Sustain? Discuss.

[Frank Blank]

As an offshoot from this post, can anyone explain to me why a bass player would desire their bass, or perhaps more accurately the material their bass is made from, to have ‘sustain’? In my many years of bass playing it is not a quality I have sought from a bass nor heard in music to my knowledge. Again, am I missing out on something or am I simply a philistine with no nuance to my hearing? Could someone point out a bass line or piece of music where the bass is employing sustain? I discussed this briefly on Saturday with the chap who works on my guitars and he was as baffled by the concept as me.

[Cato]

I think we generally concentrate far more on muting, don't we?

Edited January 8, 2018 by Cato

[FinnDave]

I've always felt it was an inappropriate import from the six string world, where sustain is a much-valued property on any guitar, apparently. It doesn't seem relevant to any bass playing I've ever done, and many people use string dampers to reduce the natural sustain. 

[T-Bay]

I might be missing something with what you are asking but as sustain is a measure of the length of time a note sounds for, so why wouldn’t you want a better sustain characteristic? There are way too many songs to list, but to pick one - she sells sanctuary by The Cult, the bass starts with two ringing A notes so without sustain it would sound terrible. You can always mute a note if you want it to sound for less time.

[fleabag]

There are scenarios for both muting and sustain, depending on the track, shirley ?

[FinnDave]

I have yet to find a scenario in which I have required any bass to require more sustain, personally. I have never heard the song or the band quoted in the example above, so can't comment further on that.

[Cato]

I just did a quick test and was able to sustain a note at the 12th fret of the G for 20 seconds with vibrato before I got bored.

OK it's not technically pure 'one pluck and let ring' sutain but surely that's enough for any scenario?

[fleabag]

yeah that'll do nicely  - more than enough

[ambient]

It depends on the music. I use an ebow to achieve sustain.

[Norris]

The last chord of the song

[KingPrawn]

Great question. I think it’s just another tool for us to use depending on the music your producing. I find it really useful in a lot of the Fretless stuff I play. It lends itself to using sustain as the very nature of Fretless is the ambiguity of the note. The “left hand wobble”  it has its place 

[la bam]

For me its a great tool for dynamics.

Letting it ring sounds great, but also adds to a sudden stop of silence.

You may not notice if if you had decent basses. I had a usa precision which had loads of sustain, then i moved to a cheapo jazz copy and the difference was amazingly bad! The sustain couldnt even last a bar never mind any longer.

[chris_b]

22 minutes ago, la bam said:

For me its a great tool for dynamics.

+1

To the OP - In my experience a bass that sustains well usually sounds better than average on the rest of the notes.

Sustain is essential to have but that doesn't mean that you have to use it on every note, but if you need it and the bass can't sustain then it's not a good instrument.

[ambient]

42 minutes ago, KingPrawn said:

Great question. I think it’s just another tool for us to use depending on the music your producing. I find it really useful in a lot of the Fretless stuff I play. It lends itself to using sustain as the very nature of Fretless is the ambiguity of the note. The “left hand wobble”  it has its place 

Exactly, fretless is where sustain really comes to the fore. Watch a good fretless player using a nice rocking side-to-side vibrato technique to try and squeeze every last bit of sustain out of the note.

[SH73]

I don't see the point. Even songs that end with a note ringing , it's eventually faded after 5 secs or so. 

 

[Chris2112]

Sustain is one of those things that comes up time and time again in bass guitar discussion. I've never known a bass that couldn't sustain a note longer than I'd ever reasonably want to play it for. I've known some cheaper instruments have a particular decay of certain harmonics that made it sound 'weak' or as if the fundamental fades quickly, but they have been few and far between. 

[mcnach]

3 hours ago, Frank Blank said:

As an offshoot from this post, can anyone explain to me why a bass player would desire their bass, or perhaps more accurately the material their bass is made from, to have ‘sustain’? In my many years of bass playing it is not a quality I have sought from a bass nor heard in music to my knowledge. Again, am I missing out on something or am I simply a philistine with no nuance to my hearing? Could someone point out a bass line or piece of music where the bass is employing sustain? I discussed this briefly on Saturday with the chap who works on my guitars and he was as baffled by the concept as me.

 

I don't particularly desire a lot of sustain, I think... but I can think two reasons: 

1) you can always mute/deaden a string/note, but you cannot lengthen it. 

2) low sustain could be a reflection of the general build quality: not rigid enough to allow strings to vibrate...

Still, I'm not sure sustain is something generally considered much when thinking bass guitar... although other bass instruments can have sustain in spades, so why not.

[fleabag]

Strings will make a difference, natch

[Skybone]

I can see this thread going on for ages...

[xgsjx]

If you played bass in an electronica, drum n bass or dubstep band, then you'll find sustain is a very useful thing.

It's quite common in those genres for the bassist to play a note & have it last for a few bars whilst playing about with filters & other effects.  Jolly good fun, old bean.

[Delberthot]

You need some amount of sustain available, you don't just want a note to stop dead as soon as you've played it. 

Unless there's something I'm missing and sustain is something completely different? e.g. you play the note and it rings out for as long as you need it to?

If so then I'd rather have the option to use it than not have it available but unless you stick mutes or bits of sponge under the strings then I can't imagine any bass not having enough unless it was a turkey

[tonyquipment]

Depends on your style and genre

ive been in experimental bands where sustain is useful 

drone or sludge type music, long single notes rather than your typical 8th or 16th notes etc 

 

again it’s subjective 

[silverfoxnik]

7 hours ago, chris_b said:

+1

To the OP - In my experience a bass that sustains well usually sounds better than average on the rest of the notes.

Sustain is essential to have but that doesn't mean that you have to use it on every note, but if you need it and the bass can't sustain then it's not a good instrument.

+1 Chris

This is the reason I take notice of sustain when playing a bass I'm interested in buying; I want to know about it's inherent quality as an acoustic instrument before you even get to what the pick ups do..

I don't there's ever been a situation that I can recall in over 40 years of playing when using any  bass I've owned (and there have been many) where I've suddenly thought in a gigging situation:

'Oh s##t, I've just run out of sustain!'

Well, maybe the Kay bass that mum & dad bought me from Woolworths when I was 14 years old.. ☺

 

 

[leftybassman392]

It's what plucked strings do. Simple physics. In fact, strings that play very low frequencies are generally speaking thicker than strings that play higher frequencies, which means they have more mass, which means they have to dissipate more energy, which means - on a well-made instrument at least - they keep vibrating for longer. Which means more sustain.

Edit To Add: Furthermore, the thicker the string for any given frequency the greater the sustain. When discussing string gauges, we don't talk about thickness; we talk about weight.

Surely better to have it and decide for yourself when (or whether) you want to use it.

Edited January 9, 2018 by leftybassman392

[casapete]

1 hour ago, silverfoxnik said:

+1 Chris

This is the reason I take notice of sustain when playing a bass I'm interested in buying; I want to know about it's inherent quality as an acoustic instrument before you even get to what the pick ups do..

I don't there's ever been a situation that I can recall in over 40 years of playing when using any  bass I've owned (and there have been many) where I've suddenly thought in a gigging situation:

'Oh s##t, I've just run out of sustain!'

Well, maybe the Kay bass that mum & dad bought me from Woolworths when I was 14 years old.. ☺

 

 

Agreed. Although in our set there is one song which finishes on a long open E, which I let ring on

into the intro of the next song also in the same key which starts with a long keyboard intro. One 

gig a while ago I couldn’t use my active bass ( due to electrical interference for some strange reason?)

and had to use my spare P-bass replica. The note didn’t hang on quite as long and left the intro rather

empty. Isolated incident though, just saying.