Hello Kondas.
Welcome to my show. How are you?
It's hot! And this is why we have a hot topic for you.
HAHAHA.
Well, we'll be talking about sustain.
It's shrouded with mystery amongst the guitarists.
It's common to think that guitars with a long sustain are cool
and those with short sustain aren't.
When someone tests a guitar
the first thing he/she does is that.
And says: "Whoaa! What a sustain!
So we wanted to talk about what it means at all.
That a guitar has a sustain of some kind.
How to measure it at all.
Because everyone has his/hers own ideas.
And ultimately why...
why it doesn't matter at all.
From our standpoint
how we perceive sustain.
Is it something that we care about in a guitar.
Sustain - a definition
There isn't a universal dictionary or a definiton of sustain amongst guitar brotherhood.
When trying to describe it with words
the first thing that comes to my mind is
electronics and synth tones and their four parameters
used to descibe them.
ADSR.
The letters.
I read about them on Wikipedia today.
Are they any good to describe the sound of a guitar?
I think so, yes.
A short while ago we were choosing between two Ibanez guitars.
And we concluded that one had a more aggressive attack than the other.
From my perspective, it's this thing...
if you have the slap or not.
Take a Telecaster which has this...
it kinda sounds as you shot a rubber band or slapped with a ruler.
We're hitting here a very subjective matter.
Are we really? Is it that subjective?
In the wolrd of synths and describing the tone with the four parameters
they're not subjective
they're very concrete.
Attack is the time between the zero
the lowest level of the singal
and the first peak of the signal
the highest level of the signal.
That was a fast attack.
This is what I describe as the twang.
It's very fast, very bright,
very much in your face.
And now we had the attack at 5 secs
It decided to
attack slowly.
Huhh, what a pun, attack decided to attack...
The question is if there's going to be any difference
in the attack of this Ibanez and the Les Paul.
Let's find out.
Now a Phill Collins would come and write a new song with us.
We'll see at the graphs.
Because it's all going to be masured scientifically.
It's not like it's just a chit-chat here.
Being a pro, that's the most important thing.
I bet the measurement will be pretty much identical.
However, everybody knows
a Telecaster has an aggresive and fast attack
it's shriller and brighter.
So what the hell?
We're approaching the unmeasurable territory.
But everyone know it anyway.
Another parameter is the decay.
It's the time between the peak of the signal
the attack reaches from zero to the peak
decay is the difference from the peak
and the moment when the sustain comes in.
And the sustain it can go on forever.
If it's a Moog or something that buzzes on end
then you have a "buuuuuuuu"
and the sustain starts here.
So we had attack, decay, sustain
this we'll take care in a second
and release.
Release is the moment of the aftertone.
When you release the key at the keyboard.
Or after
muting a string?
When you mute a string in a guitar
the sound just stops
unless you have some effect such as reverb for example.
Yep.
Of course in today's show we're not going to focus on release.
Obviously, we'll focus on sustain
but in order to understand how we'll be doing our measurements
we had to explain the attack and decay.
Sustain - how to measure it?
Now a few words on the methodology of the measurements.
We want to see how our subjective perception
of what sustain is, how the guitars sound for us personally
how it differs from the measurement in the computer.
We prepared several instruments that we chose from all in the store.
A nice set of 68 instruments.
The show will last for 12h.
We apologize if you're watching it on a toilet.
I'm playing via Orange
#4, Jim Root's signature
on the other side there's a new Laney
Lionheart, L20, is it?
Small Orange or Laney can be easily overdriven.
And this affects greatly
the tone and the sustain.
And this is when we end our show. Thank you for watching.
So, it's logical, the more the amp compresses and overdrives the sound
the longer sustain we get.
Obviously here we had a feedback but still.
So how do we approach to measuring it?
If the amp affects the sustain
are we to measure it acoustically?
Like this?
So we have the sustain of a guitar as an instrument, as wood,
then we add the sustain of a pickup
then we add
the compression and the sustain of an amp.
Uhh, I sweated.
So it all starts to compound.
A guitar can have a different sustain on different notes.
The fretwork can be done unevenly, the string can play or buzz in different positions,
it can have dead notes.
As you can see, there are lots of factors
that affect the sustain
and it's hard to say what someone means by saying
a guitar has a good sustain.
It's sooo subjective.
But let's measure it. Let's not give up.
So how do we standardize it now?
As a provident person I thought of that before
so we plugged our guitars into a USB interface.
We split the signal
it goes via an amp but it's also recorded at line level.
This is as close as it can get
to standarization.
To make the measurements absolute
I'd like to measure the time from the peak of the signal
and the drop of 30dBs.
We'll see it all at the graph.
Now we're talking a lot but we have to explain the methodology.
We'll be testing it with an A note
at the 7th fret on a D string.
It's 440Hz so we should hope it's a resonant frequency of our instruments.
It's a sensible assumption.
Check it out, mate.
It's the same note as the phone.
Note A on a D string on the 7th fret.
So you know exactly what we're playing.
And the A minor chord.
Let me start.
Holy f*ck, what a sustain!
The A minor chord.
If you're wondering if the test will be
us talking for the first 20 minutes
and the next 20 minutes us playing one note and one chord
Yes, it's going to be exactly that.
We'll do a fast forward! I managed to say this whole sentence
and the guitar is still playing.
The sustain was really long.
It's audibly shorter.
It's a quarter of the previous one. It's mega short.
A minor chord.
That's it.
You could hear that the Les Pok
has a way longer sustain.
I suspect that the reason for that
is the way the neck is attached to the body.
That's what they say.
But I'm sceptical.
Considering the fact that there's no way to measure that objectively
or I've never seen it.
I've never seen the test that would describe a methodology,
and then played the bolt-on neck
and then set it in.
It's actually impossible to do.
It's a totally different construction.
So the discussion is purely theoretical.
But it's true, it's commonly believed that Les Pauls have longer sustain
because they have set-in necks.
Does that mean it's a better guitar?
I think we'll leave it for later.
Let's pick another ones.
Which one do you want?
I'll pick something.
Things have taken an interesting turn.
Now Kondas has a fat, fluffy guitar,
and I have the shrill one.
That's a Fender Jaguar here,
if I remember correctly, it's a USA-made one.
Yes, it even has a flag on it.
And I've got an Ibanez, Pat Metheny signature.
That's a full hollow body. No resonant blocks or similar.
And archtop it is.
Alrighty, let's check the sustains.
I feel like laughing all the time.
Here you go.
A note again.
It's exactly what I wanted to hear.
We've got a humbucker, a set-in neck
and a non-existent sustain.
A neck pickup, set-in neck, and a humbucker to that.
A chord.
If we compare that to Les Paul...
The Les Paul is currently the leader.
Let's see the Jaguar but judging by my ear
it doesn't seem to be the new leader, throwing off the Les Paul.
But enough talking. Let's use the neck pickup to maximize the chances.
But the decay was quite long.
And then the sustain was...
Yes, exactly that. I didn't have an impression it was aggressive and shrill.
It didn't have a quick attack and then gone.
It went down slowly.
Slowly and softly. And the sustain wasn't that short.
It was very pleasant and I was expecting something different.
Now the A chord.
We mentioned that earlier: different notes in a different position on the neck
have different sustain.
Ok, wait, let's play
we can both play an open A string.
I wonder what we'll hear.
We'll see it, heheh.
Exactly.
I'm not playing anymore. Or is it you?
You're still playing. Am I? Or is it the echo?
Alright, I didn't expect the Jaguar to have
longer sustain (longer by ear, not by our measurements, though).
The more so that we've got a tremolo bridge here.
So now the whole theory fails.
Oh, man, how I like it.
It's a really nice guitar.
Maaan!
Back again with new interesting guitars.
It kinda feels awkward to be filmed with this in my hands.
Come on, you got to admit
this guitar is cute.
Well, no. It's not resonating with me.
What we have on our laps:
this is Spirit from Steinberger.
It's a first headless guitar, if I recall correctly.
And this is Ibanez JBM 100.
Jake Bowen from Periphery signature.
Here's a headless guitar
which also has a unique bridge.
This one has a Floyd with microtuners.
With normal tuners here.
Like we said at the beginning, we tried to chose different instruments
so you could see the difference.
It's a fucking awesome bridge. It's super-heavy,
judging with my eyes, of course,
a super-heavy metal alloy.
It's made with a great precission,
it's got heavy metal barrels for the saddles.
So it's got features that should make a long sustain.
Or according to a general belief among guitarist they make long sustain.
I'm not sure how the lack of the headstock affects the sustain.
When I broke my Ibanez headstock it surely affected it in a bad way.
Are those active pickups?
No, I don't think so.
I think these are Steinberger's pickups.
Off we go.
I'm not sure if I should touch the body with my hand...
Can you hear that? Or is it just in my head?
I think we may have a new winner.
And the chord?
I can feel it vibrating.
Sure, it's a lighter body so it resonates more easily.
It's ultra long.
Is it? I think the signal dropped faster than in the Mustang.
It was a Jaguar.
Yeah, I think it dropped faster than in the Jaguar, reaching a stable but a low amplitude at the end.
It's still there.
Something's still buzzing there.
And still.
I'm just curious, because it'll be already below our measurement point.
It was still playing, wasn't it?
We used a neck pickup here.
And so we will here. Let's go.
That's long. Yeah, it's still riding.
It's got a very soft drop, isn't it? Like...
On and on.
Very much like the Les Paul.
Not sound-wise but the character of the sustain is similar.
Yeah, we could hear the long, audible sustain.
Yes, yes, yes. And the chord.
We've got the winner.
Now we think that the longest sustain was achieved by a guitar
that according to all internet myths should have the shortest one.
Why is that so?
We've got a bolt-on neck.
A Floyd Rose tremolo.
Here's the only point of support.
So the bridge is hanging in the air all the time.
Yes, the point of support is just a few milimeters.
Versus the whole bridge laying down on the body.
Or string-through-body that the Talman had.
Which by the way had the shortest sustain.
That's why, like I said earlier,
Les Paul and set-in neck affecting the sustain...
that's why I said I was sceptical.
Because of this. For example.
We do have high output pickups here.
So it seems to be the most important factor. The pickups do the job.
Here's two Strats.
Two different ones.
A Mexican one but a super-deluxe-players.
Which is, well, deluxe.
It's got locking tuners... oh, no, it's got no locking tuners.
But they're gold! So it should sound better.
And noiseless pickups. That shouldn't buzz.
No buzz, indeed.
Here's American Standard Fender Stratocaster.
I said it backwards.
It's got those Custom Shop pickups.
Let's go. Now you.
Stratocasters are well known for their long sustain.
The chords are similar among those guitars.
As if this open A string...
yeah, the open string has a longer...
a chord has more open strings,
which have greater active length
so they're vibrating more, with a greater amplitude.
It's a bit longer.
But still pretty short.
Yeah, in comparison...
I'd even say it's near the Talman
or maybe mine's a little longer
and your's is shorter.
All the guitars make some quiet sound
and make us wondering - are they still playing?
and that went down just like that.
But it also can be charming.
A minor chord to go.
So the chord is shorter than mine.
Yes, but now it went up a bit.
Yeah, it went up and down.
But the chord was much shorter.
On the other hand, it's still playing.
The question is if we're below our measuring level or still above.
Right. Let's go with another ones.
Hey, stop that.
I can't get my guitar in tune.
So we're back with another funny guitars.
In the right corner, there's Fender Mustang.
A funny, little guitar from Fender.
And here's a funny GUITAR from Duesenberg.
It's called Rocket II and I can't play it.
Your neck kinda overwhelms me...
As soon as I got the guitar in my hands we had some problem, you got quieter, and you're still glancing at the headstock...
Oh man, I took the smallest one, almost a ukulele.
And you took the one with such a well pronounced neck.
It's true that Duesenberg makes really good instruments.
And basing on logic I'd say
it'd have a long sustain.
Especially this instrument.
Flying V's are generally associated with that.
On the other hand, Mustang, half guitar, half ukulele,
for little boys and girls.
Short scale,
P90 or some variation
so it's lower output than humbuckers.
And first of all it's a Fender.
A brand that it's not typically associated with long sustain.
On the contrary, it's believed to have a shrill and edgy sound.
It's seems I was wrong.
It's very much like humbuckers.
This guitar generally makes me laugh a bit.
I associate Duesenbergs with instruments that have unique character.
This one got the character, too.
But it's totally not for me.
Well, have a look yourself.
Yep, you don't wear leather pants, you wear sport shoes
and you work in a corporation
and you've used gel on your hair. Or you just sweat.
Yeah, I sweat.
Let's play the sustains!
You first.
No, now you first.
It's rather on the short side.
But it wasn't the shortest!
Strangely enough because the pickups...
...they sound quite like humbuckers, not single coils.
They have this grit in them!
The sound is one of the humbuckers but the sustain is one of the single coils.
Now you.
It started really well.
The decay was very soft.
You couldn't tell where the decay ended and the sustain started.
But it steadily went down.
And the Les Paul and... which one was that?
Jake Bowen.
Yeah. They went on and on...
Yes, and it was very satisfying.
And this here is very disappointing.
It started well
but the finish was just sloppy.
It's not how the real man should be like.
Let's try the chords.
Maybe it's this headstock that inspires him to say such things...
Honestly? I don't care about its sustain. I love its tone.
It's just rock'n'roll.
Alright, let me try the chord.
Tone-wise the Mustang does me really good. I can't believe it.
True, it's gritty in a nice way.
And the Duesenberg is totally dull. Nothing's happening.
Although, it's generally what I associate V's with - a dull sound.
Yeah.
Well, we've got almost the same guitars.
Though, mine is black and yours is white.
Yeah, this is the white one and this the black one.
That's a Musicman.
That's a Sub.
Sterling. Obviously you're right.
Made in Indo-nee-sia.
This one's...
...made in USA if I recall correctly.
Either way, it's a cheaper version of this.
This one is like $300
and this one's like $2000.
We'll see if there's any difference.
I thought it was going to go down quick.
Well, I thought it was going to be really long
and then it went down suddenly
but it finally went up again.
I'd say it was near the standard.
That's very satisfying, in my opinion.
In general, Musicman guitars are, you know, decent.
They were always an epitomy of a professional guitar for me.
That's a long one.
And was still playing.
Hell of a sustain.
Gosh it's boring.
Yeah.
Alright.
We chose, I think, the two most interesting instruments.
Are they?
They are the most unique ones.
We can say something about all those instruments but about those, we can say they are different.
Alright, that is true.
That's a Squier Bass VI.
Is it called like this?
Yes, it's written here - Bass VI.
Generally the tuning for it is like for the bass.
30" scale.
And this is... Fender?
Nope, it's also a Squier.
Squier Jazzmaster, also 30" scale.
But tuned four steps lower.
I see.
So we should have B here but it made it a dropped tuning so it's A.
So here, instead of E we have B.
In this case, we'll check only the single notes.
The chord doesn't quite make sense.
With a finger or a pick? A pick!
Very steadily and long.
Yeah. It's very soft.
It's short but it goes into the overtones quickly.
But that may be because of the amp.
Yeah.
And A note.
It's again what we mentioned at the beginning.
Yeah, and the position on the neck, too.
And the string that you play now is a heavier gauge.
Yeah, it's still playing, but either way,
the guitar is absolutely brilliant.
It's got so much character.
It's hard for me to say something about this one.
It's just like a bass.
Slightly less satisfying, in my opinion.
It might be because it goes through a clean channel.
The attack is very slow.
It's round shaped.
Yeah.
We'll see at the charts but it's soft to me.
Ok, let's have some Teles now.
Alright, as the last guitars, we have two Teles.
Two different ones: American and professional
versus Squier Classic Vibe.
Alder versus Ash.
Ash known for its brightness,
it is a hard wood, so it has a bell-like tone,
bright and aggressive.
So the sustain should be... what? Shorter?
Or should it?
We have already found out today
that everything here seems to be the other way round.
Shall we?
Nothing special but not bad.
Yeah, it's well-balanced.
It's kinda quiet with lower output
but at the same time, it's quite pleasant.
Yeah. Let's see what happens here.
It's much more expensive guitar and has no sustain.
Nice.
A long one.
Long, nice and pleasant.
On and on.
Endlessly, pointlessly, on end.
Like spaghetti.
And this one.
It was shorter.
Was it? I'm not sure.
It was louder so it had a more audible volume drop but...
I think it's got more character than yours.
The string separation...
But generally, when I took it it made a good impression.
I can feel the vibrations on my belly.
That's what I noticed about Squiers.
They tend to surprise you in a good way.
You could upgrade a few things like pickups, tuners or such.
But generally they're very decent.
We have played several guitars.
We've measured the sustains.
We got our figures.
And we've got our winners.
It's time to ask ourselves a question
if we, at all, care?
For me, yes and no.
I don't think it would be important criteria for me.
After having played all those guitars, not for a second would I want to
take Les Paul because of the sustain, nor Jake Bowen.
I wouldn't want this guitar at all. It's beautiful and it
sounds like this when you play it.
But I wouldn't be able to play it at all. Or Musicman. They're absolutely not for me.
They don't work with me.
And suddenly I take the Jaguar
which was mind blowing for me.
And when it comes to sustain it was
just average.
It wasn't the shortest nor the longest one.
Talman, which had one of the shortest sustains, has a fantastic tone.
I'd totally discard the measurements.
I'd discard the measurements. Let them be. And that's it.
From all the guitars I played today
Talman,
Squier, the black one, the baritone. It was great.
In my opinion, it had tons of character.
And Jake Bowen Ibanez.
For me it was sterile, clean and punchy.
What can we make out of all of this?
Have you noticed we've been discussing features of the guitars
but we haven't mentioned the sustain at all?
You know.
Right, I like Jaguar
because of its character,
it sounded like an old radio and it got a nice twang.
But you don't care about its practically non-existent sustain, do you?
Who cares! Mustang - the same thing.
It had a fantastic gritty tone.
But sustain?
Almost not there.
Telecaster, the Squier Classic Vibe, was cool as well.
And its sustain... well we said it was pleasant.
We said it was pleasant.
But what kind of a parameter is that?
It's not in our ADSR.
The fifth parameter - pleasant...
Guitar tone is beyond that.
Also with Musicman you said it was satisfying.
It's a matter of harmonics on the
decay of the sustain.
Even the Strat with a super-short sustain
was a great sounding guitar for me.
It was absolutely brilliant.
On the other hand, most of the guitars in your hands sound brilliant.
And it makes me sad.
I didn't mind the sustain go down quickly.
Exactly, it's just a part of the character of the guitar.
It's not good or bad.
If I was to get a Strat now, I'd rather get one
which is the most aggressive and punchy.
Not the one which has 400 years of sustain.
It's not just the guitar for that.
If you wan't a longer sustain you need another guitar.
One of the features of a guitar, responsible for its general tone is sustain.
But it's not the feature that decides ultimately
if the guitar is good or bad.
It's just one of many features.
Moreover, I think we've managed to show
throughout the movie that the guitar isn't everything.
What also matters is what you've got behind you.
The thing that makes the air move.
It greatly affects the sustain.
As well as who's handling the guitar and what he/she does articulation-wise.
We measured our sustains with one note and chord
but add a little vibrato to that and...
I think we managed to debunk
the myth of sustain as a parameter
resposnible for the value of the guitar.
On the other hand, everybody should believe what they want.
Yeah, this is the best part about all this.
The conclusion is, it's the most beautiful thing
that all music, all instruments
effects, amps, cables, etc.
we perceive in a very subjective way.
At the end of the day, what matters most
is how we feel with an instrument.
How we feel about our own equipment.
So, maybe it's not the time to look for a guitar with the longest sustain.
But a guitar that will make us feel good.
It's like looking for a partner with the longest...
...sustain.
Yeah.
That was a live broadcast from the studio by us:
Kondas
and Michał Wójcik.
An arrow.
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