Sustain Continued

[musicimpossible]

Laid down my roughs and now going in to do the real takes on some tunes in my studio. I plan on using my Helix rack exclusively. Only issue I have found is the inability to hold a note and sustain it indefinitely as I would standing next to a Marshall half stack or something similar. I have two studio monitors - 5 and 8 inch Yamaha powered. I have placed myself next to both of them and can't get it to happen. 

 

Do I need to go to a larger powered keyboard monitor perhaps? Would love to hear from those of you who are actually achieving this in the studio. 

[gunpointmetal]

I recorded some tracks for a guy who wanted amp feedback/sustain but we were recording in my apartment with the HD500X. We ran one of the 1/4" outs to a small practice amp and put it on a chair right next to him and turned it up till it started feeding back. I can't say if it sounds like a real amp feedback loop, but it certainly worked for our purposes at the time.

[erniedenov]

I recorded some tracks for a guy who wanted amp feedback/sustain but we were recording in my apartment with the HD500X. We ran one of the 1/4" outs to a small practice amp and put it on a chair right next to him and turned it up till it started feeding back. I can't say if it sounds like a real amp feedback loop, but it certainly worked for our purposes at the time.

 

That would do it!

 

Musicimpossible, perhaps those little monitors would work with a patch that has enough gain, though bigger speakers would be helpful. My main lead patch uses the Achron lead model, which is my favorite high gain amp in Helix. I have a Minotaur lying in waiting on that patch and even with it's drive set pretty low, switching it on gets me some nice feedback (at least with my FRFR that has a 12" speaker) that's easily controllable. The only problem is that it gets pretty noisy. I'm thinking about setting it up so that one switch will turn the Minotaur and a noise gate on simultaneously, since the Achron isn't that bad on it's own.

 

In one band I'm in, we use in-ear monitors and Helix goes direct to the board. Obviously, you can't get any feedback that way, but at least with a higher gain amp model (and possibly an added distortion and/or compressor block), you can get some pretty decent sustain.

[zooey]

One thing I've done for sustain while recording is put a boatload of compression on the monitor chain, only, not recording it, and stand really close to the speaker. Lots of natural feedback, even pretty quiet.

[jbuhajla]

Check out Scott in THEHELIXCHANNEL.com. He does some Satch presets that feed back really well. He has a JBL Eon wedge directly in front of him to achieve the sound waves hitting the strings.

[musicimpossible]

Check out Scott in THEHELIXCHANNEL.com. He does some Satch presets that feed back really well. He has a JBL Eon wedge directly in front of him to achieve the sound waves hitting the strings.

 

Yep - Thinking a powered wedge is the way to go. 

[AlexKenivel]

Yep. Powered wedge with enough volume will do wonders for feedback fun

[johnplanetz]

Thanks for mentioning Scott's Helix channel videos- some great stuff there!

Here's his video demo'ing the feedback.  He's using a JBL Eon 612:

[hideout]

Perhaps it's the construction of my guitars. My Strat is a chambered body from Warmoth and my RAW custom guitar is neck-through and semi hollow. Neither one has sustain problems and I get musical feedback fairly easily.

[drewstunes77]

I record everything direct and monitor through headphones so I don't have the ability to create feedback which is why I'm anxiously awaiting the release of the DigiTech FreqOut pedal.  If it's half as good as the youtube videos I've seen it will be an awesome addition in front of the Helix.