the virtue's of sustainless guitar

[comacoda]

I have been wondering about whether you really can have too much of a good thing. Everybody will tell you that any feature that improves sustain is worthwhile. Lately I've been playing an electric with a wooden bridge. Not only does this guitar have a wooden bridge, it is a resonator. The strings energy and sound is transmitted into a wooden bridge astride an alluminum resonator cone that distributes this energy and each note sounds out and bleeds it's sustain as though it has a slit throat. It echoes it's ring as a very linear decay in the resonator chamber until it becomes inaudible and the ringing note is dead. Let me tell you, this is fabulous. When you bend a string and return it to position and add vibrato to milk it for sustain the character of the note is completely changed, much more drastically than on a typical guitar. The sustain of this guitar is pretty different from most but not so drastic as to completely alter how it's played, just enough to give it personality. What if you played exclusively on a guitar with alomost zero sustain? Something like Pat Metheny's guitars with the sitar-like contact fret. It could be an interesting way to force yourself to play differently....

[Bluesape]

Interesting idea - kinda like a Gretsch with the mute in use.

[J. Robert Rennix]

Playing with zero sustain implies playing with 100% attack. Most players can achieve this effect with string muting, and that's why no one says they're looking for a guitar with "less sustain" or "no sustain". However, we often describe an instrument with too much resonance or too much sustain as sounding "muddy", so increasing sustain isn't always a good thing.

[Caevan O’Shite]

Classic examples of Pete Townsend's sound depended in part on guitars with punchy, brash attack, almost an overdiven version of a flat-top acoustic guitar, where sustain was not paramount. That's why he favored those Les Paul Deluxe models at one point, with the mini humbuckers; the custom-added middle pickups in his LPD's was a full-sized humbucker, chosen for instant feedback at the flick of a switch, leaving the bridge and middle mini-humbuckers for his main guitar tone.

[Dr. Ellwood]

I do not see any advantages to not having sustain. Its like having a piano with no sustain peddle, very limited and would serve no purpose. Like Caevan said sustain is just another tool in the tool box as I see it.

[Caevan O’Shite]

I think he's just talking about guitars that inherantly have less sustain/more attack, more bark 'n' bite and less singing sustain, like some resophonics, purely acoustic archtop jazz-boxes, etc.

[Kramer Ferrington III.]

Originally posted by comacoda:

It could be an interesting way to force yourself to play differently....

Just wedge an old jumper or a t-shirt under the strings. You'll have a sustainless guitar in no time at all.

[Chad Thorne]

There already is a sustainless guitar. It's called an "acoustic".

 

When electric guitars were first in use they were praised for their ability to sound "horn-like", i.e., to play notes of longer duration. But listen to Django. A lot of the appeal of his style (to me) is that percussive attack with lots of notes, necessitated by the rapid decay of the acoustic guitar note.

 

I believe that rapid note decay is why the "lots of notes" element is valued in much acoustic guitar music (as well as other stringed instruments like mandolins), to "sustain" musical interest.

 

Plus it's just fun to shred...

[Caevan O’Shite]

Yeah, flat-tops, and old stylee Gretsches played at less than screaming volume...

 

Y'know, if I had the dough, I'd love to get a Deering twelve-string banjo; that'd be choice!

 

Or a twelve-string National steel.

[musicalhair]

Hey Comacoda, I can't actually picture the guitar. I mean you give a detailed description, so the "lack" is on me obviously.

 

When I think if a "sustainless" electric I think of my Jazzmaster. Very rarely do I feel I like I'm in a place musically where I want a note to ring out for a long time. I used to do that, worked it out of my way of thinking and if anything have to add it back in.

 

Outside of the thing you're describing, Comacoda, I think most electric guitars a built in such a way that if they fight your sustain then there is something wrong either in the design or the parts and materials or the way it was put together.

 

I used to practice way way slow with the metronome down near it's bottom tempos and play my scales so that there'd be four clicks to a note or longer and listen to the note decay. Even unplugged (as I play most of the time) you can see where you are the one killing the note and not just the note dying out. Letting notes ring out and wait for little while and you might find as i did that my fingers or hand would actually twitch or something where I killed the note for no good reason.

 

JRob, those are some great points btw. For me it seems that as I developed an interest in "attack" and punchy lines my interest in sustain and long notes milking them with bends and vibrato diminished. I guess I spent a lot of time working on one, then the other and not so much on both at the same time.

[comacoda]

The guitar is an Eastwood Delta 6, a 335 style resonator with a p90 in the neck and piezo in the bridge, passive electronics, two volumes and a blend knob. Nothing wrong with the guitar, it sustains less than most designs but not drastically. I think that the attack and resonator cone give it a fantastic character and it's a winner for sure. One of the biggest reasons that this guitar sounds unique and adds to what I'm playing on it is the fact that it doesn't sustain QUITE as long and it's tone changes a lot after bends and hammer ons. Just stretching the legs of imagination and thinking about the possible benefits of playing a guitar that sustains even less.

[caprae]

[Ricochet]

I've got a Johnson Style 1 Tricone, copy of an old National. It's got a somewhat different sonic character from the biscuit bridge single cone resos, and has a good bit more sustain. The spider bridge resos have still more. They all have their own sounds, but I think they just sound electric through electric pickups. Got to mic 'em to get that reso tone right, the various piezo pickups don't get the cone tone right, either.

[Guitarzan]

made out of sustainless steel?

sorry.

[comacoda]

Originally posted by Guitarzan:

made out of sustainless steel?

sorry.

I spent 10 minutes trying to come up with a witty reply to match...no dice.

[Ricochet]

How much sustain will sustainless steel steal, if sustainless steel will steal sustain?