How to get feedback

Kalimna

Greetings folks,
Apologies if this isnt the right spot in the forum (i dont normaly frequent the 'Technique' section.....) to ask this, but how does one acheive musical (and to an extent, controllable) feedback?
Assuming I dont have a feedback-generating pedal (and Im considering finding a used one somewhere), is it really just a case of turning the amp up and standing in the right spot in front of the amp?
Is there a particular area on the fretboard that helps?
HB over SC pickups?
Semi-acoustic over solid-body?
High gain distortion instead of the amps' own crunchy overdrive? (Its a 25-ish watt valve amp, btw)

Thoughts and advice welcome, cheers,
Adam

Roland

Volume is the key component, but it doesn’t have to be deafening. Try touching the head of your guitar to the edge of the cabinet.

Kalimna

Ahh, OK, I'll try that, thanks.

Grunfeld

Boss FB-2

Works at any volume.

One trick pony but bloody good trick.

Kalimna

Am I correct in saying that  the older DF-2 is effectively the same pedal?

merlin

Grunfeld said:

Boss FB-2

Works at any volume.

One trick pony but bloody good trick.

Digitech Freqout being another possibility. 

DulcetJones

Volume, as mentioned above and proximity to the speaker(s).  I can have my amp volume fairly high while I play a song standing 10 or more feet away and off to the left or right of the speaker, play a high note and approach the amp directly in front of the speaker as the note sustains.   Hearing protection is advised.

viz

Use a dirty box and a wah wah

Grunfeld

Kalimna said:

Am I correct in saying that  the older DF-2 is effectively the same pedal?

Sort of.  I'd say from an audience perspective they are not going to notice. 

I definitely prefer the newer FB-2.  It sounds more like natural feedback than the older DF-2 -- but only because as players we know what that sounds and feels like. 

iirc the older DF-2 samples your note, whereas the newer FB-2 does some clever filtering and applies gain to it.  That could be bollocks, someone with a  bigger brain than me might chime in. 

But the big difference between the pedals is that the distortion side of the orange DF-2 is distinctive, and I'd say rubbish, but if you like that sound it certainly does it.  Whereas the boost side of the silver FB-2 is quite useful.  When I had the pedal on the board it would be my main boost and then you could just hold the pedal down for the occasional feedback effect. 

Kalimna

Cheers for the advice folks. Im popping into GuitarGuitar today so will checkout an FB2
 and Freqout if i have chance.

Adam

bbill335

Ebow!!

Heel

You don’t need any more gear. Turn up your amp, get close to it - point your guitar at the amp - and experiment with different pitches. Use fretted techniques and totally unfretted. Please don’t buy a pedal - that’s not technique, that’s a cheat. 

Grangousier

I've managed to get playable feedback via my recording monitors at relatively low levels. Not reliably - I mean, I'd find it quite difficult to dial in on command and I've not really tried, but when it happened it was totally useable, sustaining feedback, using both humbuckers and a piezo pickup driving a VG99. Weirdly, I suspect the piezo might feed back better (purer fundamental frequency - neck pickup works better for me for similar reasons)

The recording space is very snug, so that might have something to do with it (in a larger room or on stage, you'd need a lot more volume to achieve the same thing. There's also something about the total area of speaker moving the air relative to the size of the room - in my cupboard I can achieve with 6" monitor speakers what I'd need multiple 12" speakers to do on stage. 

First of all, what's happening is that the sound from the speaker is causing the strings to vibrate, which comes out of the speaker and causes the strings to vibrate. Etc. When you get musical feedback the result is quite different from using a pedal or an elbow (or a sustainer pickup) - you'll find you get feedback at particular frequencies (or multiple frequencies - all the Cs and some of the Gs, for example), while holding the guitar at a particular angle. Then if you move forwards or backwards or change the angle you're holding the guitar the fed back note will fade in and out and often a different note will feed back. 

This is how Robert Fripp did his famous fed back part on Heroes - after some experimentation, he marked the different notes on the floor and walked between them. He uses a sustainer pickup now, though. Where it clicked for me was hearing the BBC Session version of Chance Meeting by Roxy Music:



(Guitar starts at about 0:45)

It's a totally different experience from sustainer pickups and eBows (which use electromagnets to vibrate the string - essentially a pickup in reverse)  and pedals (in my experience something that generates a sound that sounds like feedback rather than being feedback in itself). When the note kicks in and basically starts playing itself, it's kind of like the guitar has come alive and is fighting back. 

Anyway, although gain (distortion) helps a lot at lower volumes, it's perfectly possible to get that sort of feedback at lower gain but higher volumes. As far as I can tell, it all has to do with the amount of air being moved relative to the size of the room and the resonant frequencies of the amp and the room. Something else that will help might be compression (and, thinking about it, it might be the compression in high gain that helps rather than the fuzziness).

If you can, set up the amp with a lot of space, turn it up, then move around the space playing different notes on the low E string (although the feedback will work on all the strings, that seems to respond best). When you find something that works, try moving in and out of the feedback zone and put a bit of masking tape on the floor parallel to the direction you're holding the guitar neck and write the note on it. 

Personally, I'm not scientific enough to do it, I just make the most of it when musical feedback happens accidentally, but if you want to that's what it takes. Good luck in your journey of experimentation, and I hope your family forgive you eventually. 

This long rambling screed on musical feedback brought to you by the wonders of too much coffee. 

Grunfeld

Heel said:

You don’t need any more gear. Turn up your amp, get close to it - point your guitar at the amp - and experiment with different pitches. Use fretted techniques and totally unfretted. Please don’t buy a pedal - that’s not technique, that’s a cheat. 

@Heel -- So how do you solve the problem of reliably creating feedback, exactly how you want it, every time you perform the song, when you're playing on small stages with crappy sound and you can't turn your amp up enough to do what you suggest because you'll ruin the sound mix? 

ICBM

Kalimna said:

Am I correct in saying that  the older DF-2 is effectively the same pedal?

No, it's completely different even though it can generate 'feedback'. I prefer the DF-2, but that may be because I've been using one for about thirty years and I'm very used to its quirks and the special tricks you need to do to get it to work at its best - there's a quite a learning curve.

The DF-2's output is actually not feedback at all, it's a monophonic synth oscillator which locks onto the last frequency it senses and then sustains it for as long as you hold the pedal down - it's completely separate from the guitar.

Grunfeld said:

@Heel -- So how do you solve the problem of reliably creating feedback, exactly how you want it, every time you perform the song, when you're playing on small stages with crappy sound and you can't turn your amp up enough to do what you suggest because you'll ruin the sound mix?  

That's exactly why the DF-2 is so good - because it's completely synthetic, it's not volume dependent at all... in fact, it can be used silently on stage if you want. I used mine exactly like that, to get 'feedback' at acoustic-gig levels with the guitar going through the PA.

Roland

Grunfeld said:

Heel said:

You don’t need any more gear. Turn up your amp, get close to it - point your guitar at the amp - and experiment with different pitches. Use fretted techniques and totally unfretted. Please don’t buy a pedal - that’s not technique, that’s a cheat. 

@Heel -- So how do you solve the problem of reliably creating feedback, exactly how you want it, every time you perform the song, when you're playing on small stages with crappy sound and you can't turn your amp up enough to do what you suggest because you'll ruin the sound mix? 

Practice. The question was about technique, not “how can I simulate natural feedback”. Gary Moore used walk about the stage during soundcheck, and put a chalk mark on the stage when the best position was. For those of us who don’t have the luxury of a big stage and soundcheck the headstock on cabinet technique works well. 

PolarityMan

The angle of your guitar to the cab can have a pretty drastic effect. Its prob room dependant to an extent but I find in our practice space standing so the guitar isnt face on to the cab gives much better feedback.

maltingsaudio

Thing to remember about feedback it is frequency dependant. You can get it at any frequency so if you want  a consistent feedback tone which is reproduceable I would suggest a GEQ pedal which you dial in the frequency you want to reproduce and just boost that one frequency by about 10db on it. 

Funkfingers

IMO, volume and valve saturation is the best route.

A correctly set up Sustainiac device works at any sound pressure level but always sounds slightly artificial. (Think of it as a six string e-Bow or Gizmotron.) The downside is that the host guitar will need a fair amount of modification to house the PCB. 

maltingsaudio said:

Thing to remember about feedback it is frequency dependant. You can get it at any frequency so if you want  a consistent feedback tone which is reproduceable I would suggest a GEQ pedal which you dial in the frequency you want to reproduce and just boost that one frequency by about 10db on it. 

This is what Frank Zappa used to do with his Performance Stratocaster. (The one on the cover of the album Guitar.) Instead of passive treble roll-off tone controls, the guitar had two Seymour Duncan Midrange EQ Prototype active cut/boost devices. Zappa would spend part of the soundcheck tuning the boosters into the appropriate frequencies for the venue. 

The Midrange EQ Prototype is so named because it never became a long-term production line item. The nearest modern equivalent is the EMG-VMC.

LastMantra

Heel said:

You don’t need any more gear. Turn up your amp, get close to it - point your guitar at the amp - and experiment with different pitches. Use fretted techniques and totally unfretted. Please don’t buy a pedal - that’s not technique, that’s a cheat. 

I agree, basically. I find some sustain, fuzz, compression etc can be used to tease out more feedback at lower volumes. A fuzz factory even. If you want crazy crank up the feedback on a delay/mod pedal too 

LastMantra

viz said:

Use a dirty box and a wah wah

I'm tempted to Google that sentence just to see what happens