure expression and questions....and advice about how I should behave and feel and think and how harmful my words are when I say something that you don't like...but not for me when you do say things that are of concern...such as "im planning to commercialized my sustainer for other fellow guitarist here"...

It can be frustrating, but still I have tried to help even though inevitably the response seems to be the same.

I'm glad that you have made a sustainer that works, I suspect that if you did actually do the work to refine it, it would come closer to the basic principles set out....just as your work improved when you started to consider the aspects that were pointed out to you so far. But, do you really think that you could have come up with this result without the work that I put into this, the hours of frustrating work helping you and others, or the incredible charity I have shown through the process of sharing it with you?

I don't think it is too much to ask for a bit of acknowledgment and gratitude for all of this and a little giving back. But what I get in return is further personal abuse now you have what you want, more questions to get more of what you want, and putting words and attitudes into my mouth based on your own personal and immature assumptions about who I am. You do realize that you are talking to an actual flesh and blood person here, if you want something from this person, perhaps try a little humility and gratitude instead of attacking and assumptions...seems like a lot of 'taking' going on, and not a lot of giving. And when I point it out, you go into further attack mode....

Think about it....

...

Lets face it...again, this thread which was not yours, nor in the appropriate section...has been somewhat hijacked in typical style of late by other people such as yourself therizky and ended much the same way, with personal attacks towards me...making it almost impossible to help the actual person who started the thread and others also.

I believe that I have helped you significantly or at least tried to publicly and elsewhere over some time...have you not considered your last thread went unanswered for a reason?

As for 'fear' of your work...perhaps people don't realize what you work consists of and the quality we are talking about...

therizky thread

dsc00693pp.jpg

Now, compared with my work...

bluetele8.jpg

I really don't think there is a comparison or anything to fear from you...except ingratitude and personal attacks and a lack of empathy and humility!

telecaster thread

See, I think it is important that people here know the level of professionalism on these matters in case they should get the wrong idea and from where you speak about it...and perhaps you might consider changing your attitude a little and cleaning up your work practices and going back to basic principles...you can start with an apology if you like!

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Shut it down already if this kind of abuse is going to be tolerated...and while you are at it, make visible the crap that I I have to put up with from that guy...

This subject is clearly not 'safe' nor welcome on this forum...I held back from trying to help, offered more of the same for what it was worth, though in recent times the information has been returned for all to learn from if they choose to....but even there, all it gets you is ingratitude and insults...

so yeah, shut it down, perhaps ban the entire subject again as just to much trouble...and do something about the personal abuse...my personal life is not open for public ridicule and no one should have to tolerate it, and few would...clearly not appropriate and I don't see any lessons learned at all by the person responsible for it...nor a respect for the forum or it's operators.

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Well anyways..

I did a quick test last night. No sustain or anything. Pretty sure I just need to wire it all up properly probably just a bad connection somewhere. I still do have a concern though. I'm using the ruby/fetzer circuit and built it pretty much to exact specs. I think every components value matches the schematic. However the circuit on its own does not power my speaker. I checked my pickups and bridge reads about 8.7 kohms. The only way I can get any sound is if I run the circuit after the mono out from my boss gt-8. I was thinking maybe my speaker requires too much power and the circuit can't power it on its own. Its an 8ohm speaker but it is in a metal housing. Well anyways thats how I've been testing it so far since I don't wanna start desoldering the components in my guitar just yet. The whole loop looks like this..

guitar>gt-8 in> gt-8 out >ruby/fetzer

----------------> gt-8 headphone out > computer speakers/headphones (so I can hear the guitar signal)

gt-8 has a bypass where I can just get it to send out the guitar signal or amplify it to the circuit.

I'm using trim pots all my variable resistors on my circuit. The 'volume' control I've wired a trim pot with some short wires into header pins so I can replace with a proper pot once I'm ready for further testing. The trim pot to bias the fetzer transistor doesn't seem to make any difference at all. I haven't checked the voltage on the fet to bias it for 4.5v since I'm using 9v battery, I keep it about half, and don't really notice any excessive noise or anything. I will sooner or later just been kinda lazy. Here are some pics of my progress so far.

http://img42.imageshack.us/i/20101019002.jpg

http://img156.imageshack.us/img156/77/20101019005.jpg

http://img839.imageshack.us/i/20101019006.jpg

ok not the neatest build but not too shabby with my very basic tools =p and intended to be experimental. I will take much more care in a more final version.

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it's bad,real bad.

on how you underestimated people.

1.true is that i do use your design and stuff,and never acknowledged them as my own work (ask people who ever checking out my guitar and sustainer,i recommended them to checking out all the thread and tutorial for them to build for themselves). and i never have any intentions to sell it or commercialized it.

2.so what you really want is some little direct appreciations and gratitude for all the infos and help you gave to me. okay,so THANK YOU now just be clear that you don't have to answer or giving help if you don't want.

3.i disagree with all the so-called personal attack and bad attitude you pointed at me,it's YOU who did that to me,say it to yourself. have you ever realized when someone come along with something new to experiment,you just throwed them to their face saying stuff like it was it has been tried before,etc it's like saying "you won't get that thing working,except thru' my path"

4.speaking about capitalism,i know you have "commercialized" your circuit too. so what about that? at least there's one or 2 persons helping development of that circuit. you ain't better then me.

"but more and more the questions are abut me explaining why 'wrapping aluminium foil' around something wont help with EMI"

it does help,aluminium foil is conductive if you don't know. like sticking big piece of iron between the driver and pu,and its grounded.

and sorry for the bad english though,my teacher does come rarely to the class lately,i learned a lot of sarcasm from him.

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Sorry...Hank came back to pour out his persona abuse and I hope permanently banned for his efforts...however, I do object to deleting exactly what I ahve to put up with as a warning to others...so yes, meanwhile

It looks ok dark one...

20101019005.jpg

That 'banana effect" is very common as the stresses on the ends are significant...a stronger bobbin would fix it...but it is certainly good enough to work and looks fine...got a suitable pickup magnet for it?

As for the circuit, if it is not working as an amplifier, it is not going to work as a sustainer...clearly something is not quite right there. Sounds like a problem with the buffer/preamp stage, are you sure of the transistor and it's legs out are in the wrong place...the GT8 is being used as an alternative preamp perhaps to overcome some problem.

I haven't built the F/R and so have not had to bias the transistor...but if it does nothing, that is a concern. Trim pots area notorious for having faults and not for constant use...still they have their uses, perhaps check that they are working.

The workmanship looks fine, but looks don't count for much if the thing doesn't operate as expected, a GT8 may even have enough to power a small speaker, so not the best thing to have in the circuit as a test.

...

Anyway...I don't have a problem helping if I can on people making these things for their own use at all, I think I ahve been pretty generous in that regard...but if my personal life gets much more or any attacks, I will not only be not helping but may even close my photo account details removing all photographic material and making much of the information here useless, forum or not.

It is a shame that the outrageous accusations about me were removed from the public, because in another setting they would be criminal in nature. I am sure I have not heard the last of it, but I am pretty tired of this topic being such a hot bed of angst and then turned on me for trying to help without any form of gratitude at all...and now this mornings outbursts (now deleted from view)...all aimed to have this subject banned from public discussion, and been very successful at it to.

If people think they can do better on their own, then they shouldn't need to follow me around and ask me questions. I attempted to help therizky for the longest time by email and now publicly. If people would prefer that no one answers but people who have failed to get any results, that is what it will be reduced to be.

Anymore crap, and I'll have to see what I can do personally...but otherwise, the advice the mods have given me is that I should not participate at all...so who else is going to chip in...hmmm, therizky with his naivie ideas from the tiles of the kitchen floor where he works?

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"Well anyways..

I did a quick test last night. No sustain or anything. Pretty sure I just need to wire it all up properly probably just a bad connection somewhere. I still do have a concern though. I'm using the ruby/fetzer circuit and built it pretty much to exact specs. I think every components value matches the schematic. However the circuit on its own does not power my speaker. I checked my pickups and bridge reads about 8.7 kohms. The only way I can get any sound is if I run the circuit after the mono out from my boss gt-8. I was thinking maybe my speaker requires too much power and the circuit can't power it on its own. Its an 8ohm speaker but it is in a metal housing. Well anyways thats how I've been testing it so far since I don't wanna start desoldering the components in my guitar just yet. The whole loop looks like this..

guitar>gt-8 in> gt-8 out >ruby/fetzer

----------------> gt-8 headphone out > computer speakers/headphones (so I can hear the guitar signal)

gt-8 has a bypass where I can just get it to send out the guitar signal or amplify it to the circuit.

prettty much the problem is on the circuit,

i'm sure what you get is just crackels and fizz coming out of speaker,as gt-8 only boost the signal,pushing the ruby to more oscillating.

at first i just eliminating the gain pot (on ruby),and try tweaking filter cap on +v to bigger values.

" I haven't checked the voltage on the fet to bias it for 4.5v since I'm using 9v battery, I keep it about half, and don't really notice any excessive noise or anything. I will sooner or later just been kinda lazy. Here are some pics of my progress so far. "

how could you the keep power supply at 4.5 without messing with the trimpot? are you using some offboard voltage divider or something? just connect the output at the fetzer directly to your amp to test it,and tweak the trimpot while plucking the string,when you hear flat boosted signal,its done. the voltage should be arrived at 4.3-4.8 volts.

()()()()()(()()()

"I attempted to help therizky for the longest time by email and now publicly"

e-mail??? WHAT e-mail? i certainly never pm'd or emailed you and you certainly don't know my email address either. the more i read your post the more i confused,.....really, what the hell are you talking about? if the capitalism is your main concern,then you shouldn't mentioned things like personal attacks,gratitude,apology? apology for what? apology for using your design without saying thank you? geezzz,who has messed with your personal life? me? as for this sustainer thing,you are not the only one giving me hands,in fact,only in this thread is,i communicated extensively with you,which in the previous thread,i just ended up figured out the rest by myself.

c'mon,everything went alright until you obsessed with that gratitude bullshit that you told me to listen, if you really expecting some gratitude,get the patent for your design and start marketing your thing,no one would ever asked this and that about anything,they just use it. and then you will get many real "gratitude".

or maybe you just misleading me with some other guy?

"hmmm, therizky with his naivie ideas from the tiles of the kitchen floor where he works?"

not naive.just not yet proven,for "that" guy of course.

what a shame,you're in diy world and not open for some radical ideas.

i was once published multiple output pickup and electromagnetic pickup concept too in pickup makers forum,but the respond was highly underestimate and pessimistic,....then i just ended up experimenting everything in my bed room with everything everywhere....

and don't compare anything,nothing is better or more professional,just different. i tried to make everything as neat and clean as possible but in the end it's all come back to tone,a little scratches or spaghetti of wiring,it's fine....for me. even that cavities is much more crowded by now.

even if you want to compare,that strat,even though it's look crap,it has so many tonal variation than the tone variations of all your guitar combined together,with individual pickup controls,phase switches,that multiple coil pickup (mid pickup,not coil tap,just multiple split),series/parallel wiring,"hybrid tone control",and yea,your design of sustainer. not all is original,but it's has been improved by my myself. and can stand in the way of any more advanced guitar with their MIDI thing,kaoss pad,optical pickup,etc.

but like i said nothing's better,just different.

really,i'm sorry if i have bring any drama to this thread or topic,as i never meant to do that. all i saw is just one guy that too....too narcist.

nuff said.

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I'm afraid to break it to you guys, but this is a public forum. You need to realise that all information you put out is public and should be treated as such, otherwise just don't post it. If you didn't notice that, then I suggest you keep you designs private, protect them legally or whatever. My opinion on broken patent systems notwithstanding, the process is supposed to be there for a reason. The moderation team are not an innovation police. We mop up the spam and rolex posts so you don't have to.

By putting your information out there, you are also making it open to public scrutiny and public domain usage. That is to say, in addition to the "yeah dude that's awesome" ego buffering, you are no doubt going to attract criticism and opinion on your design, whether for good or bad. It has to be accepted that not everyone will agree with you, and everyone can be right or wrong. It is more important to consider how you deal with this; if you can't accept that opinions exist on your design, then keep it to yourself. Whilst a great number of people have benefited from the work on sustainers created on this board and no doubt given credit to the originators (hence the huge return traffic these threads get) trading insults over natural differences of opinion dirties the waters.

Get out of the water guys. You're making a mess. Clean yourselves up and straight to bed before I smack yer legs.

<edit: hold up, let me make my signature a little bigger>

Edited by Prostheta
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really,i'm sorry if i have bring any drama to this thread or topic,as i never meant to do that. all i saw is just one guy that too....too narcist.

You may have given the impression to some starting out that you understood what you were doing and working at a sufficient level to give advice that has some validity.

c'mon,everything went alright until you obsessed with that gratitude bullshit that you told me to listen, if you really expecting some gratitude,get the patent for your design and start marketing your thing,no one would ever asked this and that about anything,they just use it. and then you will get many real "gratitude".

Well...you were asking me directly and with lots of quotes a lot of questions which at first I tried to answer...till you revealed that you 'planned to commercialize your system" eventually and asking me questions so that you could work towards that...that is your business, not mine...

This is in the public domain, under my name...I'm not asking for policing, the fact that it is public domain itself makes it patentable and the originator documented. I have never charged anyone for the information and research I have given for public use, and in fact anyone can replicate a patented design for that purpose if they have a mind to.

Are you suggesting that I should not have replied to your posting or tried to help when you directly asked me questions by name?

or maybe you just misleading me with some other guy?

That post with all the personal abuse form that "other guy" was taken down within minutes of it being reported...interesting you know the general thrust of it before it could be seen.

This is exactly why such posts should be left up to show exactly what I have to put up with and why the sustainer subject is not welcome or safe to talk about here...because it is outright abuse and at many times stalking now extending across multiple forums, also alluded to in the last post...along with my personal life and other false accusations.

If there was not a problem with those posts or the many others...they would not have been taken down...if PG believe that I am over reacting to them...return them for all to decide...by making no comment it just fuels the controversy without the evidence. I doubt anyone would find that kind of thing appropriate...but the moderators can decide on that and perhaps tell me if I am 'just over reacting' which is what is now implied.

...

Yes, everything went alright till I stopped answering your huge posts asking me to provide information towards commercializing the thing for personal gain, asking me to do more work that actually helping you get the thing going itself.

But, hey...you chose to come here...when people like you address me by name and quotes in posts, I try and help.

Further, this thread is not yours...you could contribute to it if you have something to say, but if it is misleading like wrapping a pickup in aluminium foil" to stop EMI...what am I supposed to do?

You have already declared that you have not read the original work here as 'too lazy' and all I am doing is having to retell you the most basic principles that already exist if you are looking for them.

If I have confused you with other 'guys' who email me from Indonesia about this project, well then...that guitar is kind of distinctive...my apologies there. I'm not going to go through my entire emails and look at all the guitars on there to confirm it conclusively.

You have suggested that you just ground the other pickups, that means you are with this kind of circuit, connecting the batteries negative terminal and one side of the driver itself directly to the ground plane, and the ground going directly to your effects and amplifier. This does not sound like a well thought out plan, again, I question it, I have nothing to go by, no details of what you are actually doing circuit wise (sound familiar) other than it uses an LM386 which would necessitate such a situation. You have reported things like squeal, for all I know you are getting a lot of noise, or masking it with distortion and or effects or NR in the effects chain. Regardless, a lot of work has shown it to be less than advantageous...but as you say, it is easier to do it the way you did. If it works for you, that's fine, if it doesn't blow the input stage of your effects eventually, that's good too, if you don't mind a bit of noise, more power to you on that front. As I say, not details, I can only go from experience. Very few people have actually built this thing into multi-pickup guitars other than me, so most don't have to deal with the bypass and other complexities. That other guys vid of my desing, the pickup was just sitting there, no connection at all...it's all conjecture till you do it, but hey...if it works for you, that's great...didn't for me!

...

Like the moderators, I too am unpaid, but if you think you could have come up with this on your own...or indeed, fulfill your ambition of some original work (apparently without reading any of the source material or what has come before, let alone the 'patents')...then go and live the self described 'lonesome musician' thing...and do it on your own, ok!

As for the other stuff...this kind of thing is not helpful...it is largely kids that are naive, it has to be said...poor work practices and lacking quite a bit of grasp of the deeper concepts. Some people are obsessively malicious, much older and mining every post of mine here and on other forums to 'have a go'...that much is clear.

This kind of thing doesn't matter, a kid can make this as well if not better than another...I give it freely.

However, making a business out of it, having original ideas that pass muster, giving advice without this kind of understanding and a lot more experimenting and research than making a single device off of a known design that has been replicated many times but had problems with. Similarly me informing the poster about things that are towards that aim, not that of building a sustainer for himself. Declaring that they are 'too lazy' to read the source material and expecting me to explain it all again, is likely to piss anyone off...it did me!

And no good complaining that the original thread is too long, that was not my intention or within my control. I originally came to PG on a different thing, started that thread to show what I was working with and get some help...completed that project getting results on the second page, published tutorials separate from it so people could make replicas of a working model...I am not "poncing" around as has been suggested, I am under no obligation to assist at all.

I do a lot more than make 'sustainers' and contrary to beliefs, this is not the most important thing I have done nor do I feel the need to invest thousands in it to make it a commercial enterprise nor the $30K to patent it for 3 years plus lawyers to defend it. There are already several very good commercial systems, hand building these things takes time, let alone the R&D plus sales and support...how much would you guys really pay for the 'commercial' version of such a product anyway if I were to "sell it".

Come on, think about it...I certainly ahve, it is a business decision...just because I could and can, does not mean there is a sufficient market to support it or make it worthwhile me dedicating my life to slaving over a hot iron, endlessly supporting people who can't install it properly, or not prepared top pay a reasonable cost for such handy work and design. The same people would pay $300+ for some 'boutique' stompbox far easier to do, but research shows they wouldn't for this when they could get a fernandes or sustainiac for about the same!

These are rational decisions and life choices...it is not a determination of the worth of the thing or an indication of my design that I don't follow that route. I did go significantly in that direction, I now chose a different lifestyle. My life is my business...it does not require criticism or comment!

...

I am sure it is a nice guitar, and I am sure you are happy with your sustainer now that it works so well for you...thanks for that, my work and yours is done in that regard.

As for standard of work, if you aspire to make a commercial product or to do proper work, I think you would be wise to consider working at a bench, using appropriate quality materials, get a little more organized and systematic...and get off the floor. For your own use, you can do what you like!

...

As for others, I can be and are contacted directly for information on this subject since the abuse here started and because things continue in that way.

PG may own the material once it is put on this board, but the ideas are date stamped with my actual name...that's enough to show prior art. I am not asking anything from PG and have been grateful for an avenue to share information. I have done so, it is all there, almost all 'problems' are as a result of not following the instructions correctly, going off on their own mis-informed tangents, or making fairly basic mistakes. The result is that I am just repeating again and again the same information and advice.

# Build a non-loading amplifier module, test it with a speaker to see if it works.

# Build a driver to spec with the right materials and solid

# Test the device with the circuit well away from all pickups...over the neck

# The 'harmonic switch, simply reverses the driver wires

# When that works, think about modifying and integrating the thing into the guitar.

# If more than one pickup, you will need to arrange a bypass switch, lifting both ground and hots from all pickups (usually the entire selector), switch to the bridge pickup only, and connect the power...4pdt switch can achieve this generally.

...

As for circuits, I am under no obligation to show all of my own designs...many peoples aims to commercialize it is enough to not disclose the later ones publicly. Guidelines and many pages and actual designs including the original circuits I used have been disclosed. This design has been shown to work from a couple of dozen circuits from me alone, including quite a few alternatives to the LM386.

As for the LM386...At no time did or have I suggested that this chip or the F/R or any amp design is necessary, that is entirely the users discretion. The design, like the ebow patent, calls for any suitable amplifier. I have confirmed as have others that the F/R and others can work and that I do use the LM386 and that I have disclosed the more common modifications for use on this project that I use with my driver design and the effect I seek. All freely available. But the choice is yours!

The LM386 is a cheap, practically indestructible, widely available industry standard audio power amplifier. It is not designed to take the input impedance of high output pickups directly, so will require a buffer. Adding more gain before it will distort it, running it at full power will distort it. How it sounds with a little speaker shows that it works, does not mean that is how it will react with the driver attached.

As a general rule...the battery limits the power and clean headroom of any amplifier, less power will result in less EMI and fizz and provide a cleaner headroom. Any excessive preamp gain will only overload the input of any power amp chip, most guitar pickups once buffered will be more than powerful enough if not excessive on their own without gain.

Things like my telecaster run off of about 1/4 watt at full power, enough to have the strings 'bounce the frets' (the limits of their travel) and sustains powerfully all strings on all frets in both modes. It is set up to 'bloom' on the lower notes below middle C as a preference. The battery in it now was last changed in February and still remains good. It happens to use an LM386 but it is not necessary, but certainly there is no 'instability' if you use the data sheet precautions for the chip (not found on the RoG designs). However, you could get similar results with other chips, it is simply a choice...and not mine to make.

If I were to say, here is 'the circuit' it would just invite trouble or some SA using a different chip (it is just an amplifier, there is no magic in it) and calling it their own. To make an original design for this device takes work, work I am not obliged to 'give away'. Plus, there are an infinite number of choices, and preferences. Someone like col for instance, wanted a different kind of response or 'effect' than I do and set about designing a circuit to achieve this (coincidentally using an LM386 also, as does the ebow btw) and showed a lot of innovation...that circuit too is freely available.

I have no responsibility for the F/R or any other RoG design nor endorse the thing. I have suggested mods to help stabilize it more and get a performance more like mine, it has been shown to be up to the task, even in it's basic form, many many times. Using it or any other circuit is a matter of choice...your choice!

...

If seeking to improve or design your own or vary this design, then it is wise to have in mind what it is that you are aiming for. I suggest that as a base line the least one should do is create this as designed and get it to work at it's optimum before modifying or going your own way...gives you a standard to work from. At the very least, unless you have done this successfully, there is no basis for rational criticism or to suggest improvements as these would be based entirely on the assumptions about the original's deficiencies...so complete nonsense...and shown to be so again and again.

With that then, you should set criteria for what you should aim for. Do you want a very controlled response and even sustain? You will need AGC of some kind. Do you want strong fundamental sustain in the lower strings? You may require an amplifier that can cleanly and accurately reproduce notes that low. Do you want a 'bloom' from fundamental into harmonics? You may want to look into filtering, the use of the 100uF output cap for instance creates this effect on mine on lower notes.

And this extends to other aspects too. How much modding will this take to the guitar, will I be sacrificing anything if I have a sustainer (like say, the neck pickup), how do I want switching to affect things and where and what controls do I want. How 'reliable' do I want it, must the guitar work as normal without the battery, do I want to risk a BTL or other more 'modern chip' with heating overload switching that will shut down in seconds under this load, how big do I want this circuit to be...how easy to install...etc...etc...

All these kids of things affect my work, and so there are some compromises and different approaches taken along the way to achieve it.

Finally...

This is a DIY project...that means Do It Yourself. I have made this for others, but without the guitar in my hands, so much depends on the ability of the person installing it, that I don't want the hassle unless I know that the person knows what they are doing...these are very few...and that they have a project that interests me...also rare.

I help people out of charity and do expect acknowledged for that, it is a cheap price to pay for the amount of work put into this by me. Strong critics of this 'attitude' you will note that badger me about my 'secret circuit' etc, have not revealed at any stage their own designs or helped at all int he DIY side of things.

My design is proven to work if built as described and with adequate quality. I don't need to personally prove it, because it has been replicated many many times over many years...it's not my word for it, it's a fact.

My design is obviously not the only design possible, the one I describe is the most basic form, I have shown and use many variations on this, as well as other kinds such as multi coils systems all the way to hex systems.

I was asked to make a simple sustainer system for DIY by members here in 2003, this is what I came up with. It is unique in that it will run off a simple amplifier and is deceptively simple in it's construction. It does work, I continue to support it for people with little experience to build and it works. My obligation is nil. However, out of charity I try and help people and this just blows out threads, especially when people continually hijack threads that are begun by others and then descend into ingratitude for that, promote their own designs and 'product' and odd ball theories (wrap it in foil will fix everything apparently, it has come up a lot!)...instead of starting their own threads...and then invariably descending into personal attacks towards me for some reason...largely fueled by malicious behavior because someone doesn't like me. Obligation to 'like me' is also nil, as is my obligation to like others if they set out to 'piss me off'! All I am suggesting is that if you want my personal help, you show some respect and gratitude for the time spent,...if not, my obligation to help is nil, as is my obligation to be 'nice' about it!

all i saw is just one guy that too....too narcist.

See...now that's gratitude...if you don't want assistance, quit asking me...if you have something to offer, publish it in all it's detail (resizing your pictures would help)...and if it doesn't work when others follow your advice, you help them...if you think you know what you are doing!

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I appreciate the help psw, and anyone else who helps.

My circuit works with my guitar straight into it and the speaker but the sound coming from speaker is low. Yes I've checked the pinout on the transistor, even tried reversing it just in case.

How should I connect my guitar signal? The jack has a tip, and a sleeve connection right? + tip and - sleeve? The way I have it connected right now I take the tip to the input and the sleeve to the ground on the circuit. Should I only connect the tip? and do I have my negatives and positives mixed up somehow? btw I checked the trim pots before installation and they worked. Both the volume and gain pots make a difference in the sound but only the bias pot doesn't seem to do anything.

No I dont have the a suitable magnet for final installation yet. I have a ceramic bar magnet I've been using for testing purposes. Also some rare earth discs but like you said they're not the best. Have some other disc magnets but not sure the material. They're not ceramic and I don't think they're rare earth. They were just regular 'craft magnets' I picked up from an art supply store.

As for the banana effect tried to avoid it with the clamps but couldn't get them to sit level so.. The last attempt with the bad wire looked really nice but when I undid the wire it threw the bobbin off a bit. Will definitely take more time and care next time.

Edited by dark_1
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I appreciate the help psw, and anyone else who helps.

Thanks D1...I have found you and the OP to be obviously sensible and courteous, and obviously not included in the above rant...it's not such a hard thing...

The really offensive stuff was removed, the member apparently permanently banned (though I suspect this wont be the end of it) but the damage remains...it is important that people know what is going on and take that into account before judging my 'attitude' let alone making wild psychological assesments of my personality...especially when they are asking for my assistance!

So...

How should I connect my guitar signal? The jack has a tip, and a sleeve connection right? + tip and - sleeve? The way I have it connected right now I take the tip to the input and the sleeve to the ground on the circuit.

I don't know all the details of your guitar, other pickups, etc. Take a direct line from the bridge pickup before the controls...hot and ground...and run it off that. For testing, just poke them out of the control cavity or scratchplate or something. Shielded cable is best for cutting back on noise if possible.

If you have other pickups in the guitar and you ahve a mind to, completely disconnect them from the circuit of the guitar...otherwise, just test the device well away from all of them, probably up near the 12 fret or even further away...holding it above the strings like an ebow.

btw I checked the trim pots before installation and they worked. Both the volume and gain pots make a difference in the sound but only the bias pot doesn't seem to do anything.

The bias pot is there on the F/R design only to keep the transistor happy and provide half voltage per side. Follow the instructions for this circuit to measure this with the multimeter and forget...it is not a 'control'...so you won't 'hear it' as such. The reason is, with this circuit, that the transistors are all inconsistent and require a resistor to adjust it to work correctly at half voltage per side. Besides that the Fetzer is actually designed to distort mildly (not the best for this project) and provide a moderate gain...it is actually a solid state emulation of the fender valve preamp stage, hence the name. The bias thing is one of the main reasons I didn't like it, confusing and takes up space...but that is the design.

I am not sure how 'loud' the thing is, but it should be like a low powered practice amplifier with a suitable speaker and a good battery. Check those two things, these circuits consume a fair amount of power, so the battery can easily lack the guts to do much if old.

No I dont have the a suitable magnet for final installation yet. I have a ceramic bar magnet I've been using for testing purposes. Also some rare earth discs but like you said they're not the best. Have some other disc magnets but not sure the material. They're not ceramic and I don't think they're rare earth. They were just regular 'craft magnets' I picked up from an art supply store.

It requires a magnet to work. My tele's driver...

SMparts6.jpg

...is exactly the same as the basic and original construction, and hence yours...except that it is built without a bobbin. The core is ordinary steel, the magnets 4 craft store magnets super-glued to it, all poles up the same way...the coil: solid, with 0.2mm wire to 8 ohms 3mm deep. One reason to make it transparent was to show exactly what the thing is and there is no silly 'secrets' in the thing...other than what it is.

A ceramic pickup magnet, poles all up is ideal. Rare earth magnets are not, alnico would be ok, if you can find the right size and polarity kind of thing. You don't want the thing too strong or it will attract the strings themselves just by being there and affect vibration, even tuning. Something akin to the power of a basic single coil pickups magnet strength is idea...better yet, use one for that purpose. But, as you can see, my telly used 4 in a line ordinary ceramic craft magnets...10 for $2!

The banana effect is common and does not effect performance. My original did much the same as the bobbin was a bit 'flexible'. It's the nature of winding asymmetrical coils really...but it looks fine, and it doesn't take long to build one once you have the idea. The bottom looks very flat for the magnet. so that is the main thing...make sure the magnet makes contact with the core material.

Hope that helps...

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On the improvement thing...there is some scope but there is more to these things that some expect and a lot of work exploring areas that are not profitable, or are just based on some faulty ideas. It can be a long road. Always, the best approach is to try to achieve the best possible response from a simple system. There are also 'value judgments' about what you actually want the thing to do, respond and sound like. Col's circuit was particularly aimed at low power and a very 'mild' controlled sustain and good fundamental response on the lower strings...mine is a very dynamic system generally, the newer ones have a different kind of 'drive control' as well. That is not to say one approach is 'better' just a choice...so be careful on the notions of 'improvements'. Also, you need to set some strong criteria for things, and in my case there has always been a lot more criteria that I tried to meet and generally achieved than just 'performance'...for instance, my homemade circuits are 1/4 the size of the commercial units. they are significantly smaller and adaptable to many types of guitar, combinations with pickups or stand alone drivers, various driver designs adaptable to different situations, power only required when the guitar is on, conservative in power use for increased battery life...etc.

Now, some have gone for "improvements" and often just come up with bigger power hungry circuits that require guitar modification, power on all the time, even some requiring remote power as a battery isn't practical...all these kinds of things of course break my personal criteria and so couldn't be regarded as an improvement...and they don't sound significantly better either...but each to their own in that regard, as long as you have something to aim for and if you want it enough, if you can create custom circuit designs (and not just crib together other known circuits that are not for this purpose specifically which has some unique qualities) there is some scope. However, the basic design accredited to me is that of a coil that will run from just about any suitable amplification that can power it...no phase compensation or agc and such are absolutely necessary. It is one of the reasons that circuits are kept 'secret' in that some may take a design such as mine that took a few months to develop, change a few none critical components or replace with a virtually identical op-amp and call it their own...which of course is not the case. The driver coil is the heart of things anyways and took quite a bit to develop despite it's simplicity, the circuit is virtually incidental by comparison. It is not the only design that could work, but to develop those, you'd have to go all the way back to scratch and test and retry everything...and to be really impressive, get a demonstrably better result for the effort. You will notice that I only used muti coil designs, like the bilateral, rails and even hex things...in an effort to install say into the middle slot or even by the bridge on some...or in the pickup ring in others. When tested as if a single coil, they generally worked, but were so much harder to make and some were darn right quirky! So, some scope with 'improvements' but it is a crap shoot and you need to ahve a good idea where you are headed and prepared to forge your own road I suspect.

Therizky, WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU!

Can't you be happy standing in the shadow like the rest of the bunch. :D

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