The Lie We All Believe About Sustain 

😁 I see what you did there.

Hahah your username rings true, and it sustains for days.

heckin hypnocrite

Some sort of philosophical mathematics you just did there

Somewhere out there, Davie504 just uttered, "CHECKMATE!"

I like it when it resonates not just the guitar body but MY whole body as well, but... now I'm older and the tinnitus is there in the background, plus stages are getting super quiet these days (except for drummers who are never quiet) I can't enjoy stupidly wonderful loud amps the way I could way back in my youth. Kinda miss that but also need my ears to keep working - sucks.

@@martin-1965 Thankfully many clubs that have metal bands play still let you get away with a full stack. I’m 48 and thankfully I learned early on to get the largest practice space possible and never set up near the drummer those cymbals are what kill your hearing and my ears are pretty decent still.

@@louderthangod Yeah it was the hihats and cymbals that took out the frequencies in the right ear in my case, which was the side facing the drummer. But back in the 80s and 90s we didn't know or more to the point, didn't care. Sadly my singer from back then was a maniac and he's ended up almost completely deaf so I'll consider a light whistling noise in my ears as a warning shot in comparison. Still miss playing that loud though :)

that is feedback, not sustain

Feedback is when a systems input picks up it's own out output. Ie the guitars pickup picks up the speaker. He is talking about the strings, wood, etc actually vibrating in response to the volume. That is a separate thing and a definite contributing factor to actual sustain.

Want to see this!

That's awesome. I love what compression and EQ alone (and reverb of course) do to a clean guitar sound, it's like it makes the guitar sound "more natural" than natural, if that's possible.

watch mojo shop guitar ,and learn how to fix that bass

Squeezing it from an original 59 LP standard through cranked tube amp makes it even better. Gary was one of the best ever though

@Burnt Gerbil: Have you seen the Guitarist magazine interview with GM in which he talks about how to go about choosing a good guitar? He mentions that unplugged, a guitar should be loud and have sustain (i.e. when you hold a note and add vibrato it doesn’t die on you or wilt away too quickly). Yes, the volume that a player like him used live will certainly help with feedback, etc. but I think there is something to be said for a guitar sounding good acoustically. Having to hammer away at it with the picking hand in an attempt to get it to sing isn’t really the way to go.

🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣 No. It's the result of utilising an effect pedal

I know but you can make that with the feed back of the speaker, I’ve done it before with loud volume with minimal gain

If you are not using it for leads that call for sustain it don't matter. I have the analogman rangemaster clone, beano boost, it will make any guitar sustain forever and it's a lot cheaper than a novo but a novo is very nice

100%, I feel like pleasing feedback is actually what most guitarists think of when they think of great examples of 'sustain' in music

@@jakestewartmusic yea it’s a more “harmonious” feedback since it’s actually feedbacking a higher interval than the “open” strings if you just leave it feedback, they harmonize i think that’s what makes it different

Sounds like it had a fret sticking up slightly that was deadening the sound.

Take your amp to play through and make a lot of noise

@@cnking27 Agreed, totally. When buying an electric guitar, hopefully your amp is small enough to go with you unless they have an exact Marshall stack there (lol)...If your hunting for an amp, ALWAYS use your guitar, not one from the store.

Don't buy a guitar. Buy your guitar.

@@mojacarflamenco6314 Dat's rite!

​@@john564holloway I'm kind of going backwards with it, I've been playing through a crappy practice amp with a crappy Squier from 1998 for almost a year. I live in a super rural area so I'm planning to get a Katana delivered, without playing through it first, because I figure I can't go wrong with that and I get to mess around with a ton of tones that way...and then I'll drag it with me to find the right guitar. I can't imagine getting a guitar without playing it first.

Larivee are some of the most vocal acoustics I have ever played. Made the mistake of not getting one in the 1990s but the impression it left on me is obliviously unforgettable.

Rhett has tremendous on-camera presence and a radio DJ voice.

and this is why the anology in video is pure stupidity..

The feedback that the instrument gives the performer definitely affects the performance. Also, if you have the choice between instrument derived sustain and electronic sustain, I prefer to start at the beginning. Of course, it depends what you're going for. But it's the same in recording. Move the mic or change the mic before you equalize.

I think Rhett should do a whole video on feedback through speakers. That Hendrix-style feedback is kind of its own instrument.

It's a myth. Of course a very badly adjusted guitar will not produce any good sound but sustain and tone don't come from the guitar material, nor paint or frets.

@@RenoLaringo Are you saying that Steel, brass and pot metal saddles all sound the same and have no effect on sustain or the bloom of the note? and that tiny super soft nickel frets sound exactly the same as big giant stainless steel frets? Contact points matter. What about a steel tele bridge plate? I've measured the change in inductance as I screw a pickup into the bridge plate and inductances changes tone and output

@@justinpaquette224 Yes, that is basically what I'm saying.... The timbre might slightly change regarding nut materials but that's about it. No human beeing could hear the difference anyway. Big frets or smaller ones don't make any difference whatsoever either. They make just contact on a point (frets are round so are the strings, there is no bigger contact surface depending on the fret sizes, just more surface for your fingers to pinch the string onto which can make you play out of tune more easily and more inertia on the bigger frets which in fact is actually detrimental to sustain). Also bigger frets make your guitar play out of tune the more they wear. The smaller the frets, the most accurate note pitch and sustain you get in the long run, given the frets are correctly settled, ask any serious luthier). That's the reason why you won't never find jumbo frets on classical instruments. Fret buzz is another story and can indeed kill sustain (as the neck-to-body type of fixings do) but that's part of normal guitar adjustments. So yes, I completely disagree on that. A simple experiment with any computer can confirm. I agree a good setup can make a huge difference vs a bad one, but it has little to nothing to do with fret sizes or saddle materials (or paint, varnish and guitar wood while we're at it). All the above don't change anything to the sound of an electric guitar. You could stretch your strings between two bricks and it would still sound exactly the same with the same pu's. If a spectrum analyzer and digital recorder cannot tell the difference, I highly doubt any (non-biased) human ears could. Been there, done that. Don't fall in that commercial trap anymore. We all did and it can be a costly bias. Regarding the change in inductance you measured, if it was significant, I would check the grounds wiring and contact points. You might have an issue there. In a normal situation, when your pu's are grounded correctly, there is no reason the inductance would drastically change (to the point of affecting tone and output) by only screwing them to a grounded metal part of your guitar, unless there would be some ground leak, a ground loop somewhere or if you happen to touch your strings or any metal part on your guitar while measuring. To get the most sustain, prefer a guitar with bolt-on neck (yes, Strats do have more sustain than LP's 😉 I'm not going to make me friends here lol), make sure everything is super tight at the bridge and the tuners and finally have your frets settled with the tightest fit possible which can only be achieved by a complete fret job at a good guitar shop. Hope this helps 🤘👍

How strong and healthy the note jumps off the guitar. Perfect way to put that. 👍🏻

Radius the pickups, puts the strings in the same part of the magnetic field, for even magnetic pull. Also all notes must play perfectly in tune, for this to happen. learn more at mojo shop guitar on youtube.

You're close. Tone comes from inspiration, which comes from perspiration which comes from precipitation that derives from evaporation which comes from radiation which comes from the sun which comes from helium which comes from hydrogen which comes from the big bang. So all you need to get good tone is a big bang and that's why I use diamond picks.

YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES!

Excellent points. I don't use pedals at all but letting the amp do they work and break up naturally while varying pick dynamics is satisfying and inspiring. You're bang on about picking too hard and killing a note. That frustrated me for years. Switched from .12s with an extra heavy pick in my teen years to .10s with a thin pick in my 40s. If only I had known back then...

We all develop differently. I use to play exclusively light picks for about 40 years but now play a V-pick big Fattie 5mm with a lighter attack strumming and soloing with better control of expression, and yes sustain. I use more compression now because of quieter stage volume requirements, direct to PA modeler use, and because my dynamics grew immensely with the use of thick pick.

I see it as: wood does change tone. You can watch an A/B comparison with people swapping out the neck or body but all the same everything else, there is a difference. But it's not a big difference. If you don't have the direct comparison you'd hardly notice. But a bunch of other factors work the same way, this or that part also makes a little bit of a difference, and if you design the whole instrument so all those little differences are all pulling the tone the same way, it'll add up to a difference that matters.

Actually there's many types of basswood and some are expensive, not all basswoods are cheap

People who think basswood is crap simply don't know enough about why basswood is actually a good tonewood-because it is stiff and light, so it is resonant. It's also a nice wood for making objects, because it has very consistent, tight grain and machines smoothly. However, bassword is also relatively soft, so it is easy to damage.

Ibanez? Try John Suhr. Try EVH. Music Man. All use Basswood on expensive instruments, and have for a long time.

Oh, yeah, acoustic and electric guitars are entirely different things. An acoustic guitar *must* resonate according to its principle of operation.

My acoustic guitar is so resonant that when I cough I can hear it vibrate! First time that happened in the middle of the night I thought we had a ghost

@@BanBanChi That's the sign of a good acoustic. It wants to couple with the air around it.

@@Lantertronics good to know. It's a 30 year old Takamine student model that I got at a second hand shop in Japan for less than $50!

@Lantertronics - Aaron Lanterman I never tried saying electric or acoustic are the same. That still doesn't change the fact some acoustics are more resonant than others but thanks for the information I suppose.

I like the term "feel-wood" -- and love the phrase "the wood is simply the connective tissue between the player and the guitar"

I recall a well-known producer saying something like "the best microphone is the one that's closest/already hooked up when you're feeling inspired."