Suhr Guitar Buying Guide 2025
Have you been eyeing up some gorgeous Suhr guitars lately?
If you’re in the market for a Suhr, this is for you. Get yourself a brew and take a second with me here! We’ve had some lovely new guitars delivered recently, and I want to use a few of them as examples to talk you through how you might approach selecting one for yourself.
Why listen to me on this? Well, I don’t work for Suhr, but I have played and sold them for many years, and I’ve also been fortunate enough to have had two separate conversations with John Suhr himself over the years. I’ve picked his brain on guitars, amps and other things, plus I’ve chatted with Suhr artists such as Ian Thornley and Pete Thorn. All of this will hopefully allow you to put some trust in me today.
I don’t have a vested interest in getting you hyped on Suhr: I simply think they are great guitars and have some info and perspectives for you. If you’re new to the brand, please have a read of my Suhr: The Ranges Explained blog, and then come on back here!
Contents
Best Suhr for a Classic Look & Tone, with a Comfortable Feel
The ‘Swiss Army Knife’ of Guitars: The Suhr Standard Plus S HSS
The Contemporary Hot Rod: The Suhr Modern
The Definitive Suhr Experience: Ltd Ed Suhr Standard
Suhr: Your Forever Electric Guitar
Who Are Suhr?
I expect you’ll already know at least a little about the Suhr brand, but for good measure, I’ll summarise the facts for you right here:
- Suhr is headed up by master luthier John Suhr.
- Prior to forming the Suhr brand, John Suhr worked as half of Pensa-Suhr, who famously made guitars for Mark Knopfler and others.
- After leaving Pensa-Suhr, John worked at the Fender Custom Shop and Bob Bradshaw’s company Custom Audio Electronics.
- Suhr is based in Lake Elsinore, California. All of their products are built there.
- In addition to guitars (and guitar hardware), Suhr also design and build amplifiers and effects pedals.
So, those are the facts. The guitars are top-quality, boutique grade instruments with remarkably high levels of consistency.
But which Suhr should you go for?
Suhr Buying Guide 2025
In today’s guide, I’m actually going to identify a few ‘possible players’ or situations, and then suggest a Suhr guitar (or two!) from our latest delivery that will meet those needs. They are only suggestions, and you may well have reasons and preferences that supersede my info. As always, just take what works for you and don’t worry about the bits that don’t resonate.
Shall we?
Best Suhr for a Classic Look & Tone, with a Comfortable Feel
Lots of guitarists are simply looking for an excellent example of those time-honoured S and T type electrics. Many brands offer them of course, and Suhr’s are amongst the best in the world.
It’s all about great timbers, tight neck pockets, excellent fret work, wonderful neck profiles and pickups that are made in-house to exacting standards. These two guitar choices today are starting points for those who want traditional guitars done particularly well…
Suhr Classic S SSS
For a clean and clear take on the S-style, I offer you the Suhr Classic S. Suhr offer many varieties of pickup configurations and so on, but I’m sticking with the initial triple single coil vibe here. What helps this particular guitar stand out for me are the following:
- The Even C Slim neck is wonderful and still has a slightly chunky feel.
- The fingerboard has a compound radius fingerboard (9-12”) which really is the best of both worlds: rounded for chording, flatter towards the higher frets for big bends.
- The patented SSCII system is a passive circuit which makes the single coil pickups genuinely noiseless. No batteries, no hum and no hassle!
These things help separate Suhr’s Classic S from the rest of the pack. There are literally hundreds of companies offering guitars like this, so it takes John Suhr’s skills and know-how to make such an instrument stand out. This is a world-class S-type electric, and it’ll go toe-to-toe with any other top brand on the market. Make sure you play a selection of these and form a decent opinion on how you feel about them!
Suhr Classic T Vintage SS
Much the same applies to this Suhr take on the ‘other’ 50s bolt-on electric. You know the one! The Suhr Classic T Vintage is a great example of getting the simple things correct (alder, roasted maple, Indian Rosewood, great pickups, killer neck profile, top fretwork) and putting them together with unmatched skill.
This style of guitar by definition is straightforward, so I’d simply say this: if you’re looking for a Tele-style guitar at this price and don’t have this on your shortlist, then it’s you who’ll be missing out! Regret is a horrible thing!
The ‘Swiss Army Knife’ of Guitars: The Suhr Standard Plus S HSS
For all of you guitarists who play in function bands or any other musical situation that requires versatility, you’ll be all over the HSS S-style. Adding a humbucker into an otherwise familiar design opens its functionality hugely. If you prefer to power through a gig using only one guitar, this is the sort of thing you’ll need.
The Suhr Standard Plus HSS is the perfect mixture of beauty and beast, with all of the sound selections you’ll need to cover all styles of guitar playing. I picked this over the equally useful Suhr Classic S HSS because I wanted to highlight the more ‘hybrid’ aesthetic that’s available here. This is like an updated, modernised S-type, complete with natural binding, a side-mounted input jack and a tidied-up control panel.
It’s an elegant instrument, particularly when there’s a wonderful slice of figured maple on the top! The shape is slightly sleeker than a typical S-style, but it's not quite into Ibanez territory! The HSS pickup configuration and quality tremolo bridge ensure that your sounds are detailed, high quality and authoritative. The guitar’s good looks ensure that you’ll both fit in and stand out in whichever musical scenario you find yourself in. Again, if you only take one guitar out with you, this is the guitar you should be taking.
The Contemporary Hot Rod: The Suhr Modern
Some players want a sleeker look; an even more contemporary redrawing of the blueprint. There needs to be some middle ground between classic Strat-types and super shred-machines; a guitar that performs for technical players, but retains that boutique class and flash.
Well, there is! It’s the Suhr Modern, and it’s ready for anything you can throw at it.
You get all of the performance features like 24 frets (jumbo stainless steel, I should add), a flatter 10-14” fingerboard radius, an elliptical neck carve (you definitely feel the benefits up high!) and a specially selected set of pickups arranged in a shred-friendly H-S-H configuration.
As I say, this is a very ‘capable’ guitar in the way that you can equally throw Dire Straits or Steve Vai at this and it’ll handle them with ease. I can see shredders and fans of 80s hard rock loving this model, and also players who venture into jazz fusion styles. This is the modern choice for those who still want sumptuous timbers and peerless Suhr craftsmanship.
The Definitive Suhr Experience: Ltd Ed Suhr Standard
Now, each and every Suhr guitar gives you ‘the definitive Suhr experience’, but there’s something about the ‘sans pickguard’ Suhr Standard that really sums up the brand to me. There’s a connection to the Pensa past, and a connection to other Suhr models - a few of which we’ve seen today - but it also stands proud in its own uniqueness.
This is the perfect match of tradition and contemporary, the right amount of gorgeous flash (without being egregious) and has the two most important things in spades: feel and tone. Surely, we all initially pick guitars for their looks (just be honest with yourself), but we keep them for their feel and sound. We need the whole experience to work for us, and this is where Suhr excel.
This Suhr Standard model utilises a more classic shape than the Standard Plus, and eschews the natural ‘scraped’ binding for a look that’s more rounded and familiar. The H-H pickup set is perhaps more ‘rock’ looking (I prefer it, not that it matters much!), but there’s a 5-way selector here so you can still get lovely thinner tones in addition to the molten rock lava that it can also spew. A wolf in some fancy sheep’s clothing, this one is both beautiful and deadly. How can you refuse?
Suhr: Your Forever Electric Guitar
A guitar like those above will be your companion for life: something you reach for again and again, no matter the style of music on hand. Suhr make sure that the specialness you look for in a guitar connection is there in each build. In the end, it’s a simple matter of the guitar’s maker having great taste, even better skills and an eye for the ensemble, where the whole is greater than the sum of its considerable parts. This is the Suhr ‘house style’, in effect, because there definitely is a house style!
I expect that if you like one Suhr, then you’ll like them all. It’ll then be a question of which one meets your own personal preference. There’s plenty of choice!
In all honesty, I think you should check out whichever Suhr guitars take your fancy, frankly, but these particular ones stand out for me as touchstones of the brand’s collective offering. In my years of experience with the brand, these are personal recommendations from me to you about where you might want to start in your search.
Hey, try them out and see if I’m right!
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