Sustainiac Noodling

[DrewJD82]

I’ve wanted a Sustainer/Sustainiac ever since I saw Vai in ‘99 on the Ultra Zone tour. I never even tried one until I got this guitar, but it’s basically an Ebow mounted in the neck pickup position. I’m a huge fan of the Ebow as well, really anything that fucks with pitch/sustain on a guitar I’ve been drawn to; the Whammy pedal, the Freqout, Ebows and the Sustainer, this Sustainiac essentially eliminates the need for all of them.

Just improvising over a backing track-

 

[phillybhatesme]

As someone who's owned a FR Sustainiac guitar, I had no idea how to use it. Great example and playing.

 

[alund]

I need that

 

[psychic_driver]

Can you make power chords sustain forever with one of those ? High gain, ambient drone style ?

I've been thinking of experimenting with a sustainiac for downtuned meditative drones but I've never owned one and all tutorials are about playing shreddy leads. I am intrigued by their claims of additional harmonic push & infinite sustain ...

 

[phillybhatesme]

Can you make power chords sustain forever with one of those ? High gain, ambient drone style ?

I've been thinking of experimenting with a sustainiac for downtuned meditative drones but I've never owned one and all tutorials are about playing shreddy leads. I am intrigued by their claims of additional harmonic push & infinite sustain ...

I don’t have one anymore and I know you’re asking OP, but as I recall, yeah. There’s a switch to turn the Sustainiac on or off and it’ll sustain whatever you toss at it.

 

[DrewJD82]

Can you make power chords sustain forever with one of those ? High gain, ambient drone style ?

I've been thinking of experimenting with a sustainiac for downtuned meditative drones but I've never owned one and all tutorials are about playing shreddy leads. I am intrigued by their claims of additional harmonic push & infinite sustain ...

You can but it's tricky, you have to get each note making noise at equal volumes or the louder one will 'take over' and overpower the other one. Two-note are fairly manageable, but I was only landing 3-notes by happenstance when trying it the other day. You pretty much have to play ghost notes for everything, or tap the body once you fret the notes.

Since it works by magnetically vibrating the string, some strings and areas on the neck are easier to get vibrating than others, so when you're changing chord shapes/positions it can throw off the ability to get each note sounding out at the same time or at equal volume.

I was thinking the same thing in regard to using it for meditating; I think it'd be too distracting for me and I'd want to noodle too much. I'm better off turning on a fuckton of delay/reverb and letting that do most of the work rather than the guitar if I'm using it for a meditation tool.