The Couch Racer X strap looks fantastic with the 3-ply pickguard, by the way.
Per my custom when I bring a guitar home, the very first thing I did was raise both of the pickups as high up as they would go without being hit by or affecting the strings. I don't care to go into exact measurements, but they're up very close to the strings. I raised the pole pieces on the Duncan Distortion bridge pickup so that each pole is an equal distance from its adjacent string. I've read and heard over the years that doing this can cause phase issues, or that an extra powerful pickup (like a Duncan Invader with its oversized magnets) can literally pull strings out of tune, but I've been doing this for a long time and have completely made it part of my approach to the instrument. Just feels right to me.
I may be hated by many for doing this, but I don't care.
And... The issues with Sustainiac's "lightness" or "softness" I mentioned in the previous post, all went away. This thing screams! The change was so drastic that it became intimidating to use. It can "grab" notes immediately and begin sustaining them; either one note with the same strength as the eBow (mentioned in my third post from back in April last year), or several notes with the driver's magnetic pull divided between them. It will sustain any string that's left open, so I'm going to have to be very intentional to mute strings with my left hand. The website says that it grabs thicker, wound strings much more easily than the lighter strings, but I think the string response overall is about equal, and works just about everywhere on the fretboard. There's extra incentive to keep the neck straight so that no dead spots appear and ruin any sustain I might try to have going.
The Sustainiac's three harmonic modes (called Normal, Harmonic, and Mix by the manufacturer) each have a character all their own:
The Normal mode is simply the first note, the fundamental, which sounds every bit like the eBow's "low" setting. The response is quick and it grabs the lower strings more readily but will work on the high strings if I'm holding them down.
The Mix mode plays 2nd and 3rd harmonics, much like the higher setting of an eBow. It takes the longest of the three modes to track—up to 2-3 seconds longer than the other modes. At first I didn't like the way it did this, but after some time I figured out that I can "punch in" a little bit of some harmonic action to add some color to a chord. I am now leaving the switch in the middle position to activate the Mix mode first when I turn the driver on.
The Harmonic mode has the fastest response of the three modes and replicates amp feedback with obnoxiously high 3rds and 5ths. It favors playing one string or note very loudly and tends to pick a higher string before it will grab a low string. Floyd Rose dive bombs are a lot of fun on this setting, mostly on account of being obnoxious.
After reading a few times over on the Sustainiac's website that most players tend to leave the driver controller solely at its maximum setting, I thought that I might have the same experience; in other words, I'd have a functioning but useless knob on my guitar. But it's totally useful. I can "fade" out the strength of the driver, completely controlling the rate of decay on a note or a chord. I can set the pot halfway or two-thirds of the way down and it will lightly grab the notes in a chord—very interesting for adding drones to chords with the Mix mode on a light-to-medium gain amp setting.
The driver has weird reactions to the tone control. It tends to shy away from grabbing strings with the tone rolled down, but it still works. I'll need some more time to play around with this; I know there's a cool and usable trick lurking in that control setting somewhere.
The Sustainiac as a neck pickup is just that: a simple single-coil. The +6 db "dark boost" works and resembles a '59 neck pickup. I typically never use a neck pickup by itself. I'm used to matching an alnico humbucker in the neck position with a hot ceramic humbucker in the bridge, and putting the pickup selector in the middle position whenever I want clean(er) tones. To be honest, I have no idea where I'll go with this thing. I might find that I enjoy clean single-coil tones with it and start flipping all the way to the neck position, or I might push the dark boost to classic Siamese Dream rhythm tone territory.
I'm pleased to find that the active controls don't affect the output of the pickups. Yes, that's right, I said pickupS. I took the 9-volt battery out of the back of the guitar and both pickups still worked, along with the volume and tone knobs. If the battery ever runs out while I'm playing, I lose the driver and "dark boost" capabilities, but I've still got a functioning guitar.
EDIT 2/24/2015: I later found this to be incorrect. When the battery runs down completely, or when there's no battery, it simply sets itself to using the bridge pickup—the Duncan TB-6 Distortion. I can make do with this.
It's a happy accident that the Floyd Rose's whammy bar is perfectly within a one-handed reach of the Sustainiac's switches. Back when I was designing the guitar, I only knew that I wanted the switches below the strings but out of the way of my pick attack. However, it's very convenient and useful to have the palm of my right hand centered on the whammy bar while being able to work both of the driver switches with my middle or ring finger.
One hand, three different operations: picking, whammy bar, switching electronics.
It's yet another happy accident that I decided to put the concentric knob as far back or down as possible on the pickguard, because the whammy bar barely clears it (both knobs, actually). I didn't think about it during the design phase, but it would have come back to annoy heck out of me. Or maybe I would have received a phone call from Mike during assembly: "Hey man, I know you want everything a particular way, but the whammy bar is hitting the concentric pot..."
By the way, the Duncan TB-6 Distortion was the perfect choice for this guitar and for pairing with the Sustainiac. It really is the unsung hero here; a tone workhorse producing a great balance of lows, mids, and highs; it's suitable for heavy palm muting, leads, and even clean tones. As I've mentioned before, I've had the Distortion (SH-6 model) in several guitars in the past and it's definitely no accident that I chose to have one again.
Take that, Strats-should-only-have-single-coils purists!
There's a lot to this guitar and it's going to take some time to build up the... connection with the instrument so that there's no thinking involved when handling the controls. But I'm already discovering new tricks, especially in conjunction with the Moogerfoogers (hint: the Ring Modulator just LOVES the Sustainiac!) and I'm FINALLY able to do some of the things I had only dreamed of. I'm finally able to explore that part of "my voice", the techie side of my personality coming through in creating the weirdest sounds possible. And with my own hands, no less.
Alright, no more messing around. It's time for some metal. Revocation are the best thrash band I've been introduced to this past year and a half:
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