IcePac

The song "burn" by the cure comes to mind as far as using sequencing the on/off nature but he could have also done that sound with a tremolo pedal with momentary bypass to make the sound momentarily non-tremolo. Most likely is that they added the affect after the performance of his moniter amp while playing was not being "tremolo'd" since you can hear the notes held start to feedback and "harmonic up". At least three ways to make that sound but I don't know which one they used. I haven't done research on using transistor drivers for on/off switching of a guitar signal but we use these types of drivers for coils in cars as well as injectors in my job where I rebuild and troubleshoot automobile engine control units. It's possible the amp would see a change in impedance through the device whether signal is off or on............not sure. I'm sure a google search on BOUTIQUE TRUE BYPASS (no quotes) would net such a device but these 4 posts are all the time I may well have until next week.

Thank you much..........I will research this thread. I really think many problems can be solved by "time sharing" a device that both "transmits" and "receives" in that for a certain amount of milleseconds, it is used as a pick-up and for a certain amount of milleseconds, it is used as a sustainer driver. Since any energized coil will "throw back" a bit when the field is de-energized, maybe it would be possible to use both the string exciter and the string excitee right next to each other in the same packaging rather than a single pickup/driver that does both. The time sharing could still be used but with discrete units and you reduce the potential of the spike generated by the de-energization of the driver's field being sent back to the amp............since the driver and pickup are not on the same circuit. Since most people cannot even tell the difference between a crappy MP3 sampled at a low rate compared to a CD, then it's possible the human brain either would not pick up the "gaps" in sound or would apply some sort of interpolation when faced with interrupted sound much like the way the eyes do with movies. There would be some sort of sweet spot concerning pulse width and pulse rate, most likely where a human would be hard pressed to hear any "gaps". Since I haven't done research on this since the 80s, whatever I said might already be incorporated into a product. If not, have at it.

If you're making a kill switch.........do yourself a favor and use another switch such you can also make the "kill button" an "enable button" since some people will have fits with timing issues that might better suit them if the switch is used to enable rather than kill.

Excellent thread.........didn't read it but it is favorited so I can read this thread in depth. I built my first working sustainer in late either late 1982 or early 1983 which was necessitated by my having bought a Rockman and wanting feedback. I had no idea what I was doing concerning guitar electronics but the basic principle was simple........until I read this thread and noticed how far things have come since I threw my stuff down in disgust at having the guys at Rolls Music at falls church laugh me out of the store for even proposing such a device. I seeked out patenting it and spent months at the patent office until almost the last page (yes they were individual pages stacked between what looked like book covers)...........the third to last page.......and there it was. My idea had already been patented in 1976. Still.........the search was cool as I was able to physically handle the patents on the flying V and all the other cool McCarty designs. Strange thing about the patent office............about 90% of the population searching patents there in the early 80s came in with blank pages and left with ideas. I fully expected to see people like me sweating whether someone had beat them to the punch as they searched but instead found people looking to exploit. Tom Scholz was the only person I talked to about it that felt it had legs but he was busy with Scholz R&D at the time. Paul Reed Smiths' wife was hand inlaying seaguls when I showed up to discuss it but all I could do was marvel at his sweet stash of aged wood at the time. Anyway........glad to be here and hope to get the creative spark back........maybe it is or I wouldn't have found this place. Oh.........my sustainer at that time was so inefficient that it required at least two 6L6GC tubes worth of Harmon Kardon power just to sustain to the point that the potting I used started to smoke. I was able to get around the transducer feeding back from the moster field created by 50 watts of power by using a delay pedal and sending said delayed signal (delayed only.......no mix) to the transducer that was making sizzling noises. It sucks that I ruined my Kramer focus with the non-angled banana headstock to fit that device..........apparently they are worth a lot of money now.