What is gain and sustain??

wat is tat??plz help me out..thanks..

gain: the 'volume' that your guitar has when it enters your amp, too much gain causes distortion (effect wanted in rock/blues etc.)

Sustain: the ability your guitar has to keep the strings vibrating (due to the craft and woods of the guitar). More sustain, better guitar...

Originally posted by lalimacefolle
gain: the 'volume' that your guitar has when it enters your amp, too much gain causes distortion (effect wanted in rock/blues etc.)

Sustain: the ability your guitar has to keep the strings vibrating (due to the craft and woods of the guitar). More sustain, better guitar...

A most eloquent way of putting it,lalimacefolle.

keep things simple, 'cause it's simpler that way ;)

is there any way to have more sustain, without buying a new guitar? maybe some techniques?

mmmh... when you have some distotrion, you have more sustain, but otherwise, no...

To get the most(sustain) out of the guitar you have, here's a few tips, A well set-up action with absolutely no strings buzzing on the frets, a well made nut thats made from a good material, alot of lower price range guitars come with cheap plastic sustain sucking nuts, make sure your pick-ups adjusted correctly, to far from the strings handicaps the pick-ups ability to sense vibration, to close ( mainly a sinlge coil problem) and the magnetic pull can be strong enough to dampen the vibration of the string, make sure the bridge is well mounted and in good shape, thats about the best you can do except maybe buy a 100 watt Marshall, 2-4x12 cabs, turn everything up on 10 and grit your teeth!

After you have a guitar is a bit late, but here's what I have found over the years.

Anything that makes a guitar less solid, less stiff, tends to reduce sustain. The worst offender in this regard is tremolo setups. In my (heavily biased) opinion, most whammy-bar rigs don't have sustain worthy of the name.

A through-neck is more solid than a set-neck, which is more solid than a bolt-on. I haven't owned a bolt-on since I sold my '62 re-issue Strat, and I am unlikely to buy another one.

Since you already have your guitar, you are left with two options: sell or trade it to get something better, or modify the one you have. Either way, you have to part with some coin.

If the neck is bolt-on, make sure the bolts are snug. Don't get carried away, doing chin-ups on the wrenches. If you over-tighten and strip the threads, you have a problem worse than poor sustain. :eek:

pstring is right about the nut material. I like brass, bone or Corian. If it is set up properly, you shouldn't need a graphite nut to keep your axe in tune. A locking nut might seem like a strange addition to a non-tremolo guitar, but it would improve the sustain.

Adding mass to the guitar can help too. I've seen guitars with a thick brass plate glued to the back of the headstock. And the Yamaha SBG 2000 & 3000 series guitars have the bridge mounted on brass block set into the body. I replaced the tremolo unit on that '62 re-issue Strat with a brass block, and the improvement was amazing!

Stiffen the bridge. If you don't need a whammy bar, [u]toss it[/u]. Even a tunamatic type bridge can reduce the sustain if it is free to slop around on its posts. I modify mine to allow a lock screw on each side to hold the bridge down firmly once it has been set up.

Use medium or heavy guage strings. The .009" string sets a lot of players use don't have enough mass to continue vibrating against the magnetic pull of the pickups. You get better tone from beefier strings as an extra bonus.

As a last resort, get used to cranking the gain on your amp. Unplugged, a whammy-bar, bolt-on guitar strung with .009" 'spider webs' has about as much sustain as the average banjo, but with heaps of gain, distortion, and controlled feedback, you can get by. :D

Just don't expect to play jazz or blues with it. :rolleyes:

I only have one comment to add to Lordathestrings post,
" PREACH ON BROTHER! ".

[Edited by pstring on 03-17-2002 at 09:11 AM]

Originally posted by pstring
I only have one comment to add to Lordathestrings post,
" PREACH ON BROTHER! ".

hmmm... Might I assume you do not play a "a whammy-bar, bolt-on guitar strung with .009" spider webs"? :D

Well actually, I do use the 009's and bolt-on necks, but, remembering back to my days of a brass nut, .013-.060 strings and a tune-o-matic bridge, I will say that I had a load more sustain, ... those cranked EL-34s didn't hurt either.....

Take it to the tunomatic (er, bridge) Lordathestrings :D

... Where is that confounded bridge?? :D

The tuna-matic's are swimming up the coast this time of year

if we go upstream we can harvest enough tuna cheaply enough to save the candy ass strat copy's sustain. :D

(What the fark is that bent knitting needle thing for anyhow)

Now, I happen to like basswood - D'OH -(here he goes) so my mid priced Strat type recipe =@ (not valid in certain states due to sanity restrictions)

Basswood body, Tuna (yummy!)3x 4-5k pups [scatterwound,natch] -single or tappable HB to taste-
250k pots,0.0223 caps, 7way switching, switchable preamp with a vol pot and on/off switch, graphite or brass nut,- maple or rosewood fretboard (chicken,me?) and a damn good tight neck joint- bare wood.

I can put this together for way less than $300- why can't major factories- (No, i do know really).

They'll turn out sustain sucking shhit because WE buy it - cheaper to make= better profit magin *mumbles incoherently into beard*.




I'm off to find me little blue pills and lie down somewhere dark.

I was thinking about a one piece all titanium Les Paul, with 3 humbuckers wired in series, hardwired straight to a plexi Marshall, ....wait,,,... I hear the voices again.... James, what kind of pills did you say those were? ..... I think I need to see the Doctor, well gotta go, time for my electro shock therapy, I hope the Doctor knows I'm a tube man.....

As a matter of fact, the good folks at Fender made a one-of special out of granite as an experiment. Now that's a Heavy Rock guitar!

It had to be supported by a special stand in order to be played, but it did have very good sustain.

Now where am I going to get enough little blue pills for all of us and the folks at Fender :)

By the time we're done Benny will probably be on them too :D

Originally posted by James8831
Now where am I going to get enough little blue pills for all of us and the folks at Fender :)

By the time we're done Benny will probably be on them too :D

My big red capsules are just the thing. I used to have a problem, but I'm muuuuch better now! :D

It's interesting that you mention basswood, I normally hear that it is not very good tone-wood and needs some fairly heavy pickups to give the guitar any character.
I have a start with a floating bridge strung with .011s with a roller nut. The roller-nut gives it more sustain, but I'm going to replace it with a better one, cause it doesn't accommodate .012s, which I want to move to. Compression is something that hasn't been mentioned. You can get a lot more sustain without adding heaps of gain if you use a compression box. If I were going for more sustain I would get a compression effect pedal before I messed with my floating tremelo - I get too many nice vibrato warbles with my tremelo bar to lock it up. I don't use it to dive bomb much, just a subtle waver - and sometimes like in those surf bands where they play chords and ALWAYS add a tremelo ripple to the end.