Suhr 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. Guitar FX Direct have a fantastic selection of the brilliant Suhr Guitar Effect Pedals.
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. From 1995 to 1997, John Suhr worked as Senior Master Builder at Fender's Custom Shop, and then left 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.
During their first years the company built high-end guitars to customer specifications, introducing a new model about once a year. In 2004 they expanded into guitar amplifiers. In addition to the popular OD-100, which still bears the Custom Audio Amplifiers brand, they now also manufacture the Badger line of amplifiers bearing the Suhr name. 2005 saw the introduction of the Silent Single Coil system, which uses a secondary coil for noise cancellation to enable guitars with single coil pickups to function without picking up noise.
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