I finally Got to try a Suhr guitar

Keira-WitherKay

Yesterday i popped into marshall music woodmead hunting for a speaker cab and while i was there stuart showed me the suhr guitars they have , just 2 at moment and one less expensive but less ornate than the other ,

so i tried out the more expensive one and left well impressed

so what was impressive was the guitar had a nice managable weight , ergenomically looked like a strat but with a les pauls arched top and gorgeous finish , but most impressive was the tone , man i was in tone nirvana, it gets fat jazz tone and can get almost any tone to twangy tele type bite , has a trem and it was one of the most tonally pleasing guitar to my ear that i played in a while , and i wasn't testing blind but thru same amp back to back played my archtop, a gibson es 339, gibson sg , gibson es 335 ; so some comparison to other fairly top end humbucker guitars , the suhr was amazing and as always to my taste stood out head and shoulders over anything else i played that afternoon,

one dislike was it had a huge baseball bat type neck on it , too fat for my taste and i even commented it felt like a neck on a cheap pawn shop special but once you hear the notes and tone you forget that niggle and yes it would take getting used to but not a deal breaker

however a price tag before discount of about 38K takes it out of my pocket ...... Sure it will be discounted and i know what that is but still in lower 30k region

so an experience to savour , a guitar i would love to own but afraid my pockets aint that deep when buying a guitar ? being middle class sucks

Gearhead

If it's good enough for Knopfler... ?

AlanRatcliffe

Keira WitherKay wrote: one dislike was it had a huge baseball bat type neck on it , too fat for my taste and i even commented it felt like a neck on a cheap pawn shop special but once you hear the notes and tone you forget that niggle and yes it would take getting used to but not a deal breaker

I'm firmly convinced that good tone lives in neck fat (and this applies to both guitars and opera singers ?). As I mentioned to someone else yesterday, this is especially true with mahogany neck guitars, but has a big effect on even maple necks.

AlanRatcliffe

Gearhead wrote: If it's good enough for Knopfler... ?

Actually I think you'll find MK's Pensa-Suhrs were all made by Rudy Pensa, not John Suhr

arjunmenon

Alan Ratcliffe wrote:
Gearhead wrote: If it's good enough for Knopfler... ?
Actually I think you'll find MK's Pensa-Suhrs were all made by Rudy Pensa, not John Suhr

Ah...there's some debate though of the early Pensa-Suhrs being made by John Suhr.
Here are some links to the info:

http://www.oneverybootleg.nl/MK_guitars.htm#Pensa-Suhr

http://www.mark-knopfler.info/guitarspensacustom.htm

Gearhead

Phew... got away with that one... ?

What I was trying to say was that the brand name precedes the guitars as far as I am concerned. I would have been surprised if Keira would have not been enthusiastic.

vic

Gearhead wrote: If it's good enough for Knopfler... ?

"Problem" here is the diversity amongst MK's Pensa-Suhrs. Some with all mahogany bodies...then some with maple-mahogany combination...different neck sizes...different pups, etc..??

I wonder which variant was Keira playing ?

BluJu

Nice.

I tried out Rob Marcello's one briefly when he was here doing demos for boss a few years back.

The neck felt like a super fast ibby and sounded like a strat. Really nice gits those ones are.

ZarK

Alan Ratcliffe wrote: I'm firmly convinced that good tone lives in neck fat (and this applies to both guitars and opera singers ?). As I mentioned to someone else yesterday, this is especially true with mahogany neck guitars, but has a big effect on even maple necks.

+1

For this exact reason my neck preference has also started shifting from ultra-thin necks towards fatter necks in recent years...

Warren

Alan Ratcliffe wrote:
I'm firmly convinced that good tone lives in neck fat (and this applies to both guitars and opera singers ?). As I mentioned to someone else yesterday, this is especially true with mahogany neck guitars, but has a big effect on even maple necks.

You and Paul Gilbert both. Saw a cool interview with him talking about his Fireman design, and he mentioned how he had become convinced that a beefy neck is important for tone.