Sustain

when i hook up three of my effect pedals, i end up losing sustain on my notes. i understand that this happens, but, do i want a sustain pedal to help with this, or is there a better way to deal with this problem? thank you

Ok, i did some reading and ended up switching the pedals around. That made a huge difference, but i have never used a sustain or compression pedal, what exactly do they do?

I assume a "sustain" pedal is basically a compressor.

a compressor is hard to describe soundwise, but yes it can make the notes sustain for a long time, you will also get more noise. how much more noise depends on the quality of the compressor.

annother common way to make the notes sustain longer is by turning the amp up to a louder volume.how loud you need to go, depends on the type of amp , guitar ,and pickups.

my friend has a Danelectro guitar and it has almost too much sustain(feedback) !

I dont really NEED a whole lot more sustain than you would nomally get with just the amp, but it seems that i lose some of that when i chain three pedals together. I assume then that you can adjust so maybe there wouldnt be as much noise without infinite sustain, or is there noise no matter what the settings are?

if there is any noise in your signal the compressor will amplify it.

it's not so much the compressor making noise , it's just sensitive to any noise coming from the pickups or other pedals ,,or a low quality cable.

the more you turn up the compressor the more it will raise the hiss in the signal

Thank you for your imput

input. sorry

There might be a few factors for you to consider. Do you have good quality pedals? Are they true bypass or buffered? Are the jumpers between each pedal in good shape? Are the guitar cables in good shape? ow long are the cables? Etc. Lots of factors.

A compressor will help your sustain, but at the cost of dynamics. What the compressor does is makes the quiet sounds louder, and makes the loud sounds quieter. It does this by "compressing the signal".

Visualize sound as a waveform with peaks and valleys. The compressor will put a ceiling on those peaks so that they don't exceed a certain volume based on what you have the compressor knobs set at.

The quiet sounds are boosted and this is where you get the improved sustain. As your note fades, but remains "in range" of your settings, it gets boosted. Kind of like if you struck a note to let it ring out and fade, and while it was fading, you slowly increased the volume on your amp.

And, there go your dynamics! :(

At least that is how I understand it. Hope it helped.