"The guitar has a kind of grit and excitement possessed by nothing else."
― Brian May
Maybe I should do Fender's product photography, eh? Anyway, here's my Ed O'Brien "EOB" Sustainer Stratocaster. I actually picked up this guitar some time ago, but there was a short in the circuitry and needed a repair job after only five minutes of play. What a bummer! Rather than exchange it, I figured that the technician at Dave's Guitar would probably do a solid job at fixing it as well as checking out the rest of the guitar. I thought that would be the better move.
Co-designer Ed O'Brien, guitarist for Radiohead, helped Fender replicate a guitar to do his brand of ambient, ethereal, and orchestral style of playing. This Stratocaster features a Fernandes Sustainer neck pickup, a single-coil Duncan JB Jr. humbucking bridge pickup, and a Texas Special single-coil middle. Adorned with vintage-style hardware, the guitar's controls are unique in terms of placement on the body ― note the placement of the output jack on the bottom-side. Also, two volume controls: one for overall output, and the other works the sustainer level.
The sustainer toggles: On and off (2-way), and Fundamental, Harmonic, and Blend Switch (3-way):
Just a gorgeous guitar.
Here's a short demonstration of the perpetual sustain in a snippet of Pink Floyd's intro to Sorry from A Momentary Lapse of Reason. I spent most of the day on Saturday noodling around with it to see what range of sounds I could get out of it ― it's an amazing instrument! I'll have to record what this thing sounds like when combined with my Walrus SLO multi-layer reverb pedal ― super spacey!
All images © 2022 Mike McDowell