Hi PSW and all,
I just came over from Aron’s to check on what this link was about, and I was fascinated to find such a looong thread dedicated to this subject. We get a few a year over at Aron’s forum, but they usually don’t go on this long <grin>. Usually they just want someone to tell them how to make one …easily …without doing much research or experimentation (nice fantasy, eh?)
I've been working on sustainer designs on and off since I was a kid, and I have played around with some of the commercial versions: the acoustic “Model B” version of the Sustainiac that vibrates the headstock, the Fernandez dedicated Sustainer guitars, …heck, I even bought a "Stealth plus" version of the Sustainiac and put it in one of my guitars to test it out and to examine the driver transducer and the driver circuit, mostly out of curiosity. I even traced out the electronic processing circuitry (you'll find a lot of us that hang out over at Aron's are a curious bunch who often trace things out to find out how what’s going on in the works).
BTW - You may find it helpful to know that one of the schematics in one of their patents is almost the same as the production model I traced out (which I bought about a year or so ago). I would be willing to discuss this more in direct correspondence if you are interested. They also use the driver transducer coil as a low impedance pickup and run it through a small transistor preamp to derive a “pickup” signal for the transducer’s location when it isn’t being used as a driver (located in the neck position). It makes a decent neck pickup sound, but it’s not a great sounding pickup IMHO.
Kudos on your work so far.- You are obviously energetic, creative, and really into developing a musically useful and innovative sustaining device for the electric guitar. A great goal from my point of view. I hope you keep on experimenting and developing your ideas.
I noted from your posts that you have researched the Hoover (Sustainiac) patents, and I assume you are also aware that they also tried a model (with the driver coil in the "middle" strat pu position), set up so that both the bridge and neck pickups could be used with their electromagnetic sustainer operating. FWIW, they got it working, even with single coils in bridge and neck positions. No cigar, though.
You may or may not be aware that it turned out to be a configuration they no longer recommend, because of the effect of the sustainer driver magnetics on the tone of the magnetic pickups. The designers thought the feature of having two pickups available for use with the sustainer was an important enough feature to outweigh the effect the driver magnetics had on the tone of the pickups. Unfortunately for them, the musicians who tried that design weren’t impressed (it made the pickups sound different in a way most musicians DON’T find musically pleasing), even with their new driver design that projects a self-canceling varying magnetic field perpendicular to the strings, instead of parallel (but truncated) like the current Fernandez design.
It is be impressive if you have developed a transducer whose magnetic influence on the strings and the guitar’s pickups is much less disruptive of the guitar’s tone. You may have great ears for tone, and you’ve already solved that issue. If so, that’s good - provided you haven’t traded a “biggie” for it design-wise. I encourage you to check. You may simply be oblivious to the issue of the effect of the driver magnetics on pickup tone, or you may be ignoring the issue since you are using an inexpensive, “test-board” guitar with ceramic pickups. You may also be trading off some other issue you are not currently attending to.
IMHO, Tone will always be a critical issue. FWIW.
But there are lots of other very important issues as well. Durability. How finicky it is to set up and keep it in adjustment? Power consumption, especially consumption of batteries, if you don’t phantom power it. A Sustainiac Stealth Plus is good for one or maybe two gigs per 9 volt battery. What happens when you bend a string (I read this is not much of an issue with the driver you are trying out mounted close to the bridge instead of the neck. – that placement does have some interesting features. The evolution of harmonics in sustain mode.
BTW – The “mixed-mode” of the Sustainiac Stealth just cuts the low frequency response of the electronics driving the transducer. In case you didn’t know already. Simple trick, sounds good.
A couple of other comments and questions about your design and this LOOONG thread. These comments and questions are meant to be constructive criticism, and I hope will be taken in that vein.
1) You mentioned reliability issues with early prototypes - Have you left this thing on with a real power supply for a month or so to at least tentatively verify that you have developed a durable transducer that will hold up long-term?
If not, I suggest you spend more energy on such issues - all the rest of it becomes academic if the transducer isn’t durable enough for other than experimental purposes. Piezoelectric transducers don’t tolerate being overdriven long-term.
2) You wrote that you are using a transducer located only 1 mm away from the strings – I would be concerned about the effect of that on durability in particular. Lead guitarists are second only to drummers in abusing musical instruments when they are getting into a performance. Check out the scratches and depressions worn into the face of a wooden guitar body located 3/8ths of an inch below the strings without a pickguard, or the top of plastic pu covers located 1/8” or more below the strings. You may not be a wildman guitarist, but a lot of them, including pros, are really hard on equipment. If you can’t get your transducer further away from the strings, it better be right up next to the bridge where the pick isn’t likely to hit it very often, and build it like a brick shithouse (i.e., virtually indestructible). I would also be concerned about the possibility of the transducer generating so-called “ghost harmonics” – a phenomenon noted when pickup magnets too close to the strings cause weird harmonics and can even effect string intonation.
3) Whether or not the Mk I transducer and electronics “cut it” in terms of sound performance (onset of sustain and string vibration mode dynamics, effect on string harmonic intonation and guitar pickup tone, etc – the REAL issues here IMHO), are not being addressed in this thread.
Especially, I can’t help but wonder why there are no clips of your multi-string driver in operation, since you describe and picture a (reportedly – we haven’t heard it) working version of the circuitry and driver transducer? Not trying to make accusations or piss you off, guy, but hey …”Where’s the Beef?”
The guy who glued a dime on a speaker and mounted it on his guitar one afternoon posted a sound clip…you’ve been working on this for HOW long? <good-natured ribbing you here, psw>
I, and others, would be MUCH more impressed with the successes you are reporting here if we could hear a demo, even if not super studio-fidelity, showing you actually have a device that works musically as well (and as impressively) to someone’s ears other than your own (namely, to OUR ears).
Hey, it’s just not that hard, guy. I don’t care how lame your computer is. You can get 16-bit samples out of an old SoundBlaster 16 in an ISA slot on a 486. You just plug straight into the sound card from the output of any stompbox – it can even be in bypass if it is buffered. Or you can use a guitar preamp output of a guitar amp. NOTE: You may need to add resistive attenuation before the soundcard to prevent overloading the soundcard input. I don’t want to get blamed if you fry the input to your soundcard by exceeding 1 vrms, the max for many cards. Or you can simply use a $10 Radio Shack electret mike.
What you have achieved may be GREAT, and I’m not knocking what I haven’t heard. But the sonic characteristics of a sustainer – the sound and character associated with the onset of sustain, the way the harmonics evolve (and which harmonics stand out), the controllability of the sustain system by the player’s technique, are all subjective musical characteristics that will make or break any design as useable musically, including your attempts. So let the world hear what you have – and/or maybe haven’t – worked out so far. If it’s impressive you’ll get helpful responses. It doesn’t have to be polished for people to recognize if you’ve got something here, either.
Anyone who has read about the BOSS Distortion-Feedbacker stompbox , and has then had the disappointing experience of playing through one, knows EXACTLY why I’m addressing this issue. Yeah, IT provides infinite sustain. But basically it sucks and I don’t know anybody that actually uses one (other than to play a note occasionally just to justify that they bought it and still keep it in their pedalboard). It just isn’t very usefully musically, with it’s cheesy-sounding VCO-based vibrato that fades in with the faux “sustained note” (yeech).
Put simply, lots of guitar gizmos sound a hell of a lot better in print than they do in person. I’m NOT saying your device sucks or is in that category. I’m just saying it’s time to stop telling everybody how great it is and let us hear what you’ve got, and let us decide how impressive it is.
If your device is really decent-sounding and this is about building a sonically-valid device and not just an enjoyable fantasy trip for you down “Inventor Lane,” the important feedback is about the sound of it, not the controls or the look of the box., LED lights, etc.
And you can’t get feedback from others about the musicality of the sound of your device – the REAL issue - without putting some effort into getting some modest recording rig together and spending less time on all these minor details like those that fill the past 20 pages of this thread (Did you notice the Sustainiac patent touts their transducer-mounted LED is aimed at the user as a great feature? Guess what? Their production model doesn’t even have one anymore. Waste of battery power, as you, also, have apparently come to realize. The insignificant stuff.)
BTW, how much current DOES your circuit draw?
Getting feedback from real players who can play through your rig - even if the electronics is mounted in an aluminum-foil-shielded cardboard box duct-taped on the back – would be extremely helpful to you in evolving a really impressive design, too. Semi-pro and lower-tier pro musicians are often quite easily interested in participating in R& D testing with promises of a few free beers and maybe a crack at the first workable versions at moderate cost. <voice of experience on this one>
Let us hear what you got there, psw. Others with real expertise are more likely to contribute to your effort if they can hear you’re actually accomplishing something musically valuable. All guitar sustainers have assets and liabilities – let’s hear what yours has.
Stop worrying so much about what it will look like, what controls to put on it, flashy lights, or somebody stealing your ideas, and get busy getting a great design going that has the sonic characteristics that musicians will go for, even if you end up just making a few dozen of them and posting a tutorial on the web for the DIY crowd. That’s a perfectly admirable goal. You see a lot of that if you hang around Aron’s page.
And before dreams of being rewarded lavishly for your ideas get you too intoxicated, read Don Lancaster’s “The Case Against Patents” (on his website, I believe), for a helpful reality check. If I understand the patent system correctly, you can still initiate a patent within the first year after initiating production of your device, and you can bust anyone else’s attempt to patent your ideas with a simple proof of prior art. The magazine, “Midnight Engineering”, is right up your alley, too, and has lots of sobering stories, lessons, and valuable advice for the would-be inventor-small businessman. It’s an American (USA) publication.
Hope this long post is more helpful than tedious <grin>
MR COFFEE
