Suhr Guitars

[Neal]

Ok Robert! Tell us(ME) about them Suri Guitars:R

[Robert]

They are called Suhr Guitars, and they are of fantastic quality guitars. John Suhr is the Master behind these guitars. Here is some info I copied from the Suhr site. By the way, I have never owned or played a Strat that I like as much, or sounded as good, as the one I own. Beware though, people who don't own a Suhr guitar sometimes refer to them as "Strat copies".... ;)


For those of you who are not familiar with John Suhr, here is some background.

John started his building career some 35 years ago in New Jersey. Searching for the perfect tone during his bar band days, he began building his own instruments. In the early 80's John started working for Rudy Pensa at Rudy's Music Stop in NYC. It was during this time that the "Pensa-Suhr" guitars were born. John built guitars under the "Pensa-Suhr" brand for Mark Knopfler, Eric Clapton, Peter Frampton, Lou Reed, Bill Connors, Steve Stevens, Reb Beach, Pat Thrall, Little Steven, Victor Bailey Pensa-Suhr Bass, Chuck Loeb, Eddie Martinez (Robert Palmer) and many others.

John SuhrWith an obsession for tube amp design, John left NYC to work with Robert Bradshaw in 91' and designed the CAA 3+ and 3+SE tube preamps and CAA OD100 amp with Robert Bradshaw. Four years later John felt his original calling and accepted a job as Senior Master Builder at the Fender Custom Shop. There he built custom guitars to order and was involved in R&D for new product development. His clients included and still include Michael Landau, Scott Henderson, Doug Aldrich and Peter Frampton.


Making his true dream a reality, John Suhr opened up his own small factory building custom guitars to order in 1997. John Suhr Partnering up with Steve Smith whose background is in CNC programming, John finally had total control over the entire process of building the ideal electric guitars and basses. From picking out the lumber to cutting the bodies and necks on the in-house CNC machines to painting and finish work to winding John’s own-design pickups to final assembly and set-up, John was now able to oversee every aspect of the guitars being built with the highest quality standards possible and unflinching attention to detail. Other master builder colleagues of John’s at the Fender Custom Shop soon joined John to build a strong nucleus of master craftsmen and the company has continued to grow to where it is today in 2009 – building 150 custom instruments on a monthly basis.


John Suhr At Suhr Guitars, we are convin- ced that a hand built guitar can be produced utilizing New World technology. All our bodies and necks are made by us using state of the art CNC routers, 20 years of practical experience and hundreds of hours in programming. It is this total control that helps us produce one of the finest guitars available today. This, of course, does not replace the handwork still necessary to produce a fine guitar. Each guitar is made by one builder, no assembly lines here. Attention to detail, playability, consistency and tone are what we are all about. We believe in vintage truss rod construction, tight neck fits, reliable plain grain neck woods, thin finishes and plenty of options to please every style of player. Pickups offered include our own pickups, pickups custom built for Suhr Guitars by DiMarzio Pickups, Seymour Duncan models, and EMG.

John Suhr John comments: "Using a menu of custom options we can tailor a guitar to the customer's needs. We start with only the finest choice select woods for our bodies and necks. Each order is given special attention. Customers are more than welcome to call or email to discuss their order once it’s placed with an authorized Suhr dealer. We strive to build a guitar that is a cut above all the rest. Don't take our word for it, check one out!"


John Suhr John is entering the most creative phase of his career and will now focus on designing a variety of new guitars and amps in the future. New guitars on the drawing board are a 24.75" scale single-cut set-neck solid-body electric, a sleek 24-fret Standard, a 5-string bass, a "modern" bass, an archtop hollow-body jazz guitar, and, perhaps, a steel-string acoustic. In the area of amplification, John has ideas for new amps ranging from low-wattage all-tube designs to a MIDI preamp to a monster 4-channel head to digital modeler to an all-tube bass amp. It may take a decade for all of these ideas to become reality, but you can rest assured that John will not rest on his current laurels. You can expect groundbreaking new instruments and amplifiers to come from John and Suhr Guitars for many years to come.

[Tig]

I wonder how they stack up against other Strat-ish guitars that have good reputations, like the Ernie Ball Music Man Albert Lee (http://www.music-man.com/instruments/guitars/albert-lee.html), the Fret-King (by the Trev Wilkinson) Corona 60 (http://www.fret-king.com/corona60_spec.html), or of course, a G&L USA Legacy (http://www.glguitars.com/instruments/USA/guitars/legacy/index.asp).

Suhr has an incredible reputation for quality builds and sound.

[Kazz]

Personally....I think that the best testimonial would be watching Robert's videos playing the Suhr.....but then again that could be the worst testimonial too...because I remember one video of Robert playing a cheap squire that sounded friggen awesome too.