Active DIY Guitar Sustainer for about $20! 

thanks for telling "I wont use it in a stage" its for FUN at home

Ingenious. Love your engineering technique.Sounds great👍.

Awesome and thank you! I just did the same thing based on your video. I made one small tweak, I soldered another potentiometer in parallel with the sustainer coil and used that to lower the maximum output level to get rid of that feedback issue.

Thanks man, this is great. Tremendously helpful.

Well done!

thats awesome and thanks!! this young guy i sorta teach or rather jam wiv said about these the other day.. id never heard of them but what i did think a few years ago is to do the active thing then direct it to a piezo tweeter ( like them things you get on giftcards that play a monotone happy birthday or wotever) and connect it to the sustain block on a strat or floyd rose?! im gonna do this though. thanks maan what an awesome concept!!

Great job, well explained thank you, i think the cheap treble tone relates to the quality of your amp board, basically the better quality amp, the better the tone, probably why these things are so expensive.

Yeeeep! that's it. thank you very much!👍

Just subbed. I love modding guitars.

thanks for the video, this is super cool!

Just subscribed! Amazing stuff thank you! Tinkerers unite!

Got a little bit of that Brian May queen tone in there

I'd be very curious as to how different it would sound if you reversed the polarity on your driver coil! That "might" cut down on your unwanted feedback at high gain. That is a common technique used in sound reinforcement if an acoustic gtr is feeding back - flip the phase on the monitor.

There is a Facebook group DIY guitar sustainer, that is very deep inside this. Especially the member Brian Thornock is very close to the official sustainiac. I own two Schecter with sustainiac and can tell you, it is much fun.

Very clever

I notice many people are asking about using a 8 ohm resistor to try and use the pickup coil itself as the driver. That will NOT work. However if you could find a transformer you might have a shot. It would need to be 8 ohm to maybe around 5000 ohms. The higher the better. Most of these are used as "step down" from 5000 to 8 but any step down can be used as a step up. There are no longer any "Radio Shacks" so you can maybe find one online or you could scrap an old "transistor radio" (if you know what you are doing). The right transformer to scrap would be the one connected to the speaker - and that would be the 8 ohm side of it. ALSO REMEMBER that this could permanently fry your pickup. They are not made to take any wattage. The pickup windings have a much thinner wire than what the poster used for his driver coil wire. Ever seen the wire in a 1/2 amp fuse??? A 1/2 amp fuse would fry at 2 watts (at an 8 ohm load). 😲

Great tutorial! Do you perhaps have the STL file for the 3d-printed spacer for the pickup?

Very cool

Hi! Got a few questions about the image at 6:35: 1. Should I solder the positive from battery pack to negative in the amp? 2. Hot about those G and B? Should they both be connected to output jack sleeve/tip, or what? I don't understand it properly. Btw, good job on explaining the thing in barely 10 minutes :)

So could I do this to any 8ohm pickup with the 5v amp or is there something special you did with winding? I watched you wind it but Im new to all of this and can’t tell if you did anything out of the norm. Great project and idea!!

I read that you want the sustainer as far from the bridge as possible, I wonder how the sound would be different in the neck. I was resithis because I mainly use my neck pickup, and didn’t want to lose it. Nice job I thought actually, it does the thing. I would like to hear how it sounds compared to a sustainiac. I also kinda like the out of phase sound

Watched this again this morning, have a near future build that I want a sustainer in, pretty straight forward. The spacer is my question...... it's the insulation between the stock winding and the new copper wound wire, 3 mm , I was thinking about using either wrapped gorilla tape or a piece of plastic storage container,cut and heated up to bend around the single coil I'm thinking beyond shorting, possibly a noise issue? Otherwise I did easily locate the rest of the items. Also would 100-110 times around give you 8 ohms? Rather than the 120? I don't really do alot of wiring, so I'm definitely a novice as far as this stuff goes, again Thank You in advance. I'm tempted to just buy one but they are so pricey for something that you use here and there.....

hi, i made everything you did except mounting it to the guitar, im testing it first just like an ebow and still having fail result, do i have to mount it so it will work?

Great..thank you so much🤩

Having my guitar mechanic try this out on one of my guitars. I would myself but I'm completely incompetent with this kind of stuff. Changed it a little bit though: trying a single coil with a single bar-style magnet, and moving it to the neck position. Maybe this will eliminate some of the weird mid-range overtones? I'll let you know how it goes!

Could I use it on a 100 watt amp , and also could you do more videos on some of the other ideas in the comments to really master this diy sustaining pickup and make it 100% functional without any problems

Hello,sir I'm still confused of how it works Does it work like fernandes sustainer? Like sacrifice one of the pickup slot to be a magnetic sustainer device? And where does the cocked wah sound come from? It sounds killer!

GRACIAS

great stuff!! am making this as soon as the parts come in the post. knowing that your one works have you tried using both outputs? might they cancel each other out or short the amp or might you get double the output then needing say 16 ohms of windings?

Can you create the sustain coil on an existing pickup? So, I may use that pickup position if it’s not being used as a sustainer.

About 20 years ago, a friend of mine had a Fernandes with a sustainer system. It was so much fun to play with, but the pickups had ZERO volume roll dynamics/headroom. The volume pots were basically on/off switches. Even rolled up 1/4 to 1/2 way, it was about as dirty as it was on 10, even on the most responsive tube amp. I roll my volume through all of my performances. It's the source of my dynamics. The Fernandes was useless to me due to the lack of headroom. Does that have anything to do with the sustainer system/pickup or was that maybe that the guitar had shitty potentiometers and/or capacitors? That's the only guitar with a sustainer that I had ever played. I've wanted to hot rod a Charvel So-Cal with one, but if it has anything to do with eating headroom and dynamics, it would not be worth the trade off.

I messed up and plugged a 9V battery into the amp. Is it dead, and can it explain why it doesn't work ? Thanks for all the informations btw, the building was really easy following your video

Hello and thanks for this content .Instead of building a driver can I use a regular ceramic single coil pick up with 7.3 k?

Did you try to mount it on neck position ? I'm curious to see if it change anything

Cool hack but I think that pup needs some nasal spray!! Lol I Enjoy your videos!❤

So Quik question, Doesn’t a regular pick up already come with the copper wire wound up in it already? Or are you adding more to get to the 8ohms

The sound you when it's on It's like it's out of phase. You tried to invert the output of the amp?

Would the EMG PA2 Preamp Boost Toggle Switch work for this?

He gets my attention about the same as Malmsteen does…none at all…speed freaks!

Do you know if the direction of the coil wrap makes any difference? Clockwise/counter clockwise/even or staggered winds? I'm right handed if that matters. I bought the battery box w/o the switch. Does the volume knob turn the volume all the way off? thx

How do you prevent a popping noise when you switch on the sustainer and how heavy is it on batteries ? tia. Nice job .

Hi Sean, would it be possible to use the pickup's own coil instead of making a new one from the outside?

Did you remove the existing wire from the pickup and rewind, or did you put the spacer in on top of the existing wire and wind new wire over the spacer?

thanks! what is the number of turn for the winding please ! i want to make it manualy ( sorry for my bad english)

You may have missed it but another commenter was wondering if this thing would excite more than one string at a time so you could play more than one string at a time with the effect. I said yes but you’d know for sure.

I have made a pickup driver, but the sound of the vibration penetrates the bridge pickup, why?

How do I tell what wirers are positive & negitive from the copper wire?thx

Lo hice y no me funciona,podrás enviar un layout o diagramas con respecto a las conexiones???

If using one of these mini class D amps, do not ground any of the speaker wires unless you want to buy another amplifier.

Very cool idea! I love hacks like this. When the sustain is engaged it sounds out of phase like the intro to Money For Nothing. If you reverse the leads going to the driver you'll invert the signal and bring it back in phase with the pickups. Some amplifiers are inverting while others are non-inverting. It may also be cool to add a DPDT toggle or push-pull potentiometer to the driver leads so that you can change the phase at will. This is all purely speculation, but I believe the phase issue (if present) may also be the reason some notes sustain better than others.

Hi Just curious instead of rewinding the pickup to get the ohm rating could you just use a regular pickup and add a resistor to get the correct Ohm rating?

Have you ever tried to do this on a humbucker on just one of the coils? also why did you put it in the middle p/u instead of the neck p/u

positive and negative like hot and ground? then combine 2 wire to 1 and solder to pot and switch?

Does it still work as a mid pickup. I really want this and the feedback is really cool for metal music. I have no experience or knowledge in this field . would this project be too hard for me. Feels a little bit daunting... And can you pleade explain to me how Synyster (A7X Guitarist) got feedback mode and normal sustain with just a flip of a switch... Please help me out, I won't ever afford a sustianic pickup of my own...

that worked much better.👍

couldn t you just use ANY guitar pickup as a driver ? or would it melt due to too mutch voltage/input power ?

Where we can buy that sustainer pick up set sir?

Does this works polyphonicaly? I mean on multiple strings at the same time.

can you please make a diagram to the circuit

can i put a on/off mini toggle switches ?

Oi! Você enrolou uma bobina de 5 ohms sobre a bobina de um captador( pickup) comum? Desculpe não escrever em inglês. Obrigado.

Very nice project sir i. Need digram how you connect all wiers. you are last my hope to made sustainer to my guitar. thanks

Somethings not right with it if it’s not giving you your normal guitar sound. Might be where you placed the driver, might be the amp module.

What if i use a 9v amp board? (Not that ruby shit)

Good idea cool video but the tone that it is producing is not acceptable for what my application would be. TBH I think it would be a lot less of a headache to just buy a guitar for about 8 or 900 bucks with the sustainiac in it already instead of buying a sustainiac pick up and system and having it installed.

can i using 9v battery ?

How to add harmonic switch?

Will this work on an electric bass?

suitable for humbucker pickup?

Does the pickup still have output or is it only used as the sustainer driver unit?

Has anyone even seen an actual sustainer pickup in action Lol ? This sounds more like an "out of phase" sound . The Fernandes or Jackson Sustainer or even an ebow for that matter is the sound to shoot for.

i needs a better explained complete diagram, the whole whole circuit

flip the coil, its out of phase.....

I gotta find a way to make $10.00 string vibrators instead of paying $99.00 for them. Greed destroys everything sooner or later.

How about cleaning that poor guitar?

Never seen a locking nut installed like that..??