I have just seen a YT video of a guitarist playing licks and his guitar has a lot of sustain such that each note kind of blends into the next. Sound real good to be honest.
What’s the best way of creating the same sustain effect?
Lots of gain on your amp, or a high gain pedal like a fuzz or distortion.
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Compressors have sustain option built into it, so just crank it up to max alongside some delay and high gain. If you fancy some extra spending for a pedal there is a digital feedback pedal - either from Digitech FreqOut or more rare pedal Boss FB-2. I have the latter and its so much fun! I played Europa by Santana in the past with it and plan to use it for next Community Open Mic too 
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Are you sure it’s “sustain” you’re talking about, instead of legato playing?
Theres a lot you can do here.
First ramp up the drive/level
Second add a compressor
Third bump on some heavy reverb + delay
With that lot you can go near forever
If you want more you can get a sustainer that actually adds energy into the strings and will literally go forever.
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Thanks for that.
You did. I remember that. Very good from what I can recall. 
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No idea to be honest. How would I know the difference? It sounded like he had some effect going on which elongated the notes.
For the guitar specifically, “sustain” usually refers specifically to how long the guitar can hold the note, i.e. if you pluck a string and let it ring, how long it will ring for.
Legato, on the other hand, is that “each note blends into the next” effect (as you say); it is a general musical term. On the piano, that would be played by pressing a key before releasing the previous one. On the guitar, “legato” is usually done with hammer-ons and pull-offs, so as to get that smooth transition between one note and the next without an additional pick attack.
This one:
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Was the effect something like the sustained notes in this song?
Back in those days, controlled feedback was probably the most common way to achieve this sound. Nowadays there are many more options, as mentioned by others.
There’s also a tool called EBow that can be used to produce a continuous sound by making the strings vibrate.
Could you post the video that you liked?
That would help to figure how to imitate it.
I also frequently try to figure out guitar sounds I hear on recordings. It’s good ear training. I have a Katana amp that has easy access to most of the common effects which helps.
Despite a lot of trying though, for some reason I still don’t sound like Santana.
Not quite but thanks for the link.
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Thats a little bit of drive, compressor and a touch of reverb, nothing special
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A Les Paul will sustain better than that but in the end it’s all in the fingers…
Theres nothing special about the sustain on that anyhow?
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Easy for you to say/play !!
Oh it’s a good sound but nothing that complex to it
On your gear, I would use the Tube drive, and adjust the gain (start around 12 O’Clock), and then turn the Reverb up until it sounds nice.
On sustain, in general (repeating and expanding on what others have said):
There’s not really that much sustain on the clip you showed. It’s just fluid playing and you should be able to get that level of sustain on just about any guitar, even unplugged (although it won’t sound as nice).
Guitars have a natural sustain (again, as others have said) and this is impacted by their construction, type of pickups, etc. For example, hollow-body guitars tend to have much less natural sustain than solid-body guitars due to Physics (energy transfer). The less resonance in the body of the guitar, the greater the natural sustain.
However, it’s not as simple as that because we don’t, generally, play electric guitars unplugged and, when you plug into the amplifier, the amp also has an impact if you are playing through the amp speaker and it’s loud enough. In this case, the body and strings of the guitar can pick up the sound from the speaker and feed it back which can increase the sustain as well as changing the tone.
Note that, in this case, a hollow-body guitar may end up with more sustain because they tend to feedback more.
Electric guitar players have, for decades, used amp feedback for good effect. Famous examples include:
Gary Moore, Parissiene Walkways:
Jimi Hendrix, Machine Gun:
Genesis, Firth of Fifth:
Steve Hackett, who performed the original guitar solo on Firth of Fifth, later started using Fernades guitars which incorporated a special sustainer pickup:
So feedback will increase sustain but, to avoid the “tyranny of volume” you can use special feedbacker pedals, like the Boss FB-2 or the equivalent built into many FX units and modellers
Also, in general, adding compression will increase sustain. Overdrive (increased amp gain) will, as a side effect, increase compression. So overdriven guitar sounds will sustain more than clean ones.
But you can also, artificially, add compression with a compression pedal.
Cheers,
Keith
Thanks for that. I’ll give it a go but think that
is the issue for me at this point. I’m guessing more practice will help!
You have given me a lot to think about and try out.
Oh how I wish that I could get anywhere close to these. I can dream though
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