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hey my lil fuzzie friends, I've been absent from this world but I'm back!!!! I want to be able to manipulate feedback into solo - the power of essentially tuning your feedback to notes and using that in a droning fashion and in such a beautiful way. ah to harness it and dare i say control it before it becomes too ear shattering. I believe the tool i am looking for is an e-bow but can I achieve the sound without one? I have tried volume swells which definitely are closer in the right direction but not quite exactly what I am trying to achieve. the sound i am looking for is perfectly exemplified in these two songs ( and i believe both were achieved with an ebow...maybe i need one or maybe yall can help get there without one)

goddamn cockballs i cant embed the youtube vids but it is the feedback solo at the end of drown by smashing pumpkins and ganobu-ki by boris after the long bass and drums interlude.

it is the e-bow it is it is but any tips/tricks on getting that sound without one. Maybe a volume pedal?

Ebows are cheap used, any other way is less controllable. maybe a volume pedal and a really really high gain fuzz?

I'm pretty sure Drown is straight natural feedback by the sound. Doesn't sound like Ebow to me--Ebow sounds distinct from feedback. Rat into a compressor, particularly Dynacomp flavored, can sound a bit Ebow-ish with near infinite sustain, but not so feedback-y in character.

I think you just need the right pickups to do it with. Ever since I bought my mustang and slapped a lace sensor in it, I've been able to get that long sustained harmonic feedback Billy always produced. I can nail it with other guitars now as well, I think it is just a heightened awareness/familiarity with your gear. James Iha did use the ebow a lot though post Siamese Dream.

Gone Fission wrote:I'm pretty sure Drown is straight natural feedback by the sound.

I agree.


For Drown it sounds like an oscillating fuzz into delay.

My usual strategy: Dirty amp, fuzz pedal, single coils, volume pedal. I wouldn't call the noises I produce 'guitar solos though'
An ebow creates more of an evenly 'singing' sustain, and doesnt have that unpredictable element of chaos that I personally like. It also prefers humbuckies, and I'm a strictly single coils guy, so...

Jazzmaster/jag type tremolos help a lot I feel. I find that even subtle trem vibrations can really help the feedback control, especially combined with a volume pedal as said

Boss FB-2?

DarkAxel wrote:Jazzmaster/jag type tremolos help a lot I feel. I find that even subtle trem vibrations can really help the feedback control, especially combined with a volume pedal as said

Excellent point. Real feedback can be very frequency specific, so a bit of trem-arm or finger vibrato can help grab a note that will feed and ride it into a note that's tougher to get going. There are limits, but it'll help. Being fussy about speaker placement in the room and where you stand relative to the speaker can also help--you want to avoid room nulls and encourage the right frequencies by being simpatico with their wavelengths. PITA, but if you really want to go to town, worth messing with.

Just wanted to chime in again fo a sec...

I also suspect that my jazzmaster is particularly suited to get some feedback going, the bridge/tail design is a big part of the guitar's mojo imo.

I've also had good feedback from an es-335. With semi-hollow body'd gtrs you probably want to go a little easier on the gain though, things might get a little ovebearing and less easy to manipulate otherwhise. Stuffing t-shirts or whatever in the f-holes is an old damping trick that works quite good to tame the feedback a little.

The Boss FB-2: Others may dissagree, but I wasn't impressed by its so called feedbacking qualities

This is probably going to sound a little pedestrian, but here's what I've been doing to sort of mimic feedback in the low volume settings that I get to play in (headphones, so I don't bother wife/kid/neighbors). I keep a delay that can self-oscillate (currently an old Arion SAD-1) in the chain with repeat time as low as it can go and the other controls dimed (so that as soon as I kick it on, it starts oscillating). Then, when I'm playing something, I ride the pedal as I play, so I kick it on after I play a note to let the note get eaten up by the self-oscillation/feedback, then kick it back off when I want to go back into more notes. The good part about it is that the feedback ends up being pretty much in tune with you, as long as you can deal with kicking the pedal on and off constantly as you're playing and feeling like you're going to get some sort of repetitive strain injury on your foot.

^Awesome idea.

All some great ideas so far. I unfortunately do not have a trem arm on my jaguar baritone and I do have humbuckers which helps. This delay oscillating idea sounds very interesting early in the chain. I think especially if it is buffered so the feedback decays more naturally. I think I need to mess around with this a delay just past the verge of oscillation into dirt into a dark longer delay.

Gone Fission wrote: Being fussy about speaker placement in the room and where you stand relative to the speaker can also help--you want to avoid room nulls and encourage the right frequencies by being simpatico with their wavelengths. PITA, but if you really want to go to town, worth messing with.

Parametric EQ also helps with this.

Ebow can sound quite like actual feedback if you use very hot pickups and learn to use it.

It is not so much the investment in "gear" with it - but in time.

Few people learn to actually use it.

I've been abusing one for over twenty years. Mine has been back to the mothership multiple times to have a bad switch (they don't last forever and I'm rough on things) replaced - no charge, and they continue to rehouse my old (out of production) black 90s high gain hellbeast that is much, much more feedback like than the modern ones (at the cost of you *MUST* learn to control it).

The originals have a completely different sound as well - much more mellow but suited for PUs of the time.

If you want that sound, nothing really gets close.

I also love the Boss Feedbacker - the one in the big, fancy modern multis that includes octave feedback and a ton more control It sings very, very close to a real amp if you tune it for what you're using and what you want, so much so that I rarely use my little 5" speaker uke amp next to the PU trick any more. That also produces "real" feedback at conversational volume.