Originally Posted by: stephen82

Still looking for my tone. I have a ine 6 modelling amp so I can do pretty much anything. However I am trying to find out more about sustain and vibrato. I am having difficulty getting them together.[/quote]

Sustain is largely a matter of volume. All guitars have an immediate high point at the inital note attack, then a dramatic drop off to decay. Some guitars have better sustain, but even a great guitar isn't going to keep that note ringing as strong as the inital attack.

You can of course help keep a note alive by vibrato, and subtle re-picking. So that might be something to work on. But to get the type of sustain Gary Moore gets you need gain & volume. To get that sort of endless sustain there really isn't any substitute for playing an electric guitar through an amp putting out enough volume that the note coming out of the speakers affects the guitar enough to start a sort of feedback loop.

If you can't or don't have that much volume on tap, then try turning up the gain!

Originally Posted by: stephen82If I play with no amp on my hollow body, my vibrato sounds great but when I amp it my vibrato is not as noticeable. I suspect because I am looking for more sustain from my settings and the sounds are more even?

Can you describe this a little more? It sound kind of backward to me! Typically playing through a amp, well, amplifies whatever you are playing. :) I've noticed that even just a small amount of unamplified vibrato sounds huge through an ampflier.

[quote=stephen82]

I love the sustain of say Gary Moore which I can get with a tube screamer but I lose the nuances in my playing.

[p]It's tricky to find the right balance between enough gain for sustain & too much that destroys nuance. Most of that is how hard you pick & squeeze, shake the note. Guys like Moore also rode the volume knob. At 10 there was a ton of gain on tap. But for more dynamic parts, they would turn the volume on the guitar down to 4 or 5 & be able to get more nuanced tones as well!

Anders has done some pretty good material on the basics of vibrato.

https://www.guitartricks.com/tutorial.php?input=768

https://www.guitartricks.com/tutorial.php?input=1589

And I did this tutorial on getting the most out of your volume knob.

https://www.guitartricks.com/tutorial.php?input=2290

Hope that helps!