Re: Sustainer pickup systems? Useful or gimmick??
seems the PC1 came around in the mid-90s. he said something like he uses it now for parts he used to use for an e-bow (probably that Love Bites song, and definitely for the Gods Of War into). he says he uses it for all his solos, which I agree with you on being a waste when shredding.
the newer ones in the Jacksons are FAR superior to the one I have in the old Kramer Sustainer model, which can be a little finicky and seems to trigger a bit unevenly - preferring certain strings and neck positions over others. but the Kramer is a bit of a rarity and I've kept it bone stock.
If I'm not mistaken, the PC-1 uses an updated version of the original Floyd Rose unit found in the old Kramers, and given Phil's history with the Jackson Custom Shop, it's not unreasonable to assume he had one of those put in a CS Soloist or Dinky before the PC-1 came about.
Then again, if he says he used an e-bow, an e-bow it was.
I'm sure Belew and Fripp can find amazing things to do with one in the context of what they play, but then again they've been doing that for decades with the same guitars anyone can buy off the shelf, so exceptions are not the rule.
I did say it could be used for more than the last note of a solo or a short riff, it's just the average user will only have that use for it.
A looping unit would be of more benefit if you wanted a rhythmic pattern to repeat infinitely, since, as I said before, the string's oscillation changes as soon as you change frets unless you're using a slide with a mute behind it to prevent your motion from causing it to vibrate. If you hammer-on, you trigger the string. If you pull-off, you trigger the string. If you slide from one fretted note to another, you trigger the string. If you move in any way from one note to another aside from depressing or lifting a pivoting bridge's bar or moving a frictionless slide on the string, you interrupt the sustain device's effect on the string. This is an inherent property of the string and the unit.
If you had a tapped sequence, say the intro to Van Halen's version of Dancing In The Streets, a sustain unit would not help with that since you're triggering the notes each time you attack the string or move to a different fret, or even perform a pinch harmonic along different positions of the string while fretting one note continuously.
If you wanted to use it to play around with the various harmonics on a given string using only the influence of the device, and not stopping the string completely at any time, you could only go from low to high, because each time you go to a higher pitch, returning to a lower pitch gets increasingly difficult.
