In a recent thread at you know where, Suhr expressed his frustration with vague opinions and lack of concrete criticism, and checked out.
I certainly understand that feeling, and, since I participated in that thread (I was specific about what I liked about my Suhr guitars but was vague about what didn't impress me) I thought I would go ahead and provide the concrete criticism now -- and do it here on my blog since it looks like Suhr isn't coming back to you know where.
My first Suhr was a Modern Satin that I played the heck out of for two years. But the more I played it the more aggravating it became.
First of all, the guitar (body and neck) was made of African Something (the ad copy changes from time to time from 'African Mahogany' to 'African Okoume' to 'Khaya') which is basically light, inexpensive and easy to work with.
What's easy for the CNC to tear through with ease is also apparently easy for me to wear down with my bare hands. Anchoring with my pinky finger chewed a hole in the top of the guitar but the real problem was how the neck was wearing.
Behind the neck problem is the fact that the Modern Satin undergoes about zero minutes of sanding once the parts emerge from the router. Sanding adds hellacious labor costs to guitar manufacturing.
The neck was quarter-sawn, which might be fine on another guitar, but the more I played it the more the back of the neck took on a highly granular, mixed-textured, and annoying feel. Part of the neck was being worn down smooth but right down the middle it was just perceptual speed bumps. Where there had been 'satin' there was now whatever the opposite of satin is.
This is in direct opposition to the advertised benefits of the 'raw' wood feel:
I was definitely becoming disconnected from the instrument.
So, I took it upon myself to go ahead and finish the job for Suhr. I spent all day sanding and sanding and finally ended up using an oil and wax finish to seal the neck. That is now fine and it feels good. But it probably invalidated my factory warranty. Simultaneous with all this neck finish issue was the growing sense that something else was more fundamentally 'off' with this guitar.
It was okay but I recall my 80s shredders having better action.
The fretboard radius is advertised as 14" but what they don't tell you is that with a Floyd Rose (Original) the radius from the factory is actually different and smaller -- so you wind up with a mismatch between the fretboard with one radius and the nut, saddles, and strings at another radius. There might even be three radii to contend with, I'm not really sure what's going on with this guitar.
I wondered what Suhr thought of this and found a discussion on his forum where the notion of a "reverse compound radius" was defended. A person supposedly wouldn't be able to "tell the difference" but I could. Give me a break, "reverse compound radius" neck? I didn't see this feature in the ad copy.
Of course, if necessary, I could shim this and shim that but by this point, I was growing weary of the guitar anyway -- there was not only the neck finish problem as well as the bizarre backwards radius, but also the increasing sloppiness of the OFR bridge and the 'trem' arm that wouldn't stay screwed in.
Time to move on.
My second Suhr guitar was a Classic Pro (in surf green) bought hot on the heels of the Modern Satin and before all of the aforementioned problems with that guitar surfaced. The Classic Pro looks great. It sounds great. But the action from the dealer was a little high. No problem, right? That's not unusual. We can dial that in.
Let's start with factory specs and go from there. But here's the problem: the action at factory specs was high and, oddly enough, suffered from a lot of fret buzz. I gave this guitar the benefit of a doubt, after all, it has stainless steel frets and has been Plekd to perfection at the factory. It's a Suhr, it's supposed to be perfect, right?
At any given time I keep 20 to 25 guitars in good working order but this one was elusive. I tweaked it now and then but never really got it dialed in. My son took a shine to it so I didn't see it for quite a while but when it came back to me I still couldn't get the fret buzz out of it.
I bought a Fret Rocker to check the frets and found the problem. I contacted the factory and sent it back but when it was returned the action was still high and the fret buzz was persistent. They just dialed in the factory specs and shipped it back, if they did anything at all.
The funny thing, however, is that the Classic Pro (while supposedly sporting "modern improvements") is no better than a run of the mill Fender. My EJRW Strat plays like butter with lower action as does my G&L Legacy.
Lacking string trees seems like a nice improvement (e.g., EJ Strats) but with my Classic Pro the lack of sufficient pressure across the nut makes the G-string susceptible to weird vibrations and overtones. The EJ Strat uses a thinner headstock (18/32) and non-locking tuners which require multiple wraps around the post for a better angle).
Suhr uses the same headstock thickness but the advantage (disadvantage in this case) of a locking tuner is the elimination of all the string winding around to the bottom of a longer post. So it doesn't really work out as well. EBMM solves the problem by significantly increasing the angle of the strings from the nut to the tuner posts.
Why pay an extra $1000 for a Suhr when they play no better, and arguably worse, than a Fender or a G&L. There are a lot of options when it comes to 8.5 pound S-style guitars.
Suhr seems like a standup guy and the customer service is great in terms of communication and a willingness to make things right. I have no doubt I could send that guitar back as many times as it takes to fix the problem.
But shipping it from the east coast to California costs quite a bit and at some point, objects just take on the 'dead to me now' quality; I'll just give it away to somebody who could use a guitar. If it were life or death I could just drive it over to my local repair guy and have him level the frets but I don't even care enough about this guitar any more. I'll let the next owner deal with it if they feel it's necessary.
My little adventure into Suhrland got me curious about the operation. I discovered that Suhr got his start building parts-casters made from bodies and necks supplied by Tom Anderson.
If I'm going to buy another superstrat why not just skip Suhr and go to the original guy? I played a couple of Droptops in the late 90s and early 00s and they left a favorable impression. Anderson doesn't seem to be as distracted by YouTube, TGP, amp lines, pedals, merchandising, feeding the gear pimps and influencers, etc.
What I got from Suhr was the enjoyment of paying an extra $1000 (each) for guitars that compete with the likes of Ibanez or Fender. They both sound fantastic but, ultimately, they are annoying guitars -- the annoyance amplified by paying an extra $1000 each for run of the mill designs and execution.
I was tempted by the arrival of the Suhr Hombre amplifier, however, I saw that during development they decided the amp sounds best with an alnico cream speaker but, for for reasons of cost, they went with a V-type. Yeah, there they go again. There's what's best and there are the compromises we're going to build into the product for sales purposes. I could buy the head version but that kinda misses the overall point. What's in the head?
For a company this size there is a surprising and growing number of online gripes regarding the quality of their guitars. Ten years ago I only saw positive reviews and sentiments. Now, it seems as if they're hitting about .750. That'd be a good little league batting average but that's not hall of fame numbers for a guitar company of this magnitude.
At one extreme, companies build a guitar and put a price on it (aiming to please the individual). At the other extreme, companies start with the price and build the product around that abstraction (pleasing the aggregate market). Perhaps Suhr's business model has drifted over the years more toward the market mentality. Whipping up sales means a lot of resources devoted to social media, gear pimps, and marketing. A company that's figurin' on biggerin' needs some hype to push all that product.
When guitar's fail to meet inflated expectations you end up with the sort of butthurt you find presently at you know where. Some guy plays a new Suhr and can't understand what all the hoopla is all about and all hell breaks loose.
On the one hand, it just looks like a bunch of zealots who can't tolerate their precious logos besmirched but, from another angle, it does suck when your prized guitar undergoes a prestige devaluation when the thing that was once an instance of an apex brand becomes just another thing in the race, just another option.
My subjective feeling regarding Suhr is that this is a company trading on glory days in the rearview mirror, building a mix of good, okay, bad stuff, with a logo premium that might no longer be deserved. No doubt, social media "influencers" and endorsed artists get mighty fine gear from Suhr, but until I have a million YouTube subscribers, or give my guitars away, I guess I'll remain an unhappy owner of two lousy Suhr guitars.