Paul Marossy

As of the past ten minutes i have had one note on my guitar sustaining. Right now i have no pics or videos to share as proof but i will when I can. Anyways i made the 'standard' driver wrapping 30AWG wire from the Shack on an old thin bobbin and affixed a magnet to it as for my amp/pre-amp i will honestly say I had no idea what I'm doing there. I tried making the Fetzer/Ruby and several others none with success, so in desperation and an astounding step of luck I used an on board effect i bought on Ebay from guitarfetish its the mini tube driver originally meant to power a small on board speaker so i thought why not after all the driver is essentially a speaker minus the cone right? And lo and behold IT WORKED!!!

So if you play a chord and let it ring, it sounds like you have a Ebow on all six strings? Or does it sound like an amp that is feeding back?

well it was in fact a grounding issue to the back of the pot;

Interesting. I have one guitar where the volume pot doesn't completely kill the signal. I just noticed this the other day. I need to check the grounding on that...

Yeah, that micro kill switch is pretty cool!

I just added a killswitch to a guitar that I just installed a Fernandes Sustainer into. I did do it exactly just for fun.

Good news Paul! May your sustain last longer than the arguments about it on this forum!

Yeah, I noticed a while back that the "great sustainer thread" is gone now. That's too bad that those sorts of things have to happen.

I got it figured out, I had my pickup switch wiring a little confused. I used a traditional Fender 5-way pickup switch with four solder lugs on each side and the Fernandes wiring diagram shows the type where all eight lugs are in a row. Once I figured out that I had the wires in reverse from what they should have been, I was in business.

Just letting you know that you were right about which one was the on/off switch.

It's working good except for now all I need to is figure why all the pickups are always on no matter what position the pickup switch is in. I think they might have a mistake on their wiring diagram.

I have the FSK-101, installation manual is here: http://www.fernandesguitars.com/support/do...-sustainer.html - I'm using the 5-position switch scheme, with a humbucker on the bridge. I'm using the traditional Fender type pickup switch, but I wired it the same way as they show in their diagram. It seems like they are missing a ground connection somewhere to ground out the unused pickups.

Your reasoning sounds good to me. That Benford sustainer mod was nicely done.

Anyone here ever put a Fernandes Sustainer pickup system in their guitar? Someone at a music store gave me a used one yesterday. I have one of my guitars all ready to install the circuitboard, but I don't know which switch is for on/off and which one is the harmonic switch. I downloaded the installation manual and it doesn't say which one is which. One of the switches is a DPDT toggle switch and the other one is a 3PDT toggle switch.

Can anyone tell me which switch is which?

Aha, I knew something sounded fishy.

with all due respect what monkey crack are you smoking. using any pot in an emg will give you actual zero volume i do this all the time if you get a pot doing that it is because the pot is sheit my friend.

No crack involved, Ansil.

I have, right behind me, an EMG-EQUIPPED bass with regular-value pots.

The last owner was too lazy to switch the pots and the current owner (me) never uses the volume controls.

The volumes don't go down to zero and the tone control didn't roll off as much as it should (till I dropped in a 25k).

I wonder if the volume control is wired as a variable resistor instead of a volume control. A volume control should go to zero to full volume if it is wired correctly, no matter what the value of the pot is. Does one of the lugs go to ground? If it has a lug soldered to the pot body, but the body isn't connected to ground, it will just be a variable resistor instead of a volume control.

You could get some of the parts at RadioShack, but they won't have everything you need as their selection in stores is extremely limited these days. Places like http://www.digikey.com and http://www.mouser.com would have 95% of the components that you would need to build the circuit. You can even get stuff from http://www.radioshack.com too.

I think you need to build something like this circuit: http://sound.westhost.com/project34.htm

Someone recently built it, and it sounds pretty good. Have a listen: http://soundcloud.com/jammybstard/sets/reverb-stompbox-tests

I forgot to add that what is traditionally called "vibrato" on many old amps is actually a tremolo. Vibrato is when you vary the pitch of something, as in when a violin or cello player does vibrato on a string. Or when a guitarist bends the string up and down a little bit.

I would describe a killswitch on a guitar as a "manual extreme tremolo".

Tremolo is where the volume level of something is modulated up and down. Guitars have bridges that are traditionally called "tremolos", but that is an incorrect use of the word. They are in fact a vibrato system, not a tremolo.

If it's this much trouble getting the smoke odor out of something, just imagine what smoking does to the lungs.

The coffee ground idea is interesting. I wonder why it would act as an odor absorbing substance?

Yup, it will make it buzz. Exact opposite of passives.

Well, son of a gun. I guess I'll have to fix my bass then. Thanks!

And according to the EMG install guide, it also creates a shock hazard to connect the two.

Another good reason for me to fix that!

That would account for the static while moving the pot's control, not sure it would leave it with chronic static, but I agree, that's a good place to start.

Right, chronic static requires different measures. But the turning the knob trick often works for something that has been sitting for a long time.

I think what happens is that the contacts just get a little oxidation on them while not in use and the mechanical action of turning the knob back and forth cleans it off and makes a good electrical contact again. And hence no more scratching noises when you turn the knob.

Sometimes you can turn the offending control knobs back and forth several times and that scratching sound will go away. They might also need to be cleaned with some contact cleaner, if you are able to spray any into the pots. If it's a "sealed" pot, it's real hard to get any contact cleaner inside of it.

A TL082 isn't too bad as far as noise is concerned. A TL072 is a lower noise opamp than the TL082 is, though.

the only problem is, it's noisy. There's a constant hissing. The only way I've figured to make it go away is to increase the value of the feedback cap, but then the tone gets all dull.

What opamp are you using? With headphone amps, you need to use an opamp designed specifically for audio use (or for lowest possible noise) because it will have the lowest noise floor that you can get. Something like an OPA134, OP275, NE5534, etc. A 741 or something like that will be very noisy in comparison.

and i'm assuming that a ceramic cap reading "10" means 10pF. correct me if i'm wrong

Yes, that should be a 10pF cap. But that's a very small capacitor to use in a feedback loop. What does a 100pF do for you? That should lower the noise a bit more but not kill the high end much.

Here is another cool little page that helps indentify capacitors: http://www.electronics2000.co.uk/calc/capa...-calculator.php

Edit: I just looked at the 2 links in th eprevious posts and confirmed that yes, those schematic assume you are eiyhrt using dual supplies (2 batteries with a center tap) or creating a virtual GND, using a VCC/2, so none of those circuits should work without doing this. Funny how they expect us to just know this!

Yeah, that's a good point you make there. I don't know that much about opamp design, but I do see a lot of stompbox schematics that don't use a virtual ground. Many times they are simply non-inverting opamps with input biasing.

Glad I could help.

Hmm.... OK.

Well, that circuit appears to not be designed for use with a guitar. At least not for a guitar straight into it. A passive guitar pickup needs to be amplified quite a bit first before it goes to your headphones.

This one here can be modified for use with a guitar - see asterisk at bottom of schematic in Figure I: http://www.headwize.com/projects/guitar_prj.htm

It's based around an LM386 audio amplifier IC chip, which is pretty commonly used for this sort of thing and is good for a 1/2 watt of power.