Just to let you know... This route seems a lot cheaper... in the end, after you buy each of the parts seperately from a parts distributor... it's going to cost just as much as a new guitar...
but to enlighten you...
First, guitar bodies. You can get blank guitar bodies from either Warmoth.com or find them on Ebay. The disadvantages of Ebay is you're never quit sure what you're going to be getting... and since you're not super experienced with selecting woods you don't really know what the difference between poplar, basswood, and mahogany is... Nor do you probably know what to look for as 2 piece vs. one piece bodies, tub vs. specific routed bodies, carved vs flat top bodies, laminated vs. non laminated bodies.... etc. etc..... The advantage of Ebay is that it's going to be a lot less expensive than Warmoth... which is pretty much Warmoths only disadvantage... You can get a whole bunch of different bodie designs on Warmoth where as... on Ebay you may not find that many different quality body blanks of any type besides Strat bodies.... As far as wood selection goes... I won't get much into all the different types of woods... but the wood that you would most likely want as your tone wood... since you're looking for sustain... You're going to want a mahogany body... As far as hardware goes... you're looking at some more expenses there as well... if you're not a fan of the floyd rose I would definitely recommend that you use a hard tail bridge... this improves sustain as well as your guitars ability to stay in tune. That coupled with a mahogany body... you should get Zakk Wylde worth sustain... The thing about Warmoth is... you can get your body blank routed in a ton of different ways. You can get it routed specifically for a certain configuration... such as single-single-single... or dual humbuckers... or whatever really. Or you can get it tubbed... where they leave a big open space where the pickups are so that you can install any type of configuration you'd like... the bad thing about this is you HAVE to use a pickguard... you can get the other configurations in a laminated top that doesn't require a pickguard.... The bodies are probably... off the top of my head...... around 200-300 bucks without a finish. I would recommend using warmoth.com if you're looking at doing a project guitar... Its' pricy but their work is superb and they have almost endless options... It's the way to go... Necks are even harder to find... and equally as expensive... once again... warmoth.com is the place to go. They're pricy but they're the best out there. You can get it done in all kinds of different woods as well... If you're looking for something for shred and something with sustain... I woudl recommend a 24 fret ebony rosewood fretboard... That would work the best for what you want... You can also get all the tuners, bridge, and other hardware at warmoth.com as well... If I were you I'd go with a reversed gibson style bridge ... I personally like the all in one versions that have the reversed style hardtail with the compensated string saddles... that way you don't have to have the bridge and the hard tail piece... it's all in one... For tuners... you're going to want to look at anything with a ratio higher than 15:1 or so... It depends on your personal preference whether you like locking tuners or not... i personally don't like them at all... But if oyu wanted to go all out and get them... go for it...
That's the basics... All together... after you buy all the pieces for this guitar... I would say you should look to spend upwards of 800 dollars.... So... like I said... it's not any cheaper.
