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.

 

[psychic_driver]

You can but it's tricky

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.

Do you often use the guitar as a vehicle for meditation ?

I like making high volume, high gain drones inspired by Sunn ... The kind that you can feel behind your eyeballs ... But I do not personally find it to be useful as "true" mediation because my interaction with the guitar & amplifier takes up some attention & cognitive bandwidth. It is music making informed by meditation but the music itself is not meditation per se

If that makes sense

 

[DrewJD82]

Do you often use the guitar as a vehicle for meditation ?

I like making high volume, high gain drones inspired by Sunn ... The kind that you can feel behind your eyeballs ... But I do not personally find it to be useful as "true" mediation because my interaction with the guitar & amplifier takes up some attention & cognitive bandwidth. It is music making informed by meditation but the music itself is not meditation per se

If that makes sense

Makes total sense!

I was using it for a while but would get too distracted, basically just cranking delays and reverbs and doing a lot of droning stuff. Eventually I’d end up noodling and couldn’t focus on meditating.

There’s definitely a zone you can get into in that high volume area, some of my favorite music has been written in loud ass practice spaces with just a drummer who is in the same headspace I’m in, you hit autopilot and the volume/music does it’s own thing when you get out of the way……it’s just remembering it all that’s the hard part!

 

[VonBonfire]

Loved some of your reverse sweeps in there D!!!

That is a cool axe man.

 

[Devin]

I used to have a Fernandes with a Sustainer and man I loved that thing (the Sustainer I mean - the guitar itself had some issues)

One of my favorite pointless tricks was to plug a cable in to the guitar but leave the other end of the cable unplugged - now you got infinite acoustic sustain

 

[DrewJD82]

I used to have a Fernandes with a Sustainer and man I loved that thing (the Sustainer I mean - the guitar itself had some issues)

One of my favorite pointless tricks was to plug a cable in to the guitar but leave the other end of the cable unplugged - now you got infinite acoustic sustain

I had it sustaining with the volume down the other day and made the “Hear it?” joke to my dog but he didn’t get it.

 

[311boogieman]

Sounds killer
I didn't know Solar guitars had toggle switches. Are they more than just pup selection?