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What electric guitar has best sustain and why?
I'm looking to buy an electric guitar over the internet. I need good sustain (and jazzyness), and wonder how sustain is affected by the construction and material (woods) of the guitar. It occurs to me that quality (rigidity?) of the neck is of greate importance. But what qualities, woods, construction should I be looking for to get good sustain?
There are really two kinds of sustain. The first kind is natural sustain -- where the note can hold for a long time purely through the guitar's construction. The second kind is amp sustain, which is an effect created by feedback from the amp's interaction with the pickup. But it also depends on how you play -- if you're good with finger vibrato you'll have controllable sustain regardless of what guitar you play.
For natural sustain, it generally helps if the guitar is made from a good heavy wood like mahogany or maple that has lots of resonance. It also depends on the tailpiece. A stop-tail (like you'd see on a Les Paul) or a trapeze tailpiece (like you'd see on an Epiphone Riviera) would give very nice sustain. The best would be a string-through body, but you never see that on the kind of guitar you're looking for.
For good amp sustain, you basically only need two things: An amp turned up really loud and a guitar facing the amp's speaker. But you have to achieve a balance otherwise you get pure feedback. The vibrations of the speaker cause the string to keep vibrating, hence, sustain.
As for "jazziness" -- that probably means you want a hollow-body electric...Epiphone, Gibson and Gretsch make the best, but expect to pay out the wazoo for them.
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