Sustainers for guitar allow your strings to ring out forever, giving the player the opportunity to mimic violin bows or synth-like effects. How do these little devices work though? Ebow: US: bit.ly/37MnOiT Europe: www.thomann.de/gb/ebow_ebow.htm?offid=1&affid=367 AEON: US: bit.ly/2OPvbxB Europe: www.thomann.de/gb/tc_electronic_aeon_string_sustainer.htm?offid=1&affid=367 More from CSGuitars: Gain access to exclusive content at: www.patreon.com/csguitars Buy CSGuitars Merchandise: www.csguitars.co.uk/store Website: www.csguitars.co.uk Contact: colin@csguitars.co.uk
So, this suggestion is post-punk/psych, and not metal, but "Constant in Opal," an old song by The Church, is a great example of some excellent e-bow technique, if anyone is interested. Peter Koppes still uses the e-bow after all these years, too.
I usually opted to move the sustainer closer to the 12th fret to prevent the excitation coil from directly exciting the guitar pickup (thus avoiding the square-wave sound). Up there, the string is moving the fastest, and it is easiest for the excitation coil to accelerate. Sometimes you have to move it back, because the string starts bumping into it, or because you're playing higher on the fretboard, but otherwise, you shouldn't have any problems with it.
I discovered sustainers in your Christmas gifts video, and although it sounded cool, I wasn't sold. But those soundscapes melodies might just change my mind, so dreamy !
On record it’s an Infinite Guitar - one of three customised guitars built by/for Michael Brook (Daniel Lanois has the other one) - it affects all 6 strings, like a Sustainiac or Sustainer system, so you could play chords. Not sure if Edge uses a Sustainiac equipped guitar or an ebow on stage though - he certainly doesn’t take the Infinite Guitar on tour.
(3:52-4:44) that suspense like sound. Fantastic. I was thinking of buying one sustainer. Now I have learned of its function and beauty. I think that will work pretty well together with reverb and shimmer pedal.
Thank you. A simple, clear but thorough explanation of these devices. I have an Ed O'Brien Strat w/Fernandes Sustainer (love it). BTW, do you teach? If not, you will always have a second career waiting....
@@ScienceofLoud You are right, it is the "new age" of teaching I guess. I went to teacher's college many moons ago, all classroom-based, so I am "old school" in my thinking. Anyways, your channel is quite different from others, esp. the way you make every word count and, yes, educate.
Man, I've always dug the sound of these devices, but they rarely show up where I live. Importing it causes it to become way to expensive for what it is. Though you mentioned not being proficient at it, you got some sweet tones with them. The haunting tones were awesome, and I've never seen them used to emulate the breath instruments like you mentioned and ilustrated. Very cool, inspiring sounds indeed.
Interesting stuff. I've been using an ebow since 1991 but never really understand how it works. And you have an excellent accent and perfect teeth too.
**The Guitarist from "Flock of Seagulls" was a Master** A few years ago, he had a stroke. I never purchased a FOS album, but his guitar sound is what shaped their entity.
I had an E-Bow for Christmas last year and I think they're great for getting creative with un-typical guitar playing. What I really enjoy doing is playing it through an ElectroHarmonix Mel 9 pedal, you can get some great E-Bow sounds from that. You can also get some very nice sounds playing an E-Bow through a delay pedal or 2, and delay + Mel 9. In fact most of EHX's "9" pedals sound interesting with an E-Bow, as do a lot of regular guitar effects pedals, especially modulation effects like tremolos, phasers, leslie effects, vibratos and so on. If you've got an E-Bow then a good purchase to go with it is some kind of multi effects unit. 👍
Aye laddy another fine show. I like how you mix the sustainer with the effects it-kicks it to the next level. ….Very cool…. I got to get me one of those wee sustainers … anyway ,Keep on rockin..
Amazing explications... I understood everything ! As you said "it's the opportunity to mimic" others instruments, but with the character of a guitar. Cool. Thanks.
I was given one as a gift about 10 years ago and they are perfect for ambient guitar music. I like using it with different length delays or even looping a drone note. Slide works well too for accessing quarter tones and half tones. I would note that these work best with only the neck pickup engaged
@Dave Mendoza And what does the Halo theme, one of the greatest video game themes of all time, with guitar performed by the legendary Steve Vai, have to do with the likes of Bieber?
Everyone’s rightfully pointing out the Rohan quotation, but my ear is particularly drawn to how 3:53 sounds right at home in the Rain World soundtrack. Specifically reminds me of Dustcloud a ton.
They reminded me of a Talk Box in the sense that after about half hour your either completely done with it or it's all your using for the next 3 years, Lol. It's one of those things that you wished you'd remember to use more often when you sit down to play cause you can get some really cool sounds out of them. Great video, I didn't know someone else had done one other than EBow, Thanks.
Check out mick ronson playing heroes with bowie at the freddie mercury tribute concert. I remember seeing that as a kid and thinking he had some magic robot in his hand. I Finally got around 2 getting one.
I thought it was magic that made it work until you said 9 volt battery...tears flowing now, lol. Seriously though great video, loved Amazing Grace too.
Big Country used them, I think The Chameleons did on a few tracks, hell it was even used for Halo's Bungie title on the original Xbox. Cool little piece of kit that I wanna add to my equipment
If there were two effects on my wish list, it would be the Game Changer Plus pedal (which I'm trying to justify spending that amount for a single pedal in my mind) and probably an Ebow. I typically use amp feedback to achieve a similar effect, but obviously the Ebow can do more than just feedback alone can. Cool video, though.
I've got a TATA for you: What are the ins and outs of volume and tone pots, as well as capacitors in guitars? I kinda partially know the answers, but I feel like a CSGuitars breakdown would really clear things up for me and others.
Nice work as always, sir! I have two questions: is this much different from using volume knob in order to do volume swells, and if so, how? Plus, what was the second effect in the chain you used to do the spooky music effects? I mean the yellow one. Maybe a flanger? Thank you for your beautiful and always appreciated work!
1. The volume control doesn't give you infinite sustain. You'd have to pluck the string, then swell the volume and the note will die. You'd have to pluck or hammer on every new note. With a sustainer it is vibrating the string so all you need to do is move it to suit the style you need. No plucking, on hammers. 2. Ibanez FL9 Flanger. MIJ sometime in the 80s. All the die cast is stamped with Maxon, so it was manufactured during the era where Ibanez were re-badging Maxon pedals.
Hi bro how you can change from one string to another one? Every time I do it there is a lot of noise and also the sustain is affected. Maybe fading away from the mic?
Hey there Does anyone here have experience building sustainers for guitars? I've wanted to have a system similar to that of a Sustainiac for years, but haven't had the money for it. As such, I've been working on coming up with a homemade design that would work well for my guitars and the way I play. The only thing left in the planning process is to figure out how to construct the driver/speaker/exciter coil. Currently, I’m planning on buying the cheapest hotrail pickup I can find, pull it apart, remove one of the coils and then rewind the remaining coil. However, I’m not sure which gauge of wire to use or even how much resistance to aim for, with many saying that 8 Ohms would be ideal, but others recommend more, some even stating that, theoretically, 40 Ohms would be better. However, no one has any sources or documented experiments to back this up, and I’m worried that the 8 Ohms thing, which everyone is talking about, is just something someone once said without knowing what he was doing and now everyone is just repeating what they once heard from someone, they thought knew what he was doing (it wouldn’t be the first time the guitar community has acted like that after all x) ). The reasoning behind getting a hotrail pickup is to make sure the "pole pieces" will always be perfectly aligned with the string, so I can get sustain when bending too. I'm unsure as to whether I should remove one of the coils completely from the circuit and use the neck pickup as the sustainer circuit's pickup or keep the other coil from from the hotrail and just use that as the sustainer pickup. Furthermore, I've been told that the closer the driver coil comes to the pickup, that goes the actual guitar amplifier outside of the guitar, the more feedback issues, you get. Hence I've chosen to use the bridge pickup for the guitar outgoing signal and the neck position cavity for installing my sustainer input pickup and driver coil to maximize the distance . However, I haven't been able to find anything on the optimal distance between the sustainer input pickup and the driver coil. Up until now, I've assumed that they should just be as close to each other as possible, as that would make the signal, that affects the string, as close as possible to the actual vibration of the string, which I'd imagine would improve the sustainer system's efficiency. However, I'm definitely not an expert, I'm just a cartography student. Can anyone here help me out with finding proper sources on this? I would love to get more concrete information about it
I asked for this TATA! Awesome! Thanks! On the subject of bass: I always hammer on the note in order to get the vibrations going for the sustainer. It's really pretty, almost cello like.
I was certain someone had asked for this as a TATA, but after searching for ages I couldn't find the original comment. Glad to know it was you all along and I wasn't going crazy.
