Suhr Guitars
| private | |
| Industry | musical instruments |
| Founded | 1997 |
| Founder | John Suhr, Steve Smith |
| Headquarters | Lake Elsinore, California, United States |
|
Area served
|
worldwide |
| Products | electric guitars, bass guitars, guitar amplifiers, pedals and pickups |
| Website | Suhr.com |
Suhr Guitars (officially JS Technologies Inc) is an American company that manufactures electric guitars and basses, guitar amplifiers, and effect units. The company is based in Lake Elsinore, California and was founded in 1997 by John Suhr, who "has a reputation for building exquisitely crafted guitars", and Steve Smith.
Prior to founding JS Technologies Inc, John Suhr had worked at Rudy's Music Stop in New York City doing guitar repair. He also created the first Suhr Custom guitar in 1984. Teaming up with Rudy Pensa they started selling guitars under the Pensa-Suhr brand, and the signature model they built for former Dire Straits frontman Mark Knopfler is perhaps their most famous guitar.
Around 1991, Suhr moved from NYC to Los Angeles to work with guitar rig builder Bob Bradshaw. Before leaving NYC they had collaborated on the design of a preamplifier, the Custom Audio Electronics (CAE) 3+, used for instance by Steve Lukather. They also designed a 100 watt amplifier head, the Custom Audio Amplifiers (CAA) OD-100. During this period 1991-1994, John Suhr built about 50 custom guitars and focused mainly on building amplifiers. Guitars from this period are more rare than guitars from the Pensa-Suhr era and can be identified by the 'built for" information handwritten by Suhr in the neck socket. From 1995 to 1997, John Suhr worked as Senior Master Builder at Fender's Custom Shop. In 1997 Suhr left Fender to form his own company with Steve Smith. Suhr had the knowledge about building guitars, Smith knew about management, software and CNC programming. Combining their efforts, they had total control of the manufacturing process and used the CNC routers to efficiently produce guitar necks and bodies, rather than doing it completely by hand. In the 1990s Suhr also made a name for himself making pickups, such as the custom-made single coils for Scott Henderson (Bill Frisell also uses Suhr pickups).
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