Guitarists of the board- Help identifying these techniques

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And in particular, on the second solo, how does he get those thick aggressive sounds and then the "flashy" licks after that.

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The honest answer to this question is his fingers and pick technique. It's his body and style that does that coupled with a few thousand dollars worth of equipment. How hard he hits the strings, how he used his fingers, how he holds the frets, etc...

Or did you mean just what effects and amp settings he had when he did it?

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was talking about the actual playing technique

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It's a combination of vibrato bends, slides, hammerons and pulloffs while picking other notes, muting the notes you don't use(I call this one the little wing technique), and alternating the intensity with which you pick certain notes and rake others.

Play around with those then start combining them.

Especially using your frethand to mute and sustain/kill notes while varying the intensity of how you pick the notes. If you work those out you'd be amazed how completely different you can make the same riffs sound.

And if you don't already have one, get a compressor/sustain pedal. It makes a world of a difference.

That's the kind of answer I was looking for, thanks a bunch.

I play a strat as well, through a fender champion tweed tube amp, great tone but I really wish I had more sustain. I always chalked it up to a downside of playing a single coil guitar.

Thanks Lou, I appreciate it

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Just remember no amount of pedals or money or equipment are a substitute for technique.

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When learning something new, I'm often amused to think, there's no way these notes are right. It's all about the phrasing and dynamics and a thousand other things, and it makes me all the more impressed with those for whom it comes more or less spontaneously and naturally.

For piano, which I don't play, I've always remembered this quote from the great Vladimir Horowitz.

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“He set a standard for virtuosity … for variations in tone color at the piano, what you could do with the sound of a piano…. And you'll hear the most exquisite, delicate control…. Horowitz was not just somebody who pounded the heck out of the piano. He was famous for the range of quiet sounds that he made. Somebody once came up to him backstage and said, `You know, Maestro, between piano and pianissimo [in other words, between soft and very soft] you have 20 different levels of volume.' And Horowitz's response was, ‘Thank you for noticing.’”—Miles Hoffman, NPR

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Clapton also uses active pickups (basically a preamp inside the guitar) so that's going to help sustain quite a bit.

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The video is from 1985, the last year Clapton used the strat "Blackie", which as far as I can tell is what he is playing in the video. Blackie was built from parts of three different 1950s strats which he bought in 1970 for 200-300 bucks each, in 1970 a 50s strat was just a used guitar, not "vintage". Anyway, if that is blackie being played in the video the pickups are just standard passive pickups that came on a 50s strat.

You guys are right...that is Blackie.