Tested: Where Does The Sustain Come From In An Electric Guitar? 

This was a good video on sustain. It could have been longer though.

This guy's dry humor combined with total willingness to shatter most guitar players' concensuses without even saying a word about it is amazing.

"... so I did that" had me rolling. WOW DUDE. The commitment to these tests are just insane.

Seems like a lot of these myths about tone and sustain relate to acoustic guitar, but don't really carry over to electric in reality, yet have been perpetuated for decades in the musical community. Brilliant, enlightening video, as always!

This is like "Mythbusters" for guitar, and I am loving it.

It's really a pleasure to see an empirical approach to what so many people treat like magic.

The fact that you put yourself through all of these tests is insane.

As a physicist, I find it interesting that the sustain was better with lower tension - with open strings. When the tension is lower the frequency is lower, and that means the string goes through fewer resonance periods in the same time. The Q (quality) factor is an important parameter for a resonator, and it tells you the fraction of power lost in a single period. If the Q factor stays the same but the period increases, you have more sustain.

"So I did that!" Hats off for thoroughness and commitment. Love these videos.

These make me so happy because it just confirms that as long as a guitar is built properly and the pickups are ok, there’s no reason it can’t be a usable sound

I fucking love this guy man. I can hear the cork sniffers sharpening their pitchforks.

I'm convinced. I'll never soak my guitar in glue again. Kudos to Jim Lill and his "Tested" video series for creating the most interesting guitar content on RU-vid.

The combination of these 2 videos really makes me think that practically the only things that truly matter to a great sounding guitar are a good pickup and a good setup. And a great player of course!

This series could be used in schools as an applied science class. So freakin’ clear and thorough. And zero time wasted.

As a builder and repair person, i rate this guy as a national hero.

I’m fatter after covid and my general sustain in each of my guitars is by far better… When I was less soft, things had less resonance for sure. You and your studies are incredible! Stay Awesome

This is going to turn into a series called “everything you know about guitar is wrong” and we’ll all be playing the Jim Lill signature squier bullet telecaster with Seymour Duncan pickups that only costs 249.99…

Interesting. Makes me think that perhaps the higher perceived sustain on a Les Paul vs a Tele might be the fact that the Les Pauls will tend to have higher output pickups, causing the amp to break up more easily.

I love how he used his guitar as a cutting board for the wooden dowel

I appreciate all the effort you've put into testing long held, and inaccurate, beliefs in the electric guitar world. Strings, pickups, and signal processors are the most important parts of an electric guitar signal chain, period.

It's always struck me that keeping the energy of a vibrating string in the string is the best way to sustain the vibration. Taking a significant part of that energy and using it to make other things vibrate means the string doesn't have that energy any more. But then I'm just another person with a half-baked understanding of physics having an opinion. What we need is tests. Thanks Jim Lill for providing them.

Jim, IMHO you are emerging as RU-vid’s premiere guitar assumptions tester, using an empirical approach. In a college philosophy Epistemology class decades ago (how do we ‘know’ things?) I learned there 4 main ways: 1) Authority (I can’t see atoms but I accept physicists work, etc.) 2) Belief. (flimsy, or no repeatable evidence but I believe it to be true, anyway.) 3) Reason. (Logic proves how I know this (if A =B & B=C, then A=C, etc.) 4) Empirical. ( I know it because it has been tested reputably, and can be repeated by anyone who puts in the equal effort.) You are part of the great Empirical tradition of science, Jim! Keep it up!!

You are epic. What a service to the guitar community

The Edge used an Infinite Guitar, built by Michael Brook, on the album version of With or Without You, but used an EBow on tour to play the song. In case anyone was wondering.

One thing that always cracks me up about sustain is when guitarists say, “Listen to the sustain on this guitar!”, and then apply vibrato to the string the whole time. If you’re physically manipulating the string the whole time it’s going to keep producing sound. To me sustain is best tested the way you did it the first time in this video, by simply strumming the strings, and then letting them ring, and measuring the decay of the output level of the resulting sound.

Jim you've broken the mould. You are making the best guitar videos on YT i've seen in years, congratulations on a job well done.

The amount of effort you put into this video...man, you've got yourself another subscriber. Excellent work!

"So I did that." Holy cow dude! Respect.

I appreciate you asking down to earth questions and especially approaching it humbly rather than smugly, which videos like this too often do.

4:30 As shown here, overdrive (and distortion) are, inherently, compressors (with super-high compression ratio)

*Love* your methodical approach! Hope you keep doing tests like this. "I've never taken a statistics class..." I took _one_ in college, got a C. I'm no expert either. Later as a practicing engineer, when I wanted to understand the statistics to analyze experiments, specifically, I was recommended a textbook called "Statistics for Experimenters" (by Box, Hunter and Hunter) and I _highly_ recommend it. The fact that you made that spreadsheet makes it pretty clear to me that you'd appreciate the contents. The fundamental idea is to design the experiment around the data you're hoping to extract, and the book provides the (fairly minimal) math & statistics required to get the most data out of the smallest number of data points. So you either save yourself time doing the tests, or you get more data for the same effort (compared to doing an off-the-cuff experimental design). Now, the method does rely on quantifying results, which won't always be possible in an obvious way. (Exactly how similar or different, as a number, are any two tone samples, for example?) But when it is possible (e.g. how long is the sustain?), it's quite beautiful. If you're curious, but not quite curious enough to buy a textbook, you might look up "factorial design," which is one of the methods taught in the book. There's not a huge amount of RU-vid content on the subject, but this short video discusses the basic idea: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-GGvuacZb-AQ.html I would also be happy to help you design an experiment to get a feel for the method.

YOU ARE SOOOO CRAZY!!! And I am so glad you are and are running this tests. I've learn more about tone in the couple of hours I have watching your videos, than in my 30 years as a guitar player and musician. Thanx, man!

Jim Lill - The Electric Guitar Scientist - love it. Keep em coming. Intelligent debate supported by test data is always welcomed. Just downloaded the spreadsheet and will be looking at it. Thanks for taking the time to do this.

I still remember my first electric guitar, and I was a beginner player. It was a red Lotus strat copy, with a beginner Crate amp. I never thought it sounded very good. I could play chords and stuff, but not much else at that time. Then my friend's older brother's bands lead guitar player picked it up once. It was amazing how good the guitar sounded. How the notes rang out. That changed my perspective on instruments that day. A great player can make most anything sound good. Don't buy in to the mystery bull. Buy and use guitars that you like, and that sound good to you. Simple as that. Jim proves this whole story IMO at the end of the video, taking that glued up drilled strat copy, and making it sound good. Great work on this video, and the last.

These videos are a lot of fun, and also informative. But the subtle wit and humor is the icing on the cake. Well done.

Your findings (and methodology) create a whole new foundation for guitarists. These pieces of information should be taught in guitar classes. Huge respect

Always love hearing the old sustain comments! I’ve got 12 guitars from different brands ranging from $50 to $1700. Never once have I said I love this guitar it just doesn’t have sustain! Great video look forward to more!

This is awesome. Thanks for showing these myths to be what they are… marketing nonsense. I have Danelectro guitars made of Masonite with pickups made by wrapping wire around a tape covered bar magnet and shoved into two halve of a lipstick case and a bridge made out of a hunk of wood…. guess what? They sound great. What an electric guitar is made of matters far less than how it’s made, and more importantly how it’s set up and ultimately played.

I have a guitar build video coming out this spring and will be linking back to these test videos. So good!!

I love how the results are basically "play what you like, get it set up correctly, and little things makes little differences (and it's fine if you get nerdy)" That being said, I think you'd do a great job experimenting with caps, pots, pickups, and amps. Things that are less superstitious but still a bit overblown

I love how you take us through your entire thought process when conducting your tests. These are amazing videos and I hope you keep making them!

Between the lines here: String gages. Low E dramatically out sustains High E across the board, and it makes sense. More mass = More momentum, and the surface area increases at the square of radius while volume & mass increase at the cube - so increasing momentum overtakes increasing air resistance. Open question then around smaller differences. How big a difference in sustain is there between a .09 and a .11 E string? I'd also love to see a test like this comparing different string types. Bare vs wound, flat wounds, coated, etc.

Thanks for all of your effort. This is how a real test has to be done

These videos are amazing Jim. Through pure experimentation alone (not withstanding your own insane knowledge of craftsmanship and musical ability) you're discounting all this marketing we're fed as to what makes a great player. The attention to detail in your videos is insane and will save a lot of people like myself a lot of money when they realise tone is (mostly) in the fingers. You're a world class player but it's also really cool that you don't use these videos to showcase that, just to demo the gear. The air gtr vid blew my mind.

Outstanding work Jim! You can call these segments “Guitar Science”

He put his own guitars through so much for science. The real research nobody was ready to do. Thank you. Now I'm sure I don't need a heavy guitar for it to sustain good

Dude. I genuinely love it.

This is amazing!! keep it up, loving these videos breaking down different aspects of guitar sound!!

The amount of work gone into this video is admirable man. Very impressive. You are a disciplined and brilliant guy.

I was so surprised at 3:40 that he actually did all the combinations. Respect!!!

Your channel is a gem! :) Thanks for putting all this together!

That IS awesome as you said Jim !!

Guitar players have a hard-on for words like "sustain" and "tonewood". Like you showed, the fact of the matter is, when it comes to electric guitars, the type of wood, its thickness, body size and shape, etc., etc., etc., have little to nothing to do with these mythical words. Electric guitars and the sounds they make are determined by the player and their amp. Thats it.

I build and do little experiments to answer my own questions sometimes. These videos have been super interesting to me.

Excellent work Jim! Thank you. I'll be studying that spreadsheet for a while yet.

That was impressive. I love your thought process.

Love this so much! I've never understood the obsession with sustain for guitar players. Certainly some guitars have differing levels of sustain, but I've always felt like the differences in acoustic sustain caused by different bridge materials, break angles, etc were negligible compared to the effects of compression, overdrive, and volume created by pedals and the amp, and the resulting feedback of the setup as a whole. When I think of sustain, most of the tones that come to mind eventually blossom into feedback and they all had insanely loud amps, fuzz pedals, etc added into the mix to get there.

I like how he entertains each idea without implying that the idea is stupid and then proceeds to give it a try. There doesn’t seem to be a hint of prejudice against the idea or even stupider ideas.

Very good questions and checks. Thanks ✌🏼

Another great video, and research. Well done putting this all together.

The most important factors for sustain are, good fret work, well cut nut, good functioning bridge, high enough action, new strings

As a physicist, i would say that two major things that can affect the sound of an ELECTRIC guitar in general, including the sustain as well, have to do with how the sound is produced and captured in the first place. And these two things are the strings and the pickups. Its all about electromagnetism. All the things involved in this factors, like the string material, tension etc, and the pickup resistance, magnet type, etc, and how this signal is produced and recorded. And i agree when you said about the amp relevance. Even if you flip the tone knob in half, it can affect the sustain

You tests and results are amazing.

You're my man. You clearly point out the evidences for all of my suppositions. I like Your approach very much and hope to see more💪

Your videos are really great and have inspired me with my own guitar choices. Forget buying highly expensive guitars I have bought a budget one, got it set up well, changed the pick-up and had them set to a hight of my preference. Personally think I now have a guitar that sounds like one double the cost and with the tone and playability I really like. Thanks so much

Next video should be about how a hollow body sounds different than a solid body. If the wood and finish has nothing to do with the tone / sustain, why do hollow-bodies have those hollow sounding overtones?

I love these tests, this video series is awesome!

Thank you so much for doing these! As a tone chaser these studies are invaluable!

10:45 giving his guitar speed holes. Smart thinking.

Decibels are already in a logarithmic scale, so 3db difference at 25db, at 10db or at 0db, is still the same 3db! Which is already quite a lot - it's about 50% change in the signal amplitude. Even 1db change (~20%) can be perceived by many people (I'm sure - every guitarist will be able at least to feel that change when playing). As one of the possible ways to have a better picture, I'd suggest, to consider another metric: the time of decay. I.e., compare the time it takes for the level to drop by some fixed ratio, like 10db.

So thorough, this was very interesting!

another awesome video, thank you!

Love it! Disproves every one of those "golden ear" guys that claim this or that feature of their favorite boutique guitar has the magic sustain. Keep up the good work!

Great video man. I'd love to see a test on why semi hollow guitars sound different in comparison to a solid body.

quality content man, love it

excellent videos these 2, very clarifying to many questions

You also have to keep in mind that a few decibels of difference is a massive difference in loudness, since decibels are a logarithmic scale, not a linear one like meters.

These vids are amazing. And the best takeaway lesson I'm getting, is quit cork sniffing and just pick up your guitar and practice/play/make music. And yes, pickups, setup, and strings probably matter the most. Love it, thanks for all your hard work putting these together!

These tests are amazing!

I love video and the series - it's a genuine pursuit with an earnest curiosity. Additionally, he comports a level of humility that I believe most egos and experts should appreciate.

I’ve always wondered if how I hold and move the guitar affects the sustain. It would make sense that how you move the guitar after picking a note could effect how the string vibrates, and how long it vibrates. And also any airflow/wind could also make a difference in certain settings.

As a kid when I wanted more sustain with an electric guitar, I upgraded to a better pickup and amp. I’d love to see these tone and sustain videos with acoustic guitars.

So now there is nothing to talk about at the guitar store! I love this. Thanx

thanks for the journey !

From what I’ve gathered (and assumed) the most significant factors that effect the overall sound of a guitar are pickup type, pickup position, and player.

For your next test video, it would be cool if you did necks. Set versus bolted versus through.

Another excellent video, Jim. Cheers, Max Power 😁👍

Jim, you're amazing!

Jim, Love the way you think man! Did you study engineering, or work in a technical field? Very methodical. Props on your channel.

Hey Jim! Thank you so much for doing those videos! When you calculated the loss of volume (for example between brass saddles and wood saddle) did you strum and play the low and high e string several times and calculated the average, or are the numbers you give us the drop of volume for that exact tone?

your videos are an absolute godsend

Very informative. Dude you really put some work in.

Well done, Jim! I really enjoyed this ride. I almost did a spit take when you took the saw to that strat copy and started drilling holes in it (great editing!). Cool playing it at the end too :D I'm looking forward to the next adventure!

Les Paul's experiments in the 1920s showed him that he got the longest sustain when he mounted a pickup, bridge and nut on a two foot section of railroad track. He noted that the track is so dense and massive that the string can not make it vibrate, so all the vibration energy remains in the string for a very long sustain. He was quoted as saying "That thing seemed to sustain forever". So we can draw from that experiment and observation, the converse, that if the string is mounted to a material that vibrates easily, it will rob the string of it's vibrating energy quickly and the sustain will be much shorter. To translate those physics to real guitars, a guitar made with wood of a greater density and mass will sustain longer than a guitar made from lightweight, low density wood. I contend that you probably already knew that. If someone asked you what you would expect the sustain to be like in a guitar made from balsa wood, you knew already that it would be short, without the need to conduct the experiment. To answer your initial question, " What part of a guitar does the sustain come from?" The answer is; all of it. Maybe you should make a video replicating Les Paul's railroad track experiment and then make a guitar out of balsa wood to illustrate and drive the physics involved home to your fans.

This video alone got me to subscribe! Awesome job man!

Well done!! Been showing your videos to my guitar lesson students. Thanks from Eau Claire, WI!

I find your test videos very interesting. One thing comes to my mind regarding the sustain: new strings vs aged strings. aged strings loose their sustain over time I would assume. (Your strings look new)

You're telling me you've never hit a note at the end of the song just to let it ring out for a little bit? That has to be longer than 4 seconds sometimes lol. I love your process man. Thank you for what you do. You put a lot of work and time into your videos. It's nice to see someone who cares about the quality of their content. Truly, thank you.

This is my first time here and as a non-guitar player, this was really impressive to have this explained.

Really Great Video Man ❤