TABLE OF CONTENTS FOR THE STEALTH PRO INSTALLATION PAGE
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INSTALLATION OVERVIEW
PLANNING YOUR INSTALLATION

NOT-RECOMMENDED GUITAR TYPES AND OTHER "NO-NO's"
"DRY-RUN INSTALLATION" to determine compatibility of a guitar with the Stealth PRO
SEMI-INSTALLATION : We do 90% of the work. No shipping of your guitar.

A list of DETAILED TOPIC/INSTALLATION DRAWING LINKS is contained near the bottom of this page, including pages that detail actual installation drawings, specific guitar types, details about Sustainiac control options, PDF file of the owner's manual, a PDF about guitar controls (how they work), etc.

HOOKUP DIAGRAM LIST

SUSTAINIAC WEBSITE MAP: The overall site map is at the very bottom of each page, including the ORDER FORM, our email address, phone number, shipping address etc.

OVERVIEW OF THE INSTALLATION PROCESS OF THE â STEALTH PRO SUSTAINER

A list of INSTALLATION OPTIONS AND DETAILS is shown at the bottom of this page. Links to PDF installation drawings of specific guitar models are shown, as is a PDF copy of the installation manual.

But first, read the following few paragraphs for an installation overview.

The Sustainiac Stealth PRO sustain system is a retrofit sustainer for existing electric guitar. The installation requires substantial rewiring of the guitar electronics cavity. For most installations, no routing or drilling of the guitar electronics cavity is required if you use the standard two PUSH-PULL POT/SWITCH controls for ON/OFF and for Harmonic Mode that are supplied with the kit. If you choose the optional TOGGLE-SWITCH controls to control the Sustainiac, you will likely have to drill holes in the guitar body. If you are familiar with electronics assembly, soldering, and following wiring diagrams, you can likely handle the installation. Many guitar technicians can handle the installation. But, it is much more difficult than, say, replacing a pickup or volume control. It will usually take between 2 and 10 hours, depending on the guitar model and the experience of the installer.

Alternatively, you can have Maniac Music do your installation. Our basic installation fee is $125 for guitars with electronics cavities that open in the back of the guitar, unless there are particularly difficult obstacles to overcome such as routing in order to enlarge the electronics cavity. We charge $150 for most pickguard guitars, such as Stratocasters and Ibanez Jem or RG guitars with a pickguard. Installation of the optional battery case is $25 (requires routing). If a major route is required to create a new electonics cavity for the Sustainiac circuit board, we add about $50 to the basic installation cost. In this case, we discuss the particular installation with the customer. We don't charge extra for drilling holes in the guitar top to mount optional toggle switch controls for the Sustainiac. We recommend that you have us do installations for "difficult" guitars, especially if your instrument electronics cavity is crowded or has other electronics in it such as a booster device, piezo electronics, etc. Shipping your guitar to Maniac Music: Click here for PDF instructions Shipping guitars.

PLANNING YOUR INSTALLATION

There are several things you must consider when planning a Stealth PRO installation. Each kit shipment is somewhat custom, based on your particular guitar type. Our kits are not "one size fits all" because guitars are not "one size fits all".

Read the following list, and determine what you need for your particular guitar. These choices are listed on the order form. You will need to make the proper choices to get the proper parts assortment and hookup drawing in your kit. Then, after you have reviewed everything, you should visit our ORGANIZE YOUR ORDER page when you think you are about ready to place an order. This page allows you to list and outline your installation plan. It makes it easier to navigate the Order Form.

• DRIVER SIZE AND COLOR: The Sustainiac driver replaces your neck pickup. The driver becomes an active neck pickup when the sustainer is OFF. The driver is available in two sizes (HB and SC) and two colors (black and white). The Sustainiac driver low-resolution (11KB) and Sustainiac driver high-resolution (55KB) photos show the options. The SC-size drivers can be ordered with either woodscrew mounting (for guitars having no pickguard or mounting rings) or threaded, for use on guitars with pickguards.
  NOTE: The HB size driver and the SC size are IDENTICAL. The only difference is that the HB driver is mounted onto a HB-size baseplate. A plastic "dummy" cover is then attached to the driver to fill up the cavity in order to fill up the spqace.
• CONTROLS: The standard kit comes with controls for ON/OFF and Harmonic Mode. You can choose both as push-pull, or optional toggle switches for either or both controls at no extra cost. Or, choose other unusual and useful options. Some of these involve rather exotic ideas, such as a one-lever, 5-position Superswitch control for the sustainer, or even a single lever control for both the guitar AND the Sustainiac. Visit the Sustainiac controls page for a detailed look at the options.
• MOUNTING THE 9-VOLT BATTERY (There are 3 choices, or you might go for the optional ac-line powered 9-volt supply.) Go to the following page for this info: Battery mounting and other power supply options

NOT-RECOMMENDED GUITAR TYPES AND OTHER PROBLEM SETUPS:

1. Any guitar with more than 24 frets: Use another guitar. The space between the bridge pickup and Sustainiac driver is quite small. This creates magnetic crosstalk between driver and bridge pickup, resulting in uncontrolled oscillation. This means that you have to turn the sustainer gain down to stop the resulting oscillation. Sustainer performance suffers so much that you might as well not even have a sustainer.
2. Placing the driver in the middle pickup position: It is the space thing again, between driver and bridge pickup.
3. Any guitar with a slanted neck pickup. Use another guitar. The slant will compromise the magnetic balance between the Sustainiac driver and the bridge pickup. You have to turn down the sustainer gain so much to stop the resulting oscillation that you might as well not even have a sustainer.
4. Telecasters with single-coil bridge pickup. Use another guitar. The extreme slant of the bridge pickup will compromise the magnetic balance between the Sustainiac driver and the bridge pickup. Use of the magnetic-balance tab will not fully correct this. Harmonic mode will generally not be very good.
5. Pickguards with aluminum or copper "mirror" effects, or some metallic finishes on the guitar body: The magnetic pulsations from the driver induce pulsating "eddy" currents into the conductive aluminum or copper. These in turn radiate their own magnetic pulsations. The bridge pickup responds to these magnetic pulsations. The end result is that the desired magnetic balance between driver and bridge pickup is compromised. We remove the shielding foil that comes on US-made Strats and Jems from around the pickups. You can keep the foil over the electronics cavity. If we do your installation into a Strat, Jem, etc., then we include this service.
6. Metal pickup trim rings: Some times this is OK, and sometimes it produces the same problem as #4. If you experience distortion or uncontrolled oscillation, try switching to a plastic trim ring. If the problem goes away, that was the reason.
7. Crowded electronics cavity: Having other effects inside the electronics cavity exposes the guitar signal to more electric crosstalk from the Sustainiac circuit board and signal wires.
8. Concealing the driver: If you cover up the driver (to fool people), you move the driver farther away from the strings by the thickness of the cover. This reduces the sustainer performance.
9. ES335 etc. are very difficult since there is no cavity access.
10. Placing a single-coil pickup next to the driver: This does not work well. The side-by-side permanent magnetic fields of our patented bilateral driver "bend" the field of a single coil pickup. The result is that three of the strings will have about 6dB lower output level than the other three strings. Same for a humbucker with "stacked" coils. A mini-humbucker with conventional "side-by-side" coils pickup doesn't exhibit this problem as much. In our opinion (and that of most customers), the Sustainiac driver sounds better than most mini-humbuckers. It also has the new dual-sound feature.

DRY-RUN INSTALLATION You can do a "quickie" installation on any questionable guitar to determine its suitability. Click here for a PDF file of the whole procedure: "DRY RUN" TEMPORARY INSTALLATION Click here for a PDF diagram: "DRY RUN" DRAWING It takes about 15-20 minutes. Install the driver, and hook up the bridge pickup to the sustainer input, connect a battery and a few other wires to ground. Connect a guitar amp. This will instantly tell you if this guitar will be suitable. We do this on many guitars to save headache/heartbreak.

SEMI-INSTALLATION We do 90% of the work. No shipping of your guitar.

SEMI-INSTALL OPTION FOR STRATOCASTERS® AND OTHER GUITARS: $75.00-85.00

Stratocasters: We supply a pre-wired option for $75 extra. All Sustianiac controls plus a "CRL"-type 5-position pickup selector switch and CTS volume control come as a completely wired and tested assembly. The parts are assembled by Maniac Music onto a standard Strat pickgupard. Then, we remove these parts from our pickguard, and send them to you as an assembled kit. All you have to do is remove your existing Strat controls from the pickguard without unsoldering them. Then, mount ours in their place. Remove your neck pickup, and put the driver in its place. Replace your mono output jack with our stereo jack, and mount the battery either using the optional battery box ($16, routing required) or in the tremolo spring cavity (optional quick-change cover recommended, $7.50. This cuts the installation time from 3-8 hours to about one hour. We supply a hookup diagram. You can later easily restore the guitar to its original condition if you wish, since all of your controls have been removed as a complete unit.

Strat options:

STANDARD: Sustainiac controls are push-pull. Bottom control is Sustainiac ON/OFF control, and doubles as MASTER TONE control. Middle control is HARMONIC MODE. $75.00

TOGGLE CONTROLS: We can make the ON/OFF and/or Harmonic Mode a TOGGLE control. $85.00. This leaves very little room for finger access, unless we leave out the middle control. Then, you end up with an unused hole in the pickguard.

Special option for Ibanez JEM®: We supply a pre-wired option for $75-85. Similar to the Strat option above.

STANDARD TWO-POT OPTION: Sustainiac controls are push-pull. Volume control doubles as Sustainiac ON/OFF control. Tone control goes away, and is replaced by Sustainiac Harmonic Mode control.

3-POT OPTION: This is like the standard STRAT installation. Bottom MASTER TONE doubles as Sustainiac ON/OFF. Middle control is Sustainiac Harmonic Mode. Top is CTS volume control.

TOGGLE CONTROL OPTION: Toggle controls go in between the top and bottom knobs, equally-spaced. Top toggle is ON/OFF, bottom is Harm. mode. Bottom pot can be either tone or Sustainiac drive control. We can also make this a push-pull neck pickup tone selector.

GENERIC SEMI-INSTALL (new starting March, 2010) for open-back cavities. ("CARDBOARD INSTALL") This is for guitars with 2HB, HSS, or other pickup configuration. NOT FOR MOST GIBSON LES PAUL TYPE GUITARS. Epiphone Les Pauls and Les Paul copies are generally OK for this. The problem with the Gibson Les Pauls is that many of them have a metal plate inside the cavity on which the controls are mounted. This takes up much room inside the cavity and makes the semi-installation impractical.

Send us a piece of paper or cardboard with the cavity outline accurately traced. Show the precise locations of all control holes. We will create a complete SEMI-INSTALL with volume/tone controls, Sustainiac controls, and pickup selector. We will keep a small amount of extra slack in the wiring to allow for small errors in measurement. Cost is $75 to $90, depending on the complexity. You can then remove all of your original controls (as a unit) for restoration of your guitar to its original condition should you decide to sell it. Ours will fit into your cavity. The only things for you to hook up are the Sustainiac driver, your pickups, the output jack, and the guitar ground wire. Quick and easy. You can download this PDF file showing a 1:1 scale drawing of the Stealth PRO circuit board. STEALTH PRO CIRCUIT BOARD You can use this drawing to determine if it will fit into your cavity without routing.

ABOUT YOUR GUITAR We need to know some specific information about your guitar so we can send the proper hookup diagram and parts with your kit.

What kind of output jack do you have (open or barrel style)? Each kit comes with a replacement jack (stereo) that replaces your existing guitar jack, in order to activate the Sustainiac battery when the guitar plug is inserted. To determine what style you have, Click on either picture: Output jack choices, low resolution (10kb); Output jack choices, high resolution (70kb).
• Open-style, shown on the upper left, usually mounts to a metal plate on the side of the guitar, or a special plate such as Stratocasters have. Open style has a visible hex-nut that is threaded onto the outside of the jack.
• Barrel-type (bottom of picture) has a flange, with no external mounting nut (mounting nut is inside the guitar body).
• 9-pin stereo jack The 9-pin jack (upper right side of picture) is a special jack, having internal switches that connect/disconnect two or more separate batteries. If you use active electronics in the guitar (such as EMG pickups), you need to use separate batteries, one for the EMG's, one for the Sustainiac. This requires replacing your existing guitar jack with a special 9-pin jack.. Click on the for a PDF file which shows how the jack is used, and why, and how it is hooked up.

  We have more info on output jacks, and how they are hooked up with the Sustainiac, in our ABOUT GUITAR CONTROLS, a PDF document.

How many pickups does your guitar have? One, two, or three. Select on ORDER FORM.

What type pickup selector does your guitar have? Select on ORDER FORM. Each drawing is based on the pickup switch type. Please know what you have before you order.

Pickup selector options
• 3-position toggle (for most 2HB guitars, Les Paul etc.)
• 3-position lever (Tele-style and some other 2-pickup guitars)
• 5-position lever (Strats, most other 3-pickup guitars, "shredders" etc.) There are 4 main styles:
  • "CRL" switch. Has 8 contacts, 4 on each side of the wafer. This is the switch that Fender has used for decades. Simple, reliable, good "feel" when switching. Open construction so you can observe what is happening.
  • "In-line": Has 8 contacts that are in a straight line (These switches are usually enclosed in plastic, and in our experience are generally inferior. Wimpy "feel". Consider replacing this type with the "CRL" switch that will last the life of most guitars. ($12.00)
  • "Superswitch": Has 24 contacts, 12 contacts in a line on each of 2 sections. Has open construction so that you can see the inner workings of the switch. It is often used with coil-tapping schemes of the bridge and neck pickups, to create Strat "quack" sounds. See picture and more info on the Controls Page.
  • "VLX-91" switch used in many Ibanez guitars. Has 24 contacts, similar to Superswitch. 2 wafers, 6 contacts on each side of each wafer. See picture and more info on the Controls Page.
• Individual toggles for each pickup (some "shredders" and custom guitars).
• Some other arrangement. We need a detailed explanation, or we can't provide a useful drawing.

  We have more info pickup selectors, and how they are hooked up with the Sustainiac, in our ABOUT GUITAR CONTROLS, a PDF document.

ORGANIZE YOUR ORDER BEFORE GOING TO THE ORDER FORM:
You should visit our ORGANIZE YOUR ORDER page when you think you are about ready to place an order. This page allows you to list and outline your installation plan. It makes it easier to navigate the Order Form.

DESCRIPTION OF SUSTAINIAC STEALTH PRO WIRE FUNCTIONS:

You can refer to our WIRE FUNCTION DIAGRAM for a description of all the Stealth PRO wire functions. (20KB PDF file). This description can be a big help when troubleshooting an installation.

TROUBLESHOOTING THE STEALTH PRO

PDF file containing detailed troubleshooting instructions for Stealth PRO

MAGNETIC TAB ADJUSTMENT

We don't include the magnetic tab, except for Stratocasters and similar guitars where there is a SLANTED SINGLE-COIL BRIDGE PICKUP. Click here for a PDF file showing how to mount and adjust the Magnetic Tab. Magnetic Tab Adjustment

DETAILED INSTALLATION TOPICS, SPECIFIC GUITAR DRAWINGS ETC.
The following list links you to different guitar models, also to various kit options and configurations. Click on the list topics below to download detailed information, hookup diagrams, and pictures.

PDF file of Stealth PRO Installation Manual (One copy of this manual is included with each kit. The Installation Manual does not include any hookup diagram. Separate PDF drawings can be viewed on the respective page for each guitar type below. Each kit comes with the proper hookup diagram. When you order your Sustainiac kit, we provide the most appropriate diagram for your guitar. If you are technically inclined and interested in creative options, browse our numerous hookup diagrams to get ideas that you might not have thought of for a sustain system for your needs.
BATTERY MOUNTING AND OTHER POWER SUPPLY OPTIONS page Link to the POWER OPTIONS page
9-PIN JACK PDF file for 9-pin jack, allowing 2 or more batteries to be connected/disconnected with guitar cord insertion
SUSTAINIAC CONTROLS page Each kit comes with ON/OFF and Harmonic Mode controls. Use this info to choose which control type you prefer for your installation kit. Here we present some unusual control options that we have used over the years that many people have found helpful.
Superswitch, and VLX-91; PDF file These 4-section switches allow coil tapping and other options.
Guitar Controls; PDF file Detailed, useful info for those who want to know more. Also helpful for troubleshooting.
Stealth PRO Troubleshooting; PDF file Detailed troubleshooting procedure for the Stealth PRO.
Driver dimensions; PDF file
Stealth PRO wire function diagram; PDF file; detailed diagram showing the function of each wire.
How to determine pickup polarity; PDF file; This PDF file shows how to test the polarity of your BRIDGE PICKUP. Micro-ammeter (old-fashioned needle-type meter) required, or oscilloscope. If you don't have these, hook up the sustainer. If all modes work correctly and are strong, you are OK. If there is no NORMAL mode, and all positions of the MODE control are weak, then the pickup has reverse polarity. Simply reverse the red/black driver wires to correct.
Shipping guitars. How to pack your guitar
DRY RUN INSTALLATION Detailed PDF of doing a "quickie" 10-15 minute installation to determine how well the Sustainiac will work in a "borderline" or "questionable" guitar
DRY RUN DRAWING PDF drawing showing exactly how to do the DRY RUN quickie installation

HOOKUP DIAGRAMS
Guitars with 2 humbuckers, mostly Les Paul-type guitars and generic "2HB" similar guitars (not "special" designs such as Ibanez, Parker, etc.)
Guitars with hum-single-single pickup configuration, "HSS" ("shredders")
Guitars with pickguards (mainly Stratocaster and Ibanez Jem); includes most H-S-H guitars
Guitars with active pickups, EMG etc.
Parker "Fly" guitar, also "Nitefly"
Electric bass
Guitars with a single bridge pickup PDF file