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Looper's Delight
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Per, Well, the electro-acoustic (or electro-mechanical) ones seem to work more like real guitar-amp feedback -- something a lot of us understand quite well -- only much more predictably. It's all a matter of what seems right (and useful) to the player though. After becoming long familiar with my Sustainiac Model B I would annually stop by Alan Hoover's booth at NAMM and say "thank you." He's a very personable and open sort of guy. Every time he'd let me try his new gadget (whatever it was, improved versions, etc.). More than once I spent some time with the "Stealth" type trying to figure it out too. He, got to where my being in the booth enabled him to go get a bite to eat (he was running it by himself). He'd leave me playing stuff for a half hour at a time. But I just never warmed to the "Stealth" models. The sound wasn't the same. My ability to control it wasn't the same. It was just different -- not better or worse -- just different. It may have had just as much to do with the fact that it was all unfamiliar (wrong guitar, wrong amp, wrong tuning, wrong FX, wrong environment). I am not a "Strat" guy -- prefering Gibsons generally -- and I tune all of my guitars in weird ways (leaning towards open Major Sus4 tonalities). So my rejection of stealthy pick up sustainers should be taken with a grain of salt. I also liked the idea that the headstock models could work with ANY steel-stringed guitar I owned. I never play a guitar without one of the doggone things now (unless I'm playing privately in my living room) it has so very much become part of how I think of my own guitar playing. Playing without that extra control over how the note lingers in the air seems flat and uninteresting to me. As you said once before, sustainers are like breath control on a wind instrument. Feedback sustain can give a guitar a certain vocal-like quality. I am used to working with that. As for balance, my Gibson is rather heavy anyway. A little transducer on the headstock hardly has much effect. I also play seated a lot -- not always but more than half the time. I am a ridiculously bad dancer too. If people want to see someone jump around and move a lot while playing they need to go see someone else -- not me, heheh. It's a bit more of a problem on my Danelectro Baritone guitar. It is both light and has a ridiculously long neck. The transducer DOES put that uncomfortably out of balance. Does this help? Best regards, Ted Killian On Mar 18, 2007, at 9:12 AM, Per Boysen wrote: > That's my finding to, with the DIY Poor Mans Sustaniac I mocked up. > Ted, do you think the electro-acoustic type that you have is in some > way better than the magnetic (the Stealth Plus)? I'm not sure I can > play a Telecaster with some extra weight added to the head stock. It's > already incorrectly balanced as the stock default version. One > thought, but you need to verify it by hands-on experience, is that the > electro-acoustic one can be nicer to play because it works on the wood > of the instrument in a mechanical way?