how do you get better sustain?
does it come from your amp,pickups,strings?
my notes seem to die fast.
another question would a compression or noise gate pedal help with the crarity or distorted notes?

Gee man. lots of things help sustain.

String through body guitars have more sustain then say a floyd rose.
thicker strings help.


But the biggest killer is simple physics. Eg. The more mass a guitar has, the more it will sustain.

For example. Les pauls are made of heavy thick wood. They sustain to hell and back.

There are metal clamp devices that you can buy which you clamp on your head stock which adds mass to your neck and therefore. More sustain

THis is why guitars like the BR Rich Bich shit me to high heaven.
They have a great big chunk out of it that could have wood there which would make the guitar sustain a lot longer.

I play a telecaster. Big fucking block it is. It sustains like no ones business.

one of the biggest factors is the neck.

your neck has to be attached to the body TIGHTLY.

neck thru will sustain better than bolt on...
if you have a bolt on, pull the paper test... whip out a buisness card and see if you can slide it into the neck pocket inbetween the neck and the body... if you can... the sustain will suck.

oh, and remember, wood vibrates better than glue, so bolt ons sometimes can sustain better than set necks because bolt ons are wood on wood, while sets tend to be wood on glue on wood...

[edit: added]
paint makes a difference too... the more paint you have on it, the less it is able to vibrate... thats why satin finished guitars are louder when theyre dry than gloss guitars...

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Heh... thats one of the reasons i cant stand gibsons.

A les paul is held together with glue in like 5 different places.

Yeah, and that's why LP's are one of the guitars w/ the highest sustain. It's not like the fucking glue is 2mm's thick. How do you think they put the wings together on a neck-thru?

the thing with neck thru... is that theres more neck wood touching the wings than set... with set... the neck stops about 2-3 inches into the body, while with thru, it goes allllll the way to the tail... so neck thru is better than set...

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If you say that, then set-neck's will have more full tone from the body, since the neck is not running through it, especially when you have diff. wood types for the neck and body wings. I'm not saying set-necks are better or anything, it's just that neither is really "better" than the other. It all depends on the build quality.

technique goes a long way.

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my parker fly deluxe is a 5 pound guitar... of poplar and bass wood. can make a gibson cry in the sustain area.

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PRS's are juicy too...