psw

Funny you should mention this... The system I'm developing will allow you to do this and more but, no, the current available systems can't be placed in the centre pickup position with the present technology. It also comprimises the harmonic mode due to it's placement along the string's length, or so they say. I currently have a working prototype...but don't hold your breath, it's taken the good part of a year to get to this stage...check out my sustainer thread for progress. My system uses a different technology and, in it's present incarnation, sits in the middle slot but also allows for the passive pickup to work here when the driver/s are not in use and retains the ability to switch between neck and bridge pickups. So far it looks very promising but these things take time...don't turn blue! You may wish to check out the Sustainer Stealth Plus system. The driver can also act as an active pickup when the sustainer is in use and you'll find a better level of service I believe. Check out Sustainiac's FAQ page for their answers to this and many other like questions. I'd be interested to here your concerns with these systems might be and what you would want from such a device to help with my research hope this helps a little psw

Well progress is being made rapidly on my latest device. It's been tested and works on all six strings, requires little modification and allows the choice of neck bridge or combinations of. The middle pickup will need to be disabled when the sustainer is on. It works a little differently from current systems so it may not have exactly the same features but it will offer more. It even looks cool. More tweaking is needed but I think I've got something now that is an improvement over other systems, easier to install and use, preserves all the pickups and looks like it will be significantly cheaper to produce due to the lack of coil winding and several other expensive components. Technically it is a hex driver so there is likely to be an improvement in polyphonic sustain, even though it is being fed by a mono source. I'm really pleased to see some positive fruit come from this research...let's hope it ripens for the New Year. Which reminds me to wish you all well at PG and especially those with the patience to continue with this long term and ongoing project...you know who you are...and thanks to Brian and to Kevan for their excellent moderation and setting up and maintaining this fabulous site... cheers, and stay safe psw

No, that's usefull...obviously to tune the thing to your guitars pickup power, number of frets, frequency respose I guess. The sustainiac has a gain trimmer too. Anyway, I've been playing around a little more today and have found a radically new way of implementing the second generation driver technology and it's looking very promising! I can't say too much but I'll keep you informed on how it's progressing! psw

Thanks Triapop...my thoughts exactly. I think a kind of stepped board does have potential but there's no need to get all exotic about it. For sound, your looking at something very stiff, like on a graphite neck. I'd expect more sustain and volume, higher audible harmonic content and more emphisis on the tone of the body wood. The fretboard/trussrod idea is exactly the way I had invisaged it...this allows for any profile of neck profile to be carved or even interchanged if desired. great to see the flames are going out somewhat.... psw

We guitar players/makers are a conservative lot...me included. We still covert the original designs and sounds of the first real electric guitars of 50 years ago. At that time a solid body was radical, now we can't seem to get our head around the possibility that something worthwhile could be made from anything other than the original timbers. Many of these are getting hard to get, expensive and the quality is down. I think it will be inevitable that something will come along that captures the imagination in look and sound. The Steinberger and Parker Fly, for example. I reckon there's probably quite a bit of scope for alternate materials and construction techniques in neck construction. I'm not convinced myself that a metal board is the answer, but I think there are materials and construction techniques out there to address the issues of building a complex shape such as a guitar neck. Perhaps Maccaferri, famous for Django's guitars, who produced plastic guitars and ukes at one time, had the right idea by aiming at the lower end of the market. It seems as though all of today's labour saving machines (CNC, etc.) and materials are used on the higher priced instruments...PRS, Taylor, Parker...and not really used that much to bring the cost down and the quality up. A company like Garrison, who make an acoustic bracing system and binding from plastic to support a solid top, is an example of the type of thing, that may signal the crossover to alternate materials, I think there is quite a bit of merit in this type of approach to produce a really good guitar at a reasonable price point. There will never be a better way of producing a Strat or Les Paul than the way they were made, but I hope that these 50 year old guitars are just the begining for the instrument and it moves forward from there. psw not sure that metal 'boards are the go, still...

OK, so it's that time of year again...the sustainer is back on peoples wish list I hope for the new year. Well, I've been tempted back into the fold. I'm developing a more conventional system based on some of the early designs to show that, had I settled originally for the limitations of current systems, I would have had a working model by now. So, I have made a driver and am getting quite good results. I'll need to tweak the circuit a bit, but I'm hopeful that this will be up and running really soon. I could use a little help with wiring it into the guitar though. Specifically, I will need a switch that similaneously: o selects the bridge pickup only, defeating any other/s that has been selected o routes that to the volume and tone control to the output o routes it also to the driver amplifier then onto the driver o switches the power to the driver amplifier on All of this needs to be done without clicks or pops...anybody got some ideas? The third generation drivers do have a lot of potential and I have been able to generate infinite sustain with full pickup selection but may be dependent on my new bridge design and requires the sourcing of some new materials and components which may take a little while. So in the meantime, I just thought I'd get something up and running ASAP to see the New Year out psw

Has anyone considered whether something as tough as this type of material isn't going to wear out the strings on the frets a lot quicker than a softer material...really it only needs to be tougher than the strings...just a thought! Perhaps, it would be better to choose a material that would reduce such wear...at least that's where my thinking's going...oh and the price of this stuff is never going to be practical is it, not that this matters so much hypothetically, but what is it exactly that's trying to be achieved here?

Me too...but it doesn't have to be metal you know Try one of my ideas if you like...cut individual plates of...whatever, aluminium, Ti, cardboard, timber, I don't really care...about 1-2mm thick, and overlap them at each step at exactly the right fret intervals. Seriously coat the whole thing in some kind of tough epoxy to resist wear. Instead of refretting, re-coat the epoxy! (Did I say too much Kevan?) Also, on fixing the fretboard...the bond guitar bolted the fretboard to the neck via bolts hidden under the fret marker dots. The idea being that should the 'board get too worn it could be easily removed and replaced. Now that's thinking! By the way, did you know that the step-board dates back to the days of medieval lutes and they made theirs from ebony. I haven't been able to source any information on these ancient instruments but the designer of the Bond guitar said that that was his inspiration and I've seen it mentioned several times in books. Any one know anything about this? It's interesting as the idea disappeared. Perhaps frets are just intrinsically better. I briefly played a Bond guitar when it first came out at a music show but I can't really remember how it felt to play. It does feel different and not necessarilly better as I recall. In theory, your pushing onto the fretboard, not bending over the fretwire, so your getting the feel and friction of the board under your fingers and pushing onto something solid. Kind of the opposite to a scoloped fretboard where you don't feel the fretboard at all. This is good for intonation but may make bending harder and you feel more fatigue, from fighting against the board. I'm fascinated by the idea cause, I agree, it looks cool and it's kind of an elegant solution, but more so because it suggests ways of manufacture that could make super accurate fretboards and guitar necks without the need for the labour intensive fretting. And, well it's kind of different I guess. I've got some more ideas on it... but sorry, I can't tell you... on ways to address some of these problems but I'm really glad, (flame throwing aside!) that there are people prepared to contemplate the idea and other's like them. psw

Wasabi j...thanks for posting those idea pics, it's good to see someone exploring possibilities. I have thought about this kind of thing for a while (not titanium mind you) and if you look back I was asking people if they remembered the bond guitar and it's step board. The fretboard was to be molded from carbon fibre but most of them were made from machined aluminium due to production problems. Anyway, there are several patents of this nature. One recent patent is for a perfectly do-able epoxy fretboard with glass frets using microshperes and epoxy. There is a lot of work in producing necks and fretboards and I don't see any problem in exploring alternatives to this labour intensive process. Don't kill off people brainstorming...they may just come back to something practical eventually psw

Thanks Bio for the words of encouragement. I took out an old coil and proved to myself that I did achieve at least this part of the plan. To prove this, I even started a new first generation coil that will be a practical working model of the type currently on the market...stay tuned...not really disheartened just working on to many things at once. I'll be looking forward to seeing how Ansil's Sustainer shapes up! psw

Thank's MC, I'll take that on board...still feel some of those corner bends could be a problem...squezzed, not stretched you say...hmmmm

Well, yes bio...and yet.... Even Ansil can't get the thing to perform as he originlly thought it did/should! The sustainer mod was what attracted me to this forum in the first place, and in principle a sustainer is so simple (but not quite like this)...and I do have a tendancy to over complicate things...but...as you'd know from the sustainer thread...nothing's that simple my friend....there's always a little twist...finding that is the key... I've had several new approaches swim around my brain, some of them pretty simple compared to where we were up to. I will go back through my experiments and follow some of my earlier leads and see where that takes me...a few tweaks might crack it! If I weren't trying to make things super small to avoid modification, wanted better performance on chords, and didn't require any but the bridge pickup to be used with it (like present systems), then, if you look closely to the earlier threads, the the first driver coil, CP1, is still one of the best performing I've made. To that extent, from the first prototype, I did achieve infinite sustain but not without sacrificing the above. I've been tempted back to fiddling with it again, every now and then, since the interest is still there and we'll see what develops in the new year! Once I've done it, what I do with it will be a problem...but we'll get to that later! psw

Ok, then...so I dug around (put sustainer in the search function from My Assistant) and this is the post I was thinking of: Ansil's Sustainer question thread Eventually, I found this link to FAQ's on Ansil's sustainer. I remember now that I had the same problems, I used a 100uf but here is the link: FAQ on Ansil's Sustainer Mod I hope this helps and you have fun with it! If everything works out ok, see if you can put up a sound clip psw

Sorry MC, but you've mis-read my post. The sheet is 0.6mm (ie half a mm) thick not 6mm. This is pretty thin, I think you'll agree, but do-able provided sufficient reinforcement is provided to support it with enough give not to separate with expansion. My design calls for a 18mm (3/4") or so molded top (ie to the point and including neck fixing) made with this material with a similar thickness timber back. The total would be very similar in depth to the thickness of a Strat, so even if some space needs to be made in the back for controls, trem springs and the like, I wouldn't expect any problems. Unfortunately, I don't think you could really expect to make much profit as an unknown builder using aftermarket components such as these for a commercial proposition, that's kind of what I mean't. By the way, what's your opinion on Aluminium Necks. Does the expansion issues outlaw their use. I no Travis Bean and Kramer had them and heard they had problems with stability with temperature changes...even those caused by stage lighting. It occurs to me that the back of the neck could also be made by moulding alloy sheet in a similar way in which I'm proposing with the body and gain stiffness and strength in it's natural curve shape. If the fretboard were of some other material, would you risk separation. I guess what I'm thinking is that the amount of expansion and contraction is linked to the amount of aluminium used, (or am I wrong here?), and that by using hollowed sheet I'm giving the material some play in all directions. I imagine there will still be stress on the joins but, other than epoxy I'm not sure how I would join it. I dont feel that riveting, etc. is the solution for my ideas but I appreciate that any amount of uneven expansion between materials stands the risk, or even certainty, of a failure in the joins. psw

Does anyone no where you can get piezo elements or film for pickups besides cutting up buzzers and having half the crystals fall off!!!! I'm wanting to make individual saddle pickups like the fishman or ghost system. Anyone got any thoughts...I've found manufacturers but they don't really sell to the public other than in quantity. psw Oh yeah, I'm in Australia, but I guess I could get them sent over as they're not hard to post.

Ansil, has spent a bit of time answering questions on the forum and it would be worth while looking back and finding that stuff. People have generally been disapointed, I think because they expect more than it can deliver. From my experiments, and if you think about it, your not making an ebow or infinite sustainer. The piezo, or speaker possibly even more (so because it's magnetic), vibrates the pickup and the wiring within, with it's own signal. This induces feedback in the pickup that will last as long as there is a signal, that is, until the string stops vibrating. It is not working on the string directly but does sound like conventional feedback...very high compression and distortion, and is in itself a unique effect, but not infinite sustain. I'm prepared to stand corrected, should someone prove me wrong. The thing about it is, that with a loud amp, it could easily induce natural feedback from the amp, where vibrations in the air act upon the strings. This is due to the compression and distortion produced which gives the amp time to react to the strings. For another way to induce feedback into the guitar, try pushing the head up against the speaker baffle of an amp...the vibrations travel down the neck vibrating the whole instrument (a lot of leverage in a neck) and therefore the strings creating infinite sustain in the manner of sustainiac's model C infinite sustainer. If anyone can get Ansil's sustainer to create infinite sustain I'd be very surprised, but I'd be making one up immediately for every guitar I own if they did! So far I've had no such luck other than what I described above...let us no how you go! Good Luck! psw

If nessesary, you could route into the into the inside of the timber back...necessary if it has a tremolo anyway. I felt that if the neck and all wiring could be kept together but be accessed from behind, this'd be great and very neat! As for thin, I'm never going to be able to bend thicker. I anticipate some reinforcement will be necessary from the neck to the bridge and around the controls. I'm also thinking of indenting the knobs in shallow curves. The variety of curves will be so as to provide stiffness where critical, despite it's thinness, by avoiding flat areas completely. The stiffness comes in part from it's geometry and an idea I have of filling the hollow top (post shaping) to help avoid dings and feedback without comprimising too much the hollowness and alloy properties. As the back is not structural it could be made of a number of materials. I'd love to make guitars but where would I get a suitable necks for a production line of the things? Still, we'll see how we go, if this works out well, I've a mind to make a nine string iceman! pete

OK, I don't want to give too much away...especially since it might not work...but: What I'm thinking is an alloy/composite top...the alloy sheet being bent then filled with a material with a lot of give...and fitted to a flat, perhaps plywood, base. This would be about 18mm (3/4") thick in total and to this you could mount the neck, bridge, the pickups, and controls, etc. from the back. The solid timber back would bolt around the edge, into the alloy top, from the back. If the sheet is bent sufficiently and the shape right, I figure that expansion will cause deformation of the shape in all directions (including up), which will also help address the problems of expansion. Another idea I had was a top made of a couple of sheets that overlap (would look like a scratch plate I guess) which would act as an expansion joint. There will no doubt be a number of ways to achieve a good result. Bending the edge radius of my strat shape looks like it could be a problem, so thanks for the tips on annealing...we'll have to see how I go...I still can't seem to work out how to identify what I've got or can get. This stuff, 0.6mm thick sheet, you can bend with your hands but getting the complex bends, especially around the horns look like it will pose the biggest problems. I want thes curves, not only because they look sexy, but the geometry should provide strength and stiffness to the otherwise thin top. I wonder if the shape could be pressed in a male and female mold set. What do you think, would that help the cracking problem? thanks again pete

Well, no one can say Project Guitar's not inspiring! I'm planning my own "aluminium Alien" and have cut out the basic shape from MDF and it looks great! It's a shape I've always wanted to make. Basically, it's a sort of left handed strat...I've got a good enough left handed neck...with an extended cutaway into the longer lower horn...and the controls and contours as on a right hander! I'll be using .6mm sheet hammered into shape over a timber shape as a top...this will be strengthened and will be hollow and joined to a timber body/back. 50/50 aluminium/timber. I've got some cool ideas for finishing using highly polished and brushed areas. Like a strat there will be a lot of sexy curves...hope it all bends to shape ok. I figure they're able to bend sheet into coke cans so, with care, I hope to get those fender curves and then some! I've got some sneaky ideas for construction after checking out all those sites...I'll start a thread of my own when there's a little more to show. It will take some time as I'm planning on fitting custom wound new design pickups (open coil singles) and my own trem design I'm working on! So It will really be very custom!!!!!!!! Anyway, thanks MC and you others and watch out for a thread in the new year from me!

Thank's bio...have fun I don't have the piezo version but I've heard good things about them so I can't say. One good thing though is that they are modular so, if you wanted midi later you could add it on. Midi would allow you to input data into your computer with the guitar, and write out what you play. You could even play the sounds on your sound card, just for starters! The new generation system won't need them anyway. Also, if I cant get it to work on a standard bridge you may have to replace the whole thing! psw

Here's a link to my post on Daveq's Stealth Plus Thread: psw's stealth plus post I really can't do a lot of work with the sustainer project because I have my hands full with these other things...but they are related. My new bridge is also mind blowing in it's potential and I'm adapting some of the work we've done on this thread to some new pickup designs which will be very special too. Both are coming along but I've traded the soldering iron in for hacksaws and files just now! Yes Bio, but this was where we were up to before this development! I really should index this thread...anyone wan't to try and summarise it could email me so I can check and post it! In the meantime, here's how I kind of look at it: In the begining, I made several conventional coil based designs, originaly trying to replicate the Ebow effect and test Ansil's sustainer Mod (which had originally attracted me to the site) This became the CP1 and worked, and still does work, surprisingly well. Enouraged, I continued to develop driver designs that were smaller (mainly thinner) to avoid modifications and the removal of pickups. This went on for some time...On page seven I posted links to various patent's etc for people's reference and to provide information relating to the lively discussions about circuit design...mainly between me and LoveKraft. Next came the second generation of drivers. After finding it impractial to hand wind coils as small as 5mm I discovered a new way of manipulating magnetic fields and new field arrangements. These were so small that you would need one for each string. Thus, they became hex drivers. To complement them fully we felt that six pickups would be advantagous so I began looking at ways to do this. One way of doing it was the undersaddle piezo system and I did a lot of work on this. This work was not really posted as the pickups did not really involve the sustainer. The system was also becoming unweildly, six drivers, six pickups, six lots of circuitry....time to take a break. So, Bio...mention was made of the GraphTech system...this would be an ideal pickup system for the Hex drivers. I should also say that I have a set of GraphTech saddles and have been very impressed. I had'nt realized how far they had come in their development but they now have developed their ghost system to a true midi hex pickup. This was something I thought would be the obvious extention...and they have done it...very well apparently! Now I can't devulge anything at this point about the third generation of drivers mentioned in my last post. Kevan, god bless him, would probably save me from myself and edit it out if I did! But, no, what your describing Bio is the end of the second generation's progress. The third generation is completely different in everyway, and that's all I can say at present...sorry! It will take a while for me to do any significant development of these ideas, but the sustainer thread is not dead, just sleeping. I hope that with this new approach I will be able to offer a significant improvement, or at least alternative, to available systems and technology. Stay tuned psw

The is so much potential in this device it's unbelievable! Obviously your hooked Daveq! I wish I could get one...I'll have to diy and see if I can't come up with something even better! The Sustaniac website is great and I can recommend people to their links. The Langcaster (35,000 year old wood from NZ!) has some nice sound bites: Sustainiac Site Langcaster Site After you've played around with it for a while, let me know how the Model C compares to the magnetc driven version. For those who have been following my progress, you'll recall a post early on (page 7) from darren wilson: I don't have all the reference material handy but Manic Music were originally supplying Fernandes with their system. Just below the above post, on page 7 of the sustainer thread, I posted a series of links which will direct you to various patents for the technical who wish to compare. This will take you there: psw sustainer patent links post There really is very little difference, I'd say none, in the principle, but both companies have been working on the drivers and battery consumption issues. Manic Music also worked with Micheal Brooks (inventor of the "Infinite Guitar") early on. They are the only ones to acknowledge his contribution to the device's evolution. Their customer service seems well above par and they are continually evolving systems...like the stealth plus....so I would recommend them to anyone contemplating a choice between the two. Don't hold your breath for my system anytime soon. There is still more that can be done and ways to do it...as the Model C demonstrates! I'm working beyond the current technology for the simple reason that the guys at Manic Music already have today's technology down. I got to the point of creating a driver system and technology that would be cheaper and easier to manufacture and small enough to be surface mounted without the removal of any pickups. If Manic music had my drivers, I'm sure they'd be able to adapt thir circuitry and have it up and running in no time...if for no other reason thane they have a 10 year head start on me! Perhaps, like me they're already working on the same thing...(if your out there Maniac Guys....contact me!). I have just tested the principle of a third generation of drivers that looks as if it has the potential to address a lot of the issues still outstanding. Basically, it should combine the benifits of both the Stealth and Model C with a few further improvements for chord work in particular. It's slow progress, but you can follow it on the sustainer thread if you've got the patience! Sorry to hijack the thread there, Daveq...thanks for reporting on the Sustainiac systems and keep us posted on how they're going psw

Oh Yeah...I' Baa-ack Just a real quick one...I'd been kind of glad to see the sustainer thread leave the front page and people getting on with their lives...however... I've been working on my super secret, super bridge...er it needs a name but I can't tell you much about what it does...ok it does everything. So I'm halfway through the prototype and thought, you know I think this opens a new avenue on the sustainer... Now the bridge project originated out of this as I wanted to make room for electronics and play around with some ideas related here. So, in a sudden moment of action I was able to put together (using some of the stuff I'd already developed) and what I have gotten to so far on the bridge (which is fitted to the guitar by the way) and the thing works!!!! It will take some more development but would represent a third generation of drivers and provides a viable, and perhaps improved, alternative to the Sustainiac style pickup based systems.... This may take some time...but I'm EXCITED!!!! psw

Sounds great...did it take much to install and how much did you have to pay for it?

Yeah, well try wearing one for 3 hours at a gig....serious though I dont think space for another knob would hurt and the 355 is hollow (yeah I know its bigger, but you know what I mean...SG anyone...er, I'll go now )