What makes metal guitar brands like Jackson and ESP good for metal, rather than other genres?

Guitars are designed for 1 style of music in general...

What makes the difference?

- The Pick-Up's are designed for high gain, high distortion, high overdrive... They are high gain to make Tapping and shredding alot easier... They are designed to be used with distortion or overdrive pedals... If you wana play blues, then you'll want a warm, deep, bassy tone... For Metal, you want a harsh, More trebble tone...

So the pick-up's are the biggest difference...

Then The Neck - Frets - Action...

The Necks are designed to be shredded on... The Shape of the neck, the length of the neck, the width of the neck, the wood that is used for the neck and fingerboard, the size of the frets, the action of the strings...

All of these things are specially chosen for metal... Metal guitars have a "Thin U" neck... They have 24 frets... They have thin necks (in width) They use maple wood for the neck and ebony or rosewood for the fingerboards... They use Extra Jumbo Frets... They have a VERY low action...

All of these things contribute to making it easier for shredding, tapping, palm muting, fast rifts, sweep picking, economy picking, etc...

The Bridges on Metal guitars are capable of giving you a very very low action while cutting out fret rattle...

You see, when they design these guitars, they design them to be used for Metal... If you want a guitar for another genre, then the guitar will be designed TOTALLY differently...

Everything about these guitars is aimed at giving you the best possible sound, tone, and playability in one specific genre...

Hope I Helped...

Take Care...

Cheers...

Em...

Look, Style, Type of Tremolo System Set Up, the style of the neck a build for more comfortable playing with regard to Shredding leads and Technical Riffs. Personally I think its all about personal preference because I see a couple of Technical Death Metal guitarists such as Joe from Gojira playing Technical Death on old Fender Strats

Well obviously shape and color are a factor to a lot of band images but a lot of decisions are based on type of pickups, floyd rose double locking tremolo and most importantly for me, the depth of the action. Lower action guitars help for easier shredding while obviously pickups make for better sounds with your higher quality pickups. And if your as awesome as Dimebag Darrell you need the floyd rose.

EMG pickups. Active = higher gain without noise. Perfect for shreding and finger tapping.

Alot of people need a floyd rose for divebombs and solos. Some people don't really care for a moving bridge though. I know guitarists who play metal and hate having a locking tremelo.

Design and EMG pickups.