I believe that my guitar's neck joint is the most responsible for a big loss in sustain. It's a string-through-body tune-o-matic, alder-bodied Jackson JS30. It looks and feels(it's heavy) like it should sustain a lot but it does not.

My idea is to basically remove the neck, fill the neck's mounting holes with toothpics+glue, and bolt it back on. Perhaps adding a shim of thin wood at the neck heel to improve the contact between the neck and neck heel, giving more sustain...

I'm just not sure if I wanna do the shimming part myself, I'm afraid it could change slightly the angle that the neck portrudes from the body. Not that it's permanent damage, but I'm worried about that.

Could a regular guitar tech do something to improve the sustain of my guitar? Everything else about the axe is fine, but I fear that the weak neck joint is the only thing killing it.

I also recently decided to put a strap button in one of the neck plate holes for perfect balance. But the loss of sustain was present before that, I could easily stick in a paper or business card between the neck and neck heel.

ANOTHER QUESTION: Someone in another thread reccomended that to remove fret buzzing is to raise the nut slightly by adding a shim. My nut is regular, not a locking nut, so it does NOT screw back on. I would simply have to glue the shim to the bottom of the nut right? What material should I use for the shim, regular thin wood?

Thanks for any help.

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Try a brass nut.

Damn!
That's crazy.

good luck.