Leppard84

Sorry I can't help you there... at this stage, I'm only winding smaller one string drivers...at the risk of appearing a little blunt....it's not that tough a task to wind a coil...why not have another go? Next time, I'd say don't bother with the glue ...at least this way, you can always unwind the coil again if it hasn't turned out as you'd imagined (once you're happy - simply pot it with wax afterwards) Thanks Hank! Believe it or not you solved my problem! I had no idea that I didnt have to glue it until after some testing, wow! That is awesome, wax potting after testing I can handle! Going to start winding up some more drivers tonight, maybe a plethora of designs might yield atleast one that will work in some scenario. THanks again, ToNy

Hey guys! I've had all kinds of frustration with winding the driver. I have 32 AWG copper wire, and used a salvaged single coil pickup. Used wax candles to seat the windings in the top 3mm of the coil. And elmer's wood glue to bind it all together and I can't get a reading with my multimeter from ends of the driver. Very frustrating!!! Anyone have a spare driver laying around or be willing to make me one? I will gladly pay for the parts used and shipping! I want to get my hand in debugging and designing but i'm held back by my lack of a driver in the first place!! Grr... let me know guys! ToNy

Just some points I wanted to make before I head out for work today, gotta load those boxes... I've been keeping up on the 386 discussion and thought I'd chuck my 2cents of knowledge into the mix. The LM386, if that is what anyone is using, is the junkiest form of the chip. We can get them at Radio Shack here in Toledo, Ohio. Made a Ruby amp for my friend with one of those and sounded crappy at best. I ordered a NJM 386-D from mouser electronics and the gain control and overall sound improved dramatically IMHO. I understand they're appealing only because of thier simplicity but I thought I'd throw that out for everyone else to give a try. And my Fernandes circuit board is getting mailed out this weekend to a company that will repair it for me! A little beyond my capabilities and equipment. But I looked up the op-amp in it, a NJM 062-D. Just a plain dual op amp, no FET input or anything, which kinda surprised me. 1Mhz gain bandwidth (I have no clue what the relevance of that or the slew rate are, yet...) and a 3.5V/us Slew Rate. Maybe you knowledgeable types can figure something out with some of specs of that, but I was thinking about trying a TLC2272 (low noise rail to rail) as my op-amp, with a FET input buffer infront, and test out a ruby stage with my good 386 (only got one NJM here) and my driver. Will let you know how it goes after I get back and start boarding again.

I looked at your board pics, and your missing the vibration control (VBC) right? That's marking was 104, so 100K-ohms. And a thank you to you as well. I broke my gain control one which your pic clearly shows as 503. Hope it helps, and thank you! ToNy

I'd like to see some pics and details on their driver. As for the board, you are not the first to have trouble with the trim pots and there are a few posts on fixing them around the electronics section as I recall that you might want to search out. Sorry you didn't get the project to work, both fernandes and sustainiac make good products...personally I have a bit of a bias for the sustainiac as it seems a bit more flexible in the installation and aftermarket support and as I say, yours is not the first one that has trouble with the trim pots. pete Thanks Pete! That is awesome and excited now, I want to get both working!! Thought I did enough research into Fernandes and Sustainiac but after I broke it and went back the Sustainiac Stealth Plus looks like a smarter buy IMHO. On to the Fernandes de-bugging.... My fernandes was going to fit into my Yamaha Pacifica, as I was looking for a "Phil Collen" style guitar setup, Neck Driver for infinite sustain, single coil in the middle, and a bridge HB. Here is the pic of the top of the circuit-board. There is a connector pin for power, driver pot, driver pickup, pickup selector. Switches are a DPDT on/off for the sustainer and a DPDT harmonic switch with the middle toggle being a blend of both modes. There is a small transformer on it, something with working the driver as a pickup when the sustainer isn't on (which when the sustainer is ON if you set the pickup selector to neck only you will get nothing, no sound). My sustainer works fine in passive mode, it just doesn't sustain the notes (which was why I got it!). There are two op-amps on the board, but I can only read one of them, gotta get my magnifying glass from my grandpa's house, but its 026D JRC H028B. I haven't looked that up yet, and that long black thing, I've never seen anything like before. Luckily it had a stamp on the circuit board telling me what it was, NIC-6338. Hope these are of some help. And I do have a question too... Been wondering about the driver of my sustainer. It has a ez-connect to my board, but I've been wondering what kind of load the fernandes driver runs at. If I use my DMM and test it just like the 10 ohm coil I just wound, would that give me the reading of its load resistance? Thanks didn't have any luck in the preview with posting a pic so for now your gonna have to link to my myspace to see it, here it is link to Sustainer PCB pic (top view)

Donovan, I really like your idea about de-bugging a Fernandes sustainer. I tried making one using your guide on this excellent learning webiste and my first few attempts could not create a driver that worked. That was over a year ago, since then I bought a Fernandes, to bypass my own building frustrations, only to break the trim pots on the install. Therefore, I do have a Fernandes circuit board for us to take a look at. I'll try and post some pics tonight after I'm off of work, maybe we can gain some insight into what they are doing and firnd a simpler way of going about it! But it is an idea I like. As for my driver, I finially have one that reads at 10.2 ohms on my DMM!!! Close enough for now, I don't have an oscilliscope like many of you might but I'm diving in full force to aid in testing of circuits. Talk to you all later, ToNy

Greetings all! I haven't read over all of the threads, but I just sucessfully built a Little Gem amp using this MPF102 buffer which is similar to the Tillman Circuit. MPF102 FET Preamp. Might be easier to get a hold of an MPF102 than a J201 (atleast in Toledo, OH). Dropped this preamp infront of a Little Gem (LM386) and it works quite well. I replaced the 220k pulldown output resistor with a 500k audio pot, to control the volume. I have a 10uf capacitor between pins 1 and 8 of the LM386 and the distortion is downright thick and muddy (almost to the point of becoming unpleasing, so be warned. Might work better without the electrolytic cap and just have a 1k gain pot. Hope this helps some of us! ToNy

So Im new here, and I've been fascinated by this ultimate thread on building a sustainer! What a project! THanks to ALL the people contributing thier time and knowledge to this. I'm self taught with electronics and I've previously built some 386 based Amps for a few friends here in town. I used a circuit similar to the F/R, a Little Gem Amplifier from RoG, with a MPF102 for my preamp stage. I wired it up wrong last night, but amazingly my low E string still sustained the note without the bridge pickup being wired into the amplifier's input. I was quite impressed! Finishing up today, and I will post some pics when I get it up and running!