How do I know if I have good sustain?

[BlueFender]

Is there like a measurement/time amount to count?

[Marcondo]

The amp and effects has more to do with sustain than your guitar does.

[stevearino]

Yeah, sustain pretty much comes through the amp. Maybe you're thinking of resonance? How well a guitar resonates when played unplugged? If the notes seem to ring for a short while after picking or strumming, the guitar has a nice resonance and won't sound so dead through an amp. IMO, if you use heavy heavy distortion, resonance doesn't really matter much. If you like playing clean, chimey stuff, having a guitar with good resonance can really enhance this style. Also, if you play with a little dirt, like with a Plexi, having a good resonating guitar improves the sound, again IMO. Resonance will sort of intensify the sound.
And to answer your question about measurement of time, I'm not aware of any. Just whatever sounds resonant and full to your ears.

[tdurik]

Only a nitro finish will give you good sustain.

[photoweborama]

You have good sustain when your playing through Humbuckers..

[stevearino]

Only a nitro finish will give you good sustain.

Horsehockey! I heard it was the poly coats from the late 60's that really increased sustain. Nitro was actually scientifically proven to be a sustain deadener. I believe is was Doc Emmett Brown that discovered this. Per his recommendation, I have since added a flux capacitor to my amp. You wouldn't believe the sounds I can now get from it. Vintage bassman sounds all the way to sounds that haven't even been invented yet all from a Gorilla 10 watter!

[tdurik]

I'm sorry, I forgot to say that is MUST be a thin skin nitro finish

[curtisstetka]

trapezoid inlays are good for sustain. But really, having black hardware is the only way to get the best sustain.

[Plugger]

Viagra, or Cialis. Whatever gets you through the night, it'snallright, it'snallright...

-Mark

[sneaky]

I use the Spinal Tap test... hit a note and go for a bite, if the guitar is still sustaining when I get back...it`s good.

[YaReMi]

If you can play Peter Green's The Supernatural the way he does, then you have good sustain

[NeoFauve]

If you're playing and don't get the feeling that notes decay sooner that they should, I'd say you have enough sustain.

If you want to really stretch notes, like a sax player or, say, Carlos Santana, you need to manufacture some sustain by aiming your self toward the speaker. You need sufficient volume, and you'll need to be the right distance from the speaker. You experiment to find what works.
The pickups will hear what's coming out of the speaker and, voila, feedback!
But if you manipulate the feedback to get the tastey overtones you like, you've earned the right to call it sustain.
There's alomost no time limit on this kind of "sustain."

Any guitar will provide some sustain even without an amp. Some more than others. How much is good is your call.
Pick a note, or strum a chord and listen.

[photoweborama]

Here is my second take from the "mouse" thread in the Jam Zone.

So much sustain, that it was irritating.... and when I muted it, it sounded like I was chopping the notes off...

http://photoweborama.com/jams/mouse2.mp3

[Gtrplyr]

My Casino's both have a short note decay which I find works great for rhythm work and contributes to the guitars unique sound. Every guitars mileage may vary and at the end of the day it comes down to what makes you happy. As the others have mentioned here effects will sure extend even a weak sustain.

[Freddy Fender]

I'm sorry, I forgot to say that is MUST be a thin skin nitro finish

No offence but that is still not true. When it comes to guitars, you just can't make blanket statements like that.

IMO sustain is overrated; a good sustaining guitar is not necessarily better than a guitar that sustains less; it depends on what you like or the application ... somebody mentioned a Casino; that is a classic example; they have a quick decay... unless the guitar starts to vibrate from what the amp is putting out .. then it can sustain a lot ... usually at certain frequencies only (or notes).

Resonance is the opposite of sustain. When you have resonance in a guitar, it means the wood is vibrating .... vibrating wood uses up the energy of the note that is played resulting in *less* sustain.

There are some guitars that resonate in such a way that they cancel certain frequencies but leave others that are pleasing to the ear, or are inspiring to the player ... those are the special ones!

How do you know if you have good sustain? Play it acoustically without an amp ... if it rings for a good bit then it has good sustain; if it dies out fast then you have poor sustain.

[Offshore Angler]

How do you know if you have good sustain? Play it acoustically without an amp ... if it rings for a good bit then it has good sustain; if it dies out fast then you have poor sustain.

I'd tend to wholeheartedly dissagree with that. Sustain is the effects chain and the amp. The guitar has very little to do with it. It has more to do with compression and gain. Resonanace in a guitar will manifest itself as (usually unwanted) harmonics.

Also, resonanace is when the forcing fuction is a multiple of the natural frequency. It has absolutely nothing to do with sustain or how long a guitar will ring out. That would be damping. Resonance will show as a volume or harmonic effect. Resonance is a second order effect, sustain is first order.

When the roots of the discriminate of the second-order quadratic are imaginary numbers you can have resonance. Damping, which will effect the sustain, is a constant, real number function.

But you already knew that.

[Plugger]

When the roots of the discriminate of the second-order quadratic are imaginary numbers you can have resonance. Damping, which will effect the sustain, is a constant, real number function.

[...] _affect_ the sustain.

OSA, if you're going to play the smarty-pants card, you've really got to improve your spelling. It just doesn't work otherwise.

-Mark

[JAM]

Damn engineers....

[Offshore Angler]

Hey Mark, I was a science major not english! Give me a break! I'll glady correct your solutions to a matrix of non-coupled, non-linear differential equations if you'll check my spelling and grammar!

:)

[curtisstetka]

Also, resonanace is when the forcing fuction is a multiple of the natural frequency.

I frequently have to force my fuction. I guess I'm getting old.

[Offshore Angler]

So, to answer the original question: You record something for the Jam Zome and let our panel of experts evaluate it.

[Freddy Fender]

I Sustain is the effects chain and the amp.

You better get some new batteries for your calculator. You are talking about external influences ... different guitars have different degrees of sustain. If you want to argue that point then you need to put your guitar down ..... and step away from it ..... slowly ....

[Offshore Angler]

Yeah, I suck.

[tdurik]

No offence but that is still not true. When it comes to guitars, you just can't make blanket statements like that.

IMO sustain is overrated; a good sustaining guitar is not necessarily better than a guitar that sustains less; it depends on what you like or the application ... somebody mentioned a Casino; that is a classic example; they have a quick decay... unless the guitar starts to vibrate from what the amp is putting out .. then it can sustain a lot ... usually at certain frequencies only (or notes).

Resonance is the opposite of sustain. When you have resonance in a guitar, it means the wood is vibrating .... vibrating wood uses up the energy of the note that is played resulting in *less* sustain.

There are some guitars that resonate in such a way that they cancel certain frequencies but leave others that are pleasing to the ear, or are inspiring to the player ... those are the special ones!

How do you know if you have good sustain? Play it acoustically without an amp ... if it rings for a good bit then it has good sustain; if it dies out fast then you have poor sustain.

Hey Freddy,

Evidently you haven't read some of the previous threads regarding the finish of the guitar, and it's effect on the tone.

I was kidding...

[JAM]

Remember back when sustain was a big deal and manufacturers made guitars with brass blocks under the bridge etc.? Some of these guitars would 'sustain' but sounded awful.

[Plugger]

I've got a '76 Yamaha SG2000 with the brass block under the bridge, high output ceramic pups... the real '70s deal.

Actually, in it's own way it's an amazing guitar. Easily superior in build quality to my CS Lester... or any Gibson I have played, for that matter. No kidding.

Sounds incredible through the Dumble Oversdrive Special model on the Vox. Now _that's_ sustain.

It's great downfall (or mine) is it's weight... it weighs over 9lb (the 70's "weight = sustain" theory, I guess...). A genuine mahogany monster. It's a nice "sit-down" guitar.

-Mark

[Wilko]

Man there's a lot of bullshit in the thread.

Sustain a physical property of a guitar. Amps have nothing to do with it at all.

Once the amp is in the equation, you are dealing with feedback.

[sabby]

True enough, Wilco. But Neo's comment was nearly the only useful one in the whole thread.

The short of it is, if you have to ask the question you're cool. Don't go looking for new problems.

[Wilko]

Right.
Neo's post was a good helpful post.

Apparently, I'm often taken as combative, or what ever.

I just prefer to see an educated discussion of facts instead of suposition and hearsay. In this thread too many posts are not helpful, just humorous, or just plain wrong.

How long should a guitar sustain? well depends on what you want to do, and which guitar you have. If you have a guitar known for long sustain and it doesn't sustain as long the average for that model, you may not have what you need.

[Wilko]

gremlin

[curtisstetka]

I just prefer to see an educated discussion of facts instead of suposition and hearsay.

You're kidding, right? This is an INTERNET GUITAR FORUM. Supposition and hearsay is what we do here!

[curtisstetka]

By the way, I've heard that gravity affects your sustain quite a bit. It's especially bad at high tide when the moon is closest to the earth! Then you have two gravitational fields working on your strings!

Carlos Santana was aware of this and used to record in free fall.

[Wilko]

Did you know that if you play on the equinox you can sustain long than than any other day of the year. well, then there's the other equinox...


...there goes that theory.

[Kap'n]

I've heard that gravity affects your sustain quite a bit.

Kurt Vonnegut had something to say about that. Hi-Ho! He rather liked light gravity days.

[sabby]

Apparently, I'm often taken as combative, or what ever.

... uh ... me too.

[Offshore Angler]

Wilco. I understand what you're saying. But take the following two tracks. They were recorded with the same guitar. (A Strat.) There is no feedback involved since both were modeled through a PODxt directly into the computer. I maintain there is a huge difference in sustain. Maybe my ears are shot but I hear a huge difference in sustain.

High Gain nad compression, lot's of sustain:
http://www.soundclick.com/bands/song...songID=3675180

Clucky and very little sustain, but lots of drippy 'verb and delay:
http://www.soundclick.com/bands/song...songID=3744521


So, the amp has nothing to do with it? I can't buy that.

[pc]

You're just not understanding the concept. You're mistaking the concept of natural sustain as a function of the guitar's components with artificial sustain added from effects, compression (especially in a PODxt) and additional external components.

Your point is an exceptionally good one and extremely important to take into account in the total picture of playing electric guitar, but it is NOT the concept being (almost) discussed here.

This is about certain guitars "resonating" in such a way (as a combination of the woods, metals and the way it's all connected together) that they allow a fretted note's natural decay to become prolonged.

The original question was nearly impossible to answer, because you can't compare a guitar to itself, but in comparison to one another, the differences are noticeable from guitar to guitar.

How important it is in the total picture (which is what your point gets us to) is another matter.

[Wilko]

there methods of increasing the sustain of a note.

A guitar has a physical sustain amount that is not related to electricity. It's a very simple concept.

Yes there ways to make a note longer, but the physical amount of time it takes for a plucked string to stop moving is the "suitar's sustain". Some guitars do it longer than others.

That's a fact. Not an opinion.

[Offshore Angler]

pc, I understand exaclty what your point is, but as you know, I've always maintained there is a huge difference in the way you approach the electric guitar vs. the acoustic. I'll give you all the things you say when talking about an acoustic, but when I play elelctric I use a fundamentally different approach to sound shaping. I look at my guitar as an input device. With an acoustic I can play with miking, processing like compression and reverb, but the actual sound of the instrument is baked in to it's construction. When I go electric, I may feel I need a P90, single coil, or humbucker sound, but that's about it. After that, I just start tweaking the knobs until I get what I was thinking. Yeah, I may even choose between a Tele sound or a Strat sound with singles, but that's about the size of it. I know I can go from a purring cluck to a Santanesque sustain by choosing the correct amp and signal chain. I'm old school. Dail in what you need. Whether the guitar rings unplugged is absolutely meaningless to me, because I'll never use it that way. This whole deal about "changing a bridge block changed my life" is absurd to me. And the whole resonant wood deal on a Strat, is to me, utterly rediculous. Most of the stuff people are really hearing is the strings and the bridge springs. Those springs do orders of magnitude more for the ringout than the wood. There are so many different variables in a Strat. Any floating bridge Strat that isn't choking on the neck will ring for days. We all know that. That's the nature of the beast. When people start bringing in all the acoustic arguments I tune out. The Strat style guitar, by it's very nature, is the most mechanical guitar. Put in a heavier bridge block and Viola!, physics dictates the it will have more low frequency. You kept the spring constant the same but increased the mass and lowered the natural frequency. It's not rocket science. But yet, I read guys saying how it was the difference in steel and whatnot. But the wood? I hear guys who can swear they can tell different routing schemes and diffences between brand of 9V batteries.

You've heard me say this before, but I'll repeat it. I beleive 90% of this new obsession with tone is based in the fact that it takes years to become an accomplished player, and not everone is born with the tools to succeed. But any hack can go buy gear and brag about his tone.

Cynical? Perhaps, but I guarantee you there is a grain of truth in it.


Now, let's talk about "resonance". There is a resonant frequency for every guitar built, and it will vary from instrument to instrument. But - it is a single frequency. Think of a tuning fork. Or a kick drum for that matter. Each has a single resonant frrequency BECAUSE OF ITS MASS AND THE DISTRIUTION OF THE MASS. Same with a guitar. Each string will have a resonant frequency depending on where it's fretted too. Yes, I'll give you that on the attack of a note there there are transient harmonics. But, when the note rings out, you are hearing it's one resonant frequency.

For all the emotion, mystical qualities, and anthropomorphics we read guitar players assigning to their instuments, the fact remains that they are very simple machines. And with an electric, in the long run, all that matters is how the magnetic feild around the pickup gets manipulated by the vibrating string, and the EMF it generates, and how that is processed.

[clayville]

Man... and I thought it was the rosewood all this time.