sustain and craft tuning

[Malhomme <malhomme@vete.ucl.ac.be>]

1) some may remember, we spoke about sustainer about one year ago. There
is the new system from the makers of the Sustainiac, which seem not to
expensive, sells as a separate part and seems very powerful with
features like harmonic rank choosing, a "bow-button" effect liberating a
sudden power surge to gives this bow effect, and many more.
Unfortunately, I lack the site address of these people (anyone?). I, for
my part, have a Fernandes guit. I bought for next to nothing.
And there is the possibility of the ISF (or something like that) that a
person writing on the Stickwire list has designed.
Your sound goes in parallell to a little 50W amp with no speaker, but to
a contact driver (kind of speaker without paper cone, used to drive soft
walls, glass.... any flat surface) which you stick (well..) to the body
of your intrument. That make the body of the instrument resonate and
hence gives the wildly wanted sustain. The amount is controlled by a
simple volume pedal on the patth to the second amp. Sustain at the touch
of the foot.

2) Craft tuning:
Since the GR-30 work with a pitch to midi detection, the lower the note,
the higher the delay between plucking and the note coming out. Because
it needs in theory at least 1/2 cycle to indentify the frequency, and in
real world 1 or 2 cycle at least. That can generate ghost notes, error
of detection...
For craft tuning (in fact any tuning with low notes) you'd better stick
with the neural system of the Axon (or Axxon?), that extract note
information from the transient of the plucking, whatever the note
height. That allow also for the machine to detect WHERE you are
plucking, and then have different sounds , like one near the neck, one
in the midle....
Yamaha recently licensed their technology in their latest system. That
doen't make Roland very at the edge of guitar synth (too bad, they were
the one to continuously invest in the area).
Note I'm not selling anything, I still have an old GR-50, the Axon being
impossible to find in Belgium where I now live. You would get more
information on their site (I don't remember exactly now) or on tPaolo
valladolid's digital guitar site.
Now, the V-8, i have, you don't need to change the tuning on the guitar,
you can do it on the machine as ypou please, with a different tuning for
each preset if you want, even several tuning at the same time, choosable
with an expression pedal.
I use 5th tuning for a long time, with a low A and a G# at the top. That
often prohibits things like bending the highest string. I even tried
harpsichord strings, because of their higher steel quality (being
german, sorry american stell just don't compete). It wasn't enough
anyway.
This I can do with the VG-8 at ease. The only draw back is, you loose at
bit of attack on the "re-tuned" strings that is not "perceivable" (does
the word exists???) from the audiance but is from the player.

Sorry for the long post. Hope it helps...

Olivier Malhomme