Long sustain without excessive gain

There is a situation with the guitar sound I've recently faced and I want to ask you for help.
This thing can especially (but not only) be considered among heavy metal/high gain guitar players and this is it: sometimes when listening to some solos in metal music I have noticed, that the guitar sound has looooong, pretty long sustain (when guitarist plays a long sounding bend for example), but, as it clearly can be heard, the sound itself remains clean and sweet. I relate these two things to each other because, to my mind (but I can be mistaken), length of sustain is strictly linked to amount of gain: the more gain - the more sustain. But, when you dial too much gain, sound becomes overcompressed, loses any dynamics, gets too much sensivity and becomes overall unnatural.

Example - you can go to Youtube, search for "Steve Vai - For the love of god isolated guitar track" and, without being "confused" by listening for the full mix you can hear that the solo-sound is pretty clean and pleasant to listen to, no excessive gain, but there is still a lot of sustain, especially at the begging of the main theme (let alone the fact that Steve Vai probably used bolt-on neck guitar for this song - not the most suitable type of construction if you to get the maximum sustain).

Another good example is solo from Stratovarius' "Fairness Justiftied" song. If you also look for this song on Youtube you can hear, that at 3:11 guitarist makes a whole step bend from 24th fret and still gets that 2-second sustain, that is not even coming close to begin to fade by the moment he plays the following notes. And we all know, that the closer you get to 24 fret, the shorter sustian becomes. Maybe it's because he plays custom shop hand-made Ruokangas guitars?

So, the question is - is there actually any ways to get good sustain without having to dial too much gain? And how can we reach it using AX8?

I'm very far from being professional sound engineer, so there are undoubtedly a lot of technical tricks and nuances I don't know about. The only thing I can assume is that on professional recording studios there is a special room where you can separately place guitar cab and mic and, being isolated, this room allows to set extreme volume on cab which generates some extra sustain (but it's only my assumption).

P.S. My guitar is Japan-made Grover Jackson RR 155-I with neck-through construction and Gotoh Floyd Rose (FR was bought brand new in 2013). Pickups - Dimarzio Super Distortion in bridge and Liquifire in neck.
 
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Sheer volume (acoustic coupling of the speaker with the guitar).

Having English not being my native launguage I didn't fully understand your words. What do you mean by "acoustic coupling of the speaker with the guitar"? Could you please explain it a little bit more detail?
 
Having English not being my native launguage I didn't fully understand your words. What do you mean by "acoustic coupling of the speaker with the guitar"? Could you please explain it a little bit more detail?

It' s like feedback, the guitar strings will resonate because of the volume coming from the speaker.
 
It' s like feedback, the guitar strings will resonate because of the volume coming from the speaker.

Ok, now I see what you mean. But, doesn't it mean that, doing this way, guitarst should seat in the same room near very loud sounding speaker to achive that effect?
 
Yes.

But you can also try the compressor block for sustain.

Ok, thanks, I'm going to read it.

Just for interest - if your tried this acoustic coupling by yourself or just have a knowledge, could you assume or describe how loud the speaker should be? Maybe so loud, that guitarist should protect his ears with some special equipment (headphones or ear-plugs)? So do you need REALLY LOUD headstriking-volume sound to affect strings?
 
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