My experience with Fernandes Sustainer guitars

I haven't blogged in a while - mostly because there's nothing that I really needed to post on here. I use this mostly as my own reference and I doubt very much that anyone is actually reading these - I just haven't done or played anything lately that needed to be documented in a blog pots.

All that changed fairly recently when I got to play with the Sustainer system from Fernandes. Because of reasons that I will go into later, I had to do a lot of research and I found that the information was hard to come by and sometimes not even in English. I needed a place to document everything I had researched and what better place to do that than here.

Note: I will not go into what a sustainer is, or what it does...this is assumed knowledge if you're reading this.

There are a few things that I do have to get out of the way, as they affected my decisions in a big way and may affect yours. These points are from my perspective, and may not apply to you:

• Generally, it is difficult to find a tech that can repair a sustainer driver or board. The reason is because unless a tech has previous experience with the sustainer or sustainer-like systems, there is a ton of work to be done to understand the system enough to repair it

• Spare parts are generally hard to come by. Most of the Fernandes Sustainer systems are sold out of Japan, and most of them that are on the 2nd hand market today have been already discontinued. If you manage to find them, I think you will discover that they are not cheap

OK so my story begins with wanting to purchase a Fernandes guitar with the Sustainer system, obviously. I had wanted one because there was no other solution for simulated feedback when playing with something like Amplitube or HX Stomp. Right off the bat, I learned that there are multiple models of Fernandes Sustainers. To date I have had hands on experience with 2 of them, but I will list them all here (that I know of anyway):

1. Sustainer Lite (these are usually offered with drivers that can act as pickups)

2. "Full" Sustainer with a driver that cannot act as a pickup

3. "Full" Sustainer with a driver that CAN act as a pickup (this comes as a single coil or humbucker version)

4. "Full" Sustainer with new sustainer driver (as of 2020) that is a fraction of the size of a pickup (FR SUS II or Sustainer II)

Most people outside of Japan will be purchasing from the second hand market, and hence will only have types 1 to 3 commonly available to them. I’ll include type 4 in the discussion on drivers below, however I do not have any hands on experience with them. There are differences between each one, and in turn considerations when purchasing. I will do my best to go through them here.

Driver types

The driver is the part of the Sustainer system that vibrates the strings, in conjunction with the bridge pickup (usually a humbucker) picking up those vibrations. It turns out there are multiple driver types that have been offered over the years. The following are the types that I am familiar with:

Driver with no pickup function

I think that this is the oldest of the bunch, as it is usually seen installed as stock in the older Fernandes guitars. This component serves one purpose and that is to act as a driver. When it is not ON (and acting as a driver), it is doing nothing.

Driver with active pickup

These come in 2 flavours: a humbucker sized and a single coil sized. I have only had experience with the single coil sized one, but essentially they both have exactly the same functionality.

They differ from the previous type because it is not only a driver but also a pickup. When the Sustainer function is turned OFF this driver can act as a neck pickup. When the Sustainer is turned ON, it switches to driver mode and works in conjunction with the bridge pickup to produce infinite sustain. Note that it can never act as both driver and pickup at the same time - when acting as a driver it always has to act with the bridge pickup in a type of feedback loop.

There are a few variations of these pickups - ones with pole pieces, screws, active pickups, passive pickups. They all must vary from one another but I don't have enough experience with them to do a meaningful comparison here.

Sustainer II

I’m only including this here for completeness - I don’t actually have any experience with it. I am not sure when Fernandes introduced this model but it looks pretty cool.

From what I can tell they have managed to shrink the size of the driver to be almost the size of a fret. In this picture it can be seen in between the Seymour Duncan pickup and the 24th fret. This essentially allows for a choice of neck pickups as the driver no longer occupies the neck pickup route.

Sustainer Lite vs "Full"

As someone looking to purchase their first Sustainer guitar, the difference between a Sustainer Lite and Full may not be obvious. You can see from pictures of the guitars that a Full sustainer has 2 switches to operate (along with an optional knob) and the Lite system has only 1 switch (also usually with a knob).

The controls on the Full system:

1. ON/OFF switch - self explanatory.

2. HARMONIC/FUNDAMENTAL/MIX mode - This would be the modes of the sustainer. Fundamental would just sustain the note, harmonic would emphasise a particular harmonic of the fretted note (5th, octave above, etc) and the mix is obviously a blend of the two previous modes.

3. Sustainer Intensity knob - To control how strong the sustainer effect was.

For the Sustainer Lite, it would be per above except without component #2 (mode switch).

My 1st Sustainer Guitar

So far, pretty straightforward right? I thought so...initially. I decided that I'd be open to getting a guitar with the Sustainer Lite, as I don't really need the fancy harmonic mode (I've got the Digitech Freqout pedal for that, which gives me more control). I also thought that a simpler system would be less likely to fail.

I bought a Fernandes FR-65s that ended up being my first Fernandes guitar, and also my first Sustainer equipped guitar. FR in the name stands for Fernandes Revolver, and the "s" in the model name denotes the sustainer onboard.

Unfortunately the guitar I received was damaged. The sustainer would work intermittently and when it wasn't working, it was emitting a high pitched squeal. I opened up the control cavity to check what was going on. Prior to that, I had already done some research and I knew that the switches on a Full Sustainer (ON/OFF and HARMONIC/FUNDAMENTAL/MIX) were actually soldered onto the board. I expected for the Sustainer Lite to be similar, but with only the one switch. I was expecting there still to be one board housed in the same control cavity where the switch was installed.

Of course, this was not the case. Revelation number 1: on my example of Sustainer Lite there was not 1 but 2 boards. The switch was soldered onto a PCB, but there was a second PCB that was housed underneath the battery compartment.

Referring to the photo below of a Sustainer Lite circuit that has been removed, you can see what I'm talking about:

Now, I don't imagine this circuit to be too different from the full sustainer board, but it clearly a different layout than the "Full" sustainer board. That means that any troubleshooting advice that you find online that applies to the "Full" sustainer boards may not apply to this board - or at the very least you will have to figure out where the equivalent components are.

Another implication - if something fails with the Sustainer lite (as it has in my case) and you want to buy a Sustainer kit (FSK-401 or FSK-101) to replace it, it will NOT be a drop in replacement and there is a very big chance that the board will not fit within the main control cavity.

Luckily, because the seller was able to prove that the guitar was working prior to sending, the post office offered a refund. All is well that ends well, but I definitely learned my lesson: No more Sustainer Lites!

My 2nd Sustainer Guitar

Not getting discouraged, I was determined to scratch that Sustainer itch....and finally did, with the FR-95s.

Now this one had a Full sustainer, and it is the 18V variant. It takes 2 x 9V batteries, which is fine since I have rechargeable ones that I can recharge with a USB cable and not even have to remove from the guitar. It does have some other problems that I am slowly working through (definitely putting my limited luthier skills to the test) but I will write about that in a separate post. It's one of the earlier models, as evidenced by the 18V, and type of driver.

The sustainer this time works flawlessly and is actually a joy to play with. And you know what? I actually do use that HARMONIC/FUNDAMENTAL/MIX switch now that it is available.

Here's a peek at the internals:

There are 2 trimpots, which means that this is again a different board to the one offered by Fernandes later in the 90s (and in kit form). Those later boards are supposed to have 4 trimpots. However the PCB is housed completedly in this cavity, which means that if I need to ever replace it with a kit version, it is likely that it will fit....let's hope it doesn't get to that.

The 4 trimpots on the newer boards are as follows:

1. FGC-Output control for the neck pickup (driver). Set it to match the output of the middle or bridge pickup.

2. VBC- (vibration control) Turn clockwise to increase the sustainers attack, this will also shorten battery life.

3. AGC- Sustainer gain control. Set to 10 if possible, if you get feedback turn it counter-

clockwise until the feedback stops.

4. MBC-Balance control- usually set to 0. Balances the output between the standard and the

harmonic mode.

Without removing the board in my guitar to further inspect, I can't tell what those 2 trimpots are, but I can see from the description that the FGC trimpot does not apply here since the driver is not also a pickup.

I'm still tinkering with this guitar so I have no doubt that I will come up against more issues that need to be solved and things that need to be learned. I will post what I learn here in the future as well, hopefully.

Edit: I have looked on the other side of the board and of course....it is not labelled. We might have to figure it out by adjusting the trimpot and seeing what it does.