What do you people mean by 'sustain'?

[xgsjx]

[quote name='Robert Manning' post='1291193' date='Jul 3 2011, 05:18 PM']i'm thinking about penguins! hahah[/quote]

[munkonthehill]

[quote name='ikay' post='1291202' date='Jul 3 2011, 05:27 PM']+1 ... I often stuff foam under my bridge to get less sustain and a bit more punch and thump. Depends what you play I guess[/quote]

Sorry for being a bit dense.....but.

I have seen foam under the strings before, but I dont quite get why someone would do it. I have string mutes on my Ric so would that serve the same purpose??

Why do you gain from the foam or mutes???

[Robert Manning]

[quote name='munkonthehill' post='1291366' date='Jul 3 2011, 07:55 PM']Sorry for being a bit dense.....but.

I have seen foam under the strings before, but I dont quite get why someone would do it. I have string mutes on my Ric so would that serve the same purpose??

Why do you gain from the foam or mutes???[/quote]


You just keep the transient, and loose the rest of the note.
in terms of practical use, its can sound nice when you need that, warm upright-ish sound.
Also from a producers POV, it changes the mix in a sense. you get more of the note and less of the low FQ hanging around after.

but the ric, foam mute are poo pants! and take about 5 mins to set up! haha. best off using your palm.

[url="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GmfufABDqr4"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GmfufABDqr4[/url] thats an example, dont slag the person off in the video as its me. haha

[bubinga5]

[quote name='munkonthehill' post='1291366' date='Jul 3 2011, 06:55 PM']Sorry for being a bit dense.....but.

I have seen foam under the strings before, but I dont quite get why someone would do it. I have string mutes on my Ric so would that serve the same purpose??

Why do you gain from the foam or mutes???[/quote]
for the style of music your playing.. you may not want sustain in say, Reggae, or for an old school tone..

[munkonthehill]

[quote name='Robert Manning' post='1291375' date='Jul 3 2011, 08:03 PM']best off using your palm.[/quote]


hmmmmmmmmmm not a truer word said hahahaha.

[Robert Manning]

just when usung your palm you slightly limit your finger capabilities on the bass, if that makes sense. but i like using the palm as you can control the amount of dampening.
so less for the higher notes as there on thinner strings etc

[munkonthehill]

the fella from Blind Faith, Rick Gretsch a think his name is. He uses this technique on the hyde park gig.

But me being a rock/blues bassist, I just cant imagine not having the ability to do whatever I want on the bass. Now this fella is pretty awesome so it makes me wonder if I am doing something wrong!!!!!

Or I should just take my own ususal info which is do whatever makes you happy:-) Its worked so far I guess.

[Ou7shined]

[quote name='munkonthehill' post='1291392' date='Jul 3 2011, 08:15 PM']hmmmmmmmmmm not a truer word said hahahaha.[/quote]
... and her 5 sisters.

[munkonthehill]

[quote name='Ou7shined' post='1291427' date='Jul 3 2011, 08:42 PM']... and her 5 sisters. [/quote]

well its not a party without the whole family

[bubinga5]

whats a sustainer?

[Ancient Mariner]

I was waiting for the 5 lovely daughters appending to the Mrs. Palm comment.

My J type has roundwounds and my P type has flats. Sometimes I wish for more sustain with the flats (the bass itself is quite capable, but limited by the strings). It's not marketing and there's no mystery to it - there will be times that the song calls for a sustain at a reasonable level for 4 or 5 seconds, where the transient from plucking the string again would be intrusive.

[Lfalex v1.1]

This may be contentious, but here goes...

Does a bass that doesn't sustain as well need to be played harder in the first place? Is that healthy/necessary/desirable? What if you play very lightly or use a great deal of dynamics in your playing? I don't think I'd want a bass which had these characteristics.

If a bass with less sustain isn't smothering the dynamics/nuances of the player/song, then the note must be decaying much more quickly once struck/plucked, which at the extreme could sound very odd.

Do those that [b]don't[/b] care for sustain bother to change their strings very often? If they do, then why bother?
Are tone and sustain connected?

You can't ADD sustain, so it's arguably better to have plenty that you can damp (either with technique or mutes)

[Lfalex v1.1]

[quote name='Johnston' post='1291459' date='Jul 3 2011, 09:09 PM']It's a magnet that agitates the strings to get them vibrating.

Usually on a guitar they look like a humbucker but one of the coils is a magnet to get the strings vibrating and a single coil pup.

Mate has one on a Jackson although it's a factory fit. I think he said the "Single coil pup" is actually the magnet. So it looks like a HSH but is actually HH and will keep notes going for as long as you can hold the string down.[/quote]

Does it work/sound a bit like an E-bow, then?

[Ou7shined]

[quote name='Lfalex v1.1' post='1291460' date='Jul 3 2011, 09:09 PM']...[b]You can't ADD sustain[/b], so it's arguably better to have plenty that you can damp (either with technique or mutes)[/quote]
You can create it with compression though.

[bubinga5]

its not that i dont care about sustain, but its a problem that very rarely arrises... unless you have a very shoddy bass with 10 year old strings, its not going to be a problem.. sustain is a moot point nowadays as most basses can do it... there is such a thing as over engineering...

im betting i could give you guys an Encore with fresh strings, and you could have sustain for any song you want.. you may or may not like the tone, but thats a different story...

Edited July 3, 2011 by bubinga5

[Ou7shined]

[quote name='bubinga5' post='1291490' date='Jul 3 2011, 09:40 PM']...

im betting i could give you guys an Encore with fresh strings, and you could have sustain for any song you want.. you may or may not like the tone, but thats a different story...[/quote]
I'll take that bet.

[lojo]

I'm playing mainly with flats of late, but tonight I backed some singers at a church with just me an and acoustic playing mininal and I found that i Missed the sustain of rounds, I found the notes dying before I wanted them to. Didn't anticipate this as none of the covers I've been playing of late had need for long enough sustain to highlight this.

[Al Heeley]

I remember Jim Fleeting (excellent N. Yorks Luthier) exclaiming at the Harrogate bass bash a couple of years ago that sustain was not altogether a desirable quality, it needs not to be sounding muffled or damped but a lot of bass technique is about muting notes and huge sustain is not always a good thing. Most good and bad basses can sustain long enough for most styles of music.

[dc2009]

[quote name='Doddy' post='1291219' date='Jul 3 2011, 05:46 PM']If you are playing a slow ballad and you need to play a semibreve (or two tied together),you don't want the note to
die after 3 beats. I'd much rather have an instrument that has good sustain,because I can always mute the strings
and make the notes shorter.[/quote]

I'm with the pro here.

And my Warwick does sustain for days, and whilst you don't need it, when you're perhaps playing a note that lasts a few full bars, and then another one of the same type, it's nice to find the note has barely faded when you come to play it again. Think also of the intro to Hallowed be thy Name by Iron Maiden, when you play the open notes, the bass easily sustains the note, when you play the fretted note, you should want IMO the sustain profile to be as close to when played open as possible!

[LawrenceH]

I like a bass that's acoustically resonant, because I like the rich tone when amplified. But there is an unavoidable trade-off between resonance and sustain, as someone pointed out on here once (Ou7hined maybe?) you can't have both! Energy used to resonate the instrument comes from the string, which will therefore stop sustaining quicker.

So for me there is a significant downside to basses which sustain for ages. I personally think that this is why modern basses with high-mass bridges, laminate necks and other things that add significant stiffness all sound quite 'same-y' to me especially when pickups are in similar places, but things like Fenders are more idiosyncratic.

[bubinga5]

what realy matters is how pure your note can sound for a while until you fret another note... my old Modulus was seriously good at sustaining a note... went on for 20 seconds... do i miss it..? no.. .. as long as a bass has a fairly good construction and has fresh strings it will have a good sustain.. like i said there is much more important things to look at in an instrument.. sometimes i do wonder why subjects like these are even being disscussed.. and im a bass geek

[Norris]

My (ex-Clarky) Thunderbird has 'Nigel Tufnell' levels of sustain - and I like it that way. If you're playing a ballad (e.g. Still Got the Blues) and hit that last power note, it's great to still be there when the guitarist has finished with all the mega-widdling and to have enough volume left that you can damp it gently off at the end.


On a side note, I used to have a sustain pedal. I've never actually used it on a gig, as it was a great way to get screeching feedback after a few seconds. It used the guitar signal level to light an LED, and had a pre-amp controlled by a light-dependant resistor. So the more the signal decayed, the dimmer the LED got, and the more boost from the pre-amp. And when you didn't play at all, it sat there loudly hissing. It was complete rubbish really

[xgsjx]

[quote name='Norris' post='1292146' date='Jul 4 2011, 01:18 PM']On a side note, I used to have a sustain pedal. I've never actually used it on a gig, as it was a great way to get screeching feedback after a few seconds. It used the guitar signal level to light an LED, and had a pre-amp controlled by a light-dependant resistor. So the more the signal decayed, the dimmer the LED got, and the more boost from the pre-amp. And when you didn't play at all, it sat there loudly hissing. It was complete rubbish really [/quote]
Was it the Boss one? I tried one of those & after a couple of hours of tinkering & trying to make it useable, handed it back.

[thisnameistaken]

Sustain is quite important to me because I use octavers a lot. As a consequence, dead spots really wind me up!

I set up my basses higher than most to give a longer, clearer note for my pedals to chew on, and I have sold basses in the past because they gave me poor performance from my pedals.

I would agree though that for most people it's probably not an issue.

[Grand Wazoo]

No worries everyone, I've got the sustain perfectly explained in this here video clip from the Lego Spinal Tap rockumentary, [b][i]"This is Spinal Tap"[/i][/b]

Edited July 4, 2011 by Grand Wazoo