Electro-Harmonix Black Finger Sustainer

Read the other reviews.

Very good. Most reviews are similar. Nice warm sound. Good for direct recording too. It's basically a tube preamp with a compressor circuit. It shouldn't noticebaly change your signal much unless you run the preamp input all the way high, and than you will get tube crunch sounds.

It has a few annoying issues. First, it has two modes of operation. I have not found much use yet for the other "sqsh" setting yet. The only other problem I have with it is that it lacks a true on/off switch and requires being unplugged. RTFM there are some tips in there that explain what settings work best togethor.

I use this with a power tube amp and a fender strat.

It seems very delicate. Also, it does not have an on/off switch, which I find kind of odd, you have to unplug it to turn it off. Also, be gentle with it, it has tubes.

I don't know, probably sucks, but I'll give them the benefit of the doubt here.

I play mostly blues guitar, sometimes blues-metal riffs, rock and hard rock. If it were stolen, I'd probably buy another one, or find something to replace it. I don't know about the other tube pedals ehx makes but this one makes the most tonal sense to me. These pedals are probably all tube preamps with some additional circuits. If you run a distortion box into this you will get all the benefits of a tube preamp and a compressor.

I think it's a bit expensive, despite how much I use it. It is very fragile looking, won't take much abuse. Playing out with this, I can't imagine how it wouldn't get broken. This is mainly for studio work. It is nice because it is small if you have limited space. Lack of power on/off switch is annoying. It has alot of uses but fragile construction.

Not technically hard to use. It has a few knobs. What is hard is to get the exact sound you want out of it ;-) 5 knobs has quite alot of combinations.

This is a great box. Well worth it, if you are looking for a very warm tone. Doesn't add much noise at all to your signal. Great deal for the cost. I use this in a rack that loops through my PC. It has really done some serious beefing up of my sound through this rig.

Beat's me I just got it. Hopefully it will last a long time.

Dunno, never dealt with them.

I bought this box for an odd idea I had, and I am happy it worked so well! I bought this to use in between my CD and a small analog mixer. I also play guitar, and plan to use it with that. But the purpose was to see how it could 'warm up' my CDs. Wow! It took a long while to get the sound just right, but my oh my, my CDs sound so f**$@ good now. I dunno if this is technically the right way to use this box, but it sure as hell works! It takes quite a bit of tweaking to get the sound just right! I wanted to buy a Paia kit but I'd probably kill myself putting it togethor. For a $100 more I got this.

I haven't even tried it with my guitar yet. And I bet it is going to sound very sweet.

Easy to use.

79 Les Paul Deluxe, US Tele and an 04 Burns Steer. It's not noisy and the sound is fantastic into a Pod or a Cornford or a JC120. Best pedal I ever bought in 26 years.

I'm troubled by what i read regarding EH and reliability. I have an English Muffin, a Stereo Memory Man and a Guitar Micro Synth all of which work perfectly.

I try and play quite a few styles and avoid many more. I've been playing on and off for 26 years and I've tried numerous guitar compressors and they bored me. I've been recording for 10 years and use 16 studio compressors from TLA, Drawmer, Dbx, Behringer and Joe Meek and found plugging compressors from MXR, Boss, Aphex, Digitech, ZVEX, Marshall, Demeter, Homebrew etc has switched me off. They've all been shite. Dull and expensive toss.

I doubt I'll be using it with a dynamic microphone but I like the idea of trying. I'm sure the pedal purists with bad EH experiences suspect the Black Finger of being another valve-laden gimmick but to my ears it's beautiful, versatile and blows me away sonically and tonally. I'd nearly given up on my search for a compressor that I liked but tried one out. If it was stolen I would definately find the thief and relocate my pedal before writing a song about it and all the really cruel things I did to the thieving scum. I've had it for a week now and I dread it breaking as it sounds so good and I have a 'once bitten twice shy' policy with studio electronica and if it breaks before it's second birthday I won't be replacing it but I would try and repair it.

Compressors in general are tricky devices, and like other compressors, the Black Finger will take a little while to find the sweet spots. The catch is, it will probably sound different degrees of great all along the way.

I love it. I've only used a few compressors but I like this one the best.

I've owned two, and the intermittant static that has already been writen about happens on BOTH OF THEM. It drives me NUTS!!!!!

The customer support crew at Electro Harmonix can lick my balls!!!! I actually sent my warantee card in with the original receipt and everything like a good little guitar player and they sent my unit back to me saying that there was nothing wrong with it. Oooh I was so pissed. I had gone to great trouble to record the sound and give a detailed explanation of when and how it happened. And I KNOW they know what the problem is because A LOT of people have the exact same problem. They probably plugged it in for 5 minutes and didn't hear the noise and packed it back up. They CHOSE to be lazy and not to get to the bottom of my problem. The time and money I spent in shipping them a broken product was a complete waste. And at the end of the day, I have a broken compressor that I can't use to record. AAAAH so mad! And in case someone thinks that maybe it is really user error and that they were correct when they said there is nothing wrong with the unit, trust me, I'm not an inexperienced newbie at this stuff.

well, like I said, I love the sound but mine are COMPLETELY USELESS to me so I'd give it a zero. To have $300 invested in 2 useless compressors

Not so easy to get the hang of but definatley worth it. Pay attention to the pre gain and compression not the post gain as this is the major interaction. I use the post gain as the leveling device between bypass and the effect on. I use full compression and just regulate the pregain for tone that I want. This gives me the kind of sublte tone altering bring your sound forward effect I am looking for if I use the lamp and normal settings.

This thing is great that sublte pollished sound that realy makes you stand out. I use this right before my BBE Sonic Maximizer. If I could only have two effects that would be it (crazy you say...they arent like real effects eh...well they make your tone great and I would rather sound great with no drastic effect than sound not great with any noticable effect ) I dont care what you play if you stand next to someone with this and a BBE sonic maximizer in their chain and all you have is some stomps and an amp then you will notice a huge difference.

Well tubes alluminum housing and wallwart ehm not a fultone but hey sounds great and not exactly made out of cardboard either.

N/A

Super go get one of these...or dont hey its your loss and its ok if I have better tone than some people.

pretty easy to use...manual is the front side of a piece of paper.

has a great balance...not a very hot signal so not a lot of noise created. i have a '65 fender twin that i use w/ an xotic r/c boost, an xotic a/c boost and the blackfinger plugged into a '71 gretsch tennessean. w/ the addition of the bfinger i have the most impressive tone i've had in nearly 20 years.

seems strong.

have not had to deal w/ the company.

cant say enough good things about this unit. i've tried other compressor's and have been disappointed every time. for $185 you can buy a very nice, great quality compressor.

Really easy to use. Ive only owned it for a very short while, but I allready love it because it doesn't sound like a standard compressor. Standard compressors don't sound musical at all, they sound cold. This thing colors your sound greatly. All you do is adjust the knobs untill you find a setting that you like.

I have a mexican strat with a Fender Blues Deluxe 12 inch speaker amp. Its not noisy at all, but it doesn't sound good when used before my Tubeman distortion. What I mean is that it colors the sound so much before the distortion that the distortion ends up sounding wide and almost fuzzy instead of direct and punchy.
The Black Finger is mostly for clean channel sounds. It has the greatest clean sound. I liken it to the way a tube amp sounds completely cranked up on the clean channel. Imagine, if you can, a recording of a woman loudly stroking all the notes of a harp faster and faster. The notes all clash together and it sounds much much louder than it really is. Thats kind of how this pedal sounds.
You can hear a kind of distortion if you really turn up the pre gain, but I almost wouldn't characterize it as distortion because it is so subtle. Its almost like a white noise that ends up warbling and shifting with the different combinations of notes that are hit in unison. Much like a cranked tube amp on clean, when you play two notes in a chord, you hear a very beautiful colored clashing sound.
I can imagine that some people wouldn't like this sound because it is an almost vintage old kind of sound, kind of like a old 60's television show themesong. Even with the television turned down, the songs were created to sound like the speaker on the television is cranked to 11. Like when I Love Lucy comes on at 2 am and you think to yourself, "jeese, thats so freaking loud! I have to turn that down because its going to wake everyone up!!!", then you check the volume and its hardly turned up at all. Its hard to define, but thats what this pedal is doing. This isn't compression that makes your notes sing like blood spewing Metallica solos. Its more like playing a song and somehow its coming out of an old record player in the form of a classic, lo fi recording. I am referring maily to the "squash" setting because this effect is the most extreme setting and the one I like the most.
I have noticed that this pedal has a bit of a boost in the low frequecies because if im playing a fingerpicking tune and then hit a low string, it seems to overpower all the other higher notes (once again, much like a tube amp turned way up on clean). Im playing it through a tube amp, so maybe Im just getting too much tube sound. I still have to mess with it a bit more.
Ive never been fond of compression for guitar. I have a Dbx 160a thats great for drums and bass, but thats mostly for a "limiting effect." The Black Finger is a much much different kind of thing. I almost wouldn't catagorize it as a compressor because it does so much more to the sound. I don't step on it for compression, I step on it because I want to sound like an old Bing Crosby record or something. Once again Im using the most extreme settings. I imagine you could dial in very little effect if you wanted to, but where is the fun in that.
Im using in signal chain, right before my Whammy pedal. I think that this would sound good used with a microphone. I love the sound of a miked amp, but my amp is just too loud.

I haven't had enough time with it, but I think I can depend on it because I don't take my stuff anywhere. I don't know who these people are that can afford backups for all thier stuff. I guess we all can't be U2.

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I would give it a 9 overall, but thats just because I know if I got ahold of a five thousand dollar tube compressor, it would probably sound amazing. I play mostly The Smiths,Sonic Youth, Nine Inch Nails kind of stuff, interspesed with thoughtfull tunes. Ive been playing guitar for about 20 years. I have a drum machine, a bunch of pedals, a bass guitar, a drumset etc.
The way the bass notes way overpower the high notes is what I don't like at this moment. I know that is what compressors do, but this does that a bit too much, but I guess I need more time to mess with it. I really have to watch how hard I pluck the low strings, or that will be all I hear. It may just be the settings im using and the fact that I have the compression turned to 10, but I think it would help to have a parametric eq placed before this just to suck out a little bit of the low frequecy honk.
I don't imagine this thing would work well for drums although I haven't tried. Im sure it would sound unique, but the compression curve probably wouldn't be fast or smooth enough for a sudden snare sound.
I wish it had a parametric eq on it so the user could adjust how much "ducking" effect the bass notes have.

Two 12AX7s. Controls Pre Gain, Post Gain, and Compress rotaries. Then there's LAMP/LED and NORM/SQUASH selectors.

I own several studio compressors and at first I missed the traditional controls (attack/release etc). I can see now however why they made it like it is; it's dead dead easy to use when you know it. Basiclly its got to dynamic settings and two voicings. Which for your average guitaist is probably enough anyway lol.

I have Mex Tele and Jap Strat guitars both modified. I have Fender Pro Junior and Orange AD30TC.

When I bought it I wanted to make recording/mixing easier and guessed that it would live it my cupboard inbetween.

I tried it with my old amp in the studio (Marshall 6100 into closed 2x12) and nearly cried because it seem to have no positive influence whatever. Then I tried my little Pro Junior and was suddenly impressed. I had the amp set on about 4 with the ECC83 starting to fizz. The Blackfinger was set to NORM/LAMP with 2/3 compression, pre on full, and post to suit volume. It seemed to pull it's output together acoustically, it was excellent. Maybe it was EQing the signal a bit and maybe it was the room but it seemed to change the imaging. I was using two mike and the results were improved by about 10%. So it likes open back cabs. It also improved my bass recording by about the same.

I think its fair to say that these improvements might be down to boost I dialled in but I do think theres something in it.

One things for sure this pedal isn't just about dynamic control. I've seen the *.wav of its output on guitar and let me tell you it adds all sorts of shit to the signal. Someone said "gooey" below and it is. My AD30 gets fuller and hotter with this on boost in a useable kinda way. I also use SQUASH with the Pro Junior all the time for practicing.

Cons

I think the guitar drive (turn compress to zero) is average.
Its not an LA2A and I've had no luck with vocals.

Fine all good. Though i've only had it a year.

Unknown

I like this product and I'm glad I bought it. If it was nicked I'd buy another. At the end of the day compression can kill a recording if overused and you know that most people don't understand how it works anyway. This is a valve tone colourer with some dynamic controls and it does that job well enough for me to bother to write my first review. I'd love to try it with a 65 Super Reverb and I reckon anyone could get something out of it. And if you care about how the drums fit into the mix then you'll find a use for it for sure. So maybe it is a studio tool after all.

Five knobs, tru bypass, two 12ax7 tubes, and comes with ac adaptor.
Two knobs serve as modes of preselected compressor operation.
One page manual which is useful but if you have never use a compressor you might catch up on your reading to really now how to use it best.

I use a Blackbeauty Les Paul Custom with a Marshall Valvestate head/Cabinet 100 watts, since my main amp is in repair. I tried this pedal directly to the amp. No noise other than the natural noise form any amp. With this pedal you do get great compressed sound, improve your gain/crunch and get notes to sound full and separate. However BE CAREFUL and BEFORE ORDERING ONE OF THIS TAKE INTO ACCOUNT THAT THERE HAS BEEN COMPLAINS ABOUT ANNOYING STATIC SOUNDS FROM MALFUNCTIONING UNITS. AND IF YOU LIVE OUTSIDE THE US.A THAT IS A BIG BUMMER.
I have been playing for ocer 15 years and I play MELODIC ROCK AND METAL. There is another great option instead of this pedal so check my review on the Aphex Punch Factory which is the pedal I am currently using. It hgas more note definition than the BFinger. However if you get one of this working perfecly then you might be satisfy. However the Aphex is so much adaptable to acustics sound on the same guitar setup you use for distortion sounds .There is a stagged too much compress sound you might experience with the BFinger and with the Aphex you get away with playing freely from good crunch and better define riffs/lead into great breathing yet define clear acustic chords and clean leads. It is far superior in that way but if you only want Distortion purely then I bet you skipped this las paragraph. I am generous and to do justice to this great company a nine is giving eventhough the price is high and still my pedal came with this annoying static sound which comes and goes when turned off only to retuyrn a feww second later when you are playintg. Is a shame I thougt this would be my ultimate compressor. BUt I got justice done with the Aphex Punch Factory.

Ahh. If your BFinger came functioning as it was intende to do then I assume it would realiable. The box feels solid and the tubes are protected. However be careful not dripping sweat on those hot tubes!!
I am not using mine as stated before.

YEs they answer my help call via email. But the solution was to send this pedal all the way to the U.SA. Dont you think aNOTHER way could be invented to assist customer overseas. No opinion on their support.

I play melodic rock and metal. YEs if it works without annoying static then yes it could help anybody playing this styles. On blues i cant comment since it aint my style.
Been playing over 12 years. I own the Clone Chorus by Electro-harmonix which is maybe the best chorus pedal out in the market and for its price it cant be beaten. I also use in loop form a Vox Wha 847
A Mxr Flanger(in loop also) a Whammy pedal (yeah in loop this tone sucker beast!!)
ANd in the end part of my chain an Aphex Exciterpedal and the Aphex PunchFactory. (the chain goes Les paul- CLone Chorus- Loooper pedal-(loop Vox/MXR/Whammy) then directly into Aphex Exciter then at last the Punch Factory Compressor into my Marshall. ALso I ve extensivley experimented o nwhich cables to use that give me the best clear, mid low definition and crunch possible.

If you know the rudimentary compressor controls, then you should be able to work this.
Not as many knobs as on say, the Alesis I've used before, but it's superior in sound.
Compress - comression level
Level LED
Post-gain - output level
Lamp/LED - changes the light source for the optical attenuator. The lamp has a slow attack and less compression on treble frequencies, the LED has a fast attack and a flatter frequency adjustment.
Sqsh/norm - By my reckoning, this is a ratio type. With squash being high ratio, and normal as normal. But the manual says it's an attack type being changed. Squash being long and norm short. I need more time to work that one out.
Pre-gain - Wet/dry kind of thing. Determining how much of the signal will be sent to the attenuator, and therefore compressed.

It's great. A bargain for the sound I'd say.
On both clean and dirty the tone is enriched, warmed, thickened. Currently I have a Peavey Dynabass, EHX Big Muff, Boss OC-3 Octaver and the Black Finger, in that order, going through a Carlsbro Viper 250W bass amp.
The Muff is especially improved, and the lamp setting allows me to play accents, or get a punch through while still keeping the sound. It helps when the octaver's on too, as it boosts the weak, very low frequencies.

I normally mess around with the lamp/LED and sqsh/norm knobs for each song, or each sound I want. There's also the possibility of overdriving it a bit, but I haven't used that yet.

One slight qualm I have with it is that the squash setting is so much quieter than the norm, as it's compressing a lot more. Or seems to be. The only rason I say that is because it means adjusting the output levels each time, but turning on extra knob isn't much effort.

It seems solid, like all EHXs. More so than the Big Muff, as it's all metal as opposed to metal and plastic. The tubes are well guarded too. As with anything tube, don't drop it.

It can't use batteries because of the high voltages involved, so no trouble with running out suddenly.

I can't see it breaking down, everything is strongly mounted etc.

I'd gig without a backup.

I should think this pedal would be good for most kinds of music, as it seems to improve the tone of anything put through it.
I use this all the time now, and I'll probably use it on other instruments when we do the recording in the summer too.

Overall, an excellent piece of kit, good sound and solid.