WE SAY

I could never quite get the hang of proper feedback - that glorious Hendrixy noise when the guitar comes alive in your hands, and you have to fight to control this maverick machine as it howls and shrieks its protest at your...

Phew. Exciting stuff. My problem was that I was never loud enough. The trouble with that type of feedback is that the guitar has to be loud, and preferably close to the amp. That way, the strings pick up their own sound coming back at them, which enhances their vibration and makes them sustain. For that to work on a solid body guitar, we're talking HIGH VOLUME.

There are ways of helping your guitar feed back, such as pressing the headstock against the speaker cabinet. Thus the neck picks up the vibrations directly. This method is not only ungainly, but also hard on the head, and it still needs substantial noise. But now that's all about to change. This little box what we have here is about to make volume-controlled feedback largely redundant.

Like all great inventions, the Sustainiac is deliciously simple. Rather than you putting your headstock against a speaker, it gives you a tiny speaker to attach to the headstock. This broadcasts the guitar's own signal back down the neck, giving almost instantaneous whoooo. Brilliant.

Your guitar (a goodish Nadine Strat copy in this case) plugs into a large footpedal; this is the Sustainiamp. One lead from this carries the direct signal off to the guitar amp, while a second cable leads to a chunky black box fixed to the head. This black box is held onto the instrument by a row of magnets, which are in turn glued to the guitar. The magnets are reasonably strong, but the addition of an elastic band removes any likelihood of the transducer flying off in a particularly energetic bout of neckwrestling.

The mains-powered Sustainiamp has two footpedals and three control knobs. The footpedals enable you to switch between the machine's two main functions. 'Green' mode (right pedal) is best for making the fundamental note (the one you're actually playing) feed back; 'red' mode enhances the harmonics in the note — the octave usually, but occasionally fifths will appear. You need to hold the pedals down to make the effect work, unless you hit both pedals at the same time, which makes the Sustainiamp lock on.

The knobs are labelled Power, Harmonic Enhance, and Auto-Sense. These give varying degrees of control over the viciousness with which the feedback starts when you touch those pedals. And vicious it can be. Leave the Sustainiac switched in, and the guitar keeps going crazy — unmuted strings rapidly make their presence known, making the instrument feel perpetually on the edge of going out of control.

It feels and sounds loud, but it's not. Because the guitar signal itself isn't tampered with, it's possible to get a completely clean sustain. Play a note, hit the pedal and the note just carries on. Until we want it to stop. Isn't that just what we've always wanted?

DECISION

There are problems: the lead from the transducer gets in the way; more seriously, there's an audible clunk from the headstock when you switch the Sustainiac in. Worst of all, you run the risk of dead spots — the vibrations from the transducer interfere with certain notes, killing them stone dead, especially in Harmonic mode. Finally, I suspect the vibrations wouldn't be too good for your guitar over a long period of time; I wouldn't relish mounting it on a '62 Strat.

But don't let these put you off — I'm picking faults in what is a very successful innovation. It does, basically, The Business. In the studio, and in gigs where high volume is a no-no, the Sustainiac is going to prove indispensable.

MANIAC SUSTAINIAC SUSTAIN SYSTEM £289

Dixie's Music, (Contact Details).