Plexibreath
09-03-2006, 05:01 PM
If I could do backflips, this is the guitar I'd pop off a few backflips over!
I own a hell of a lot of fine guitars. But I wanted to finally have my one bread and butter workhorse guitar. So years ago I started planning this thing, originally I was going to build it myself, the main thing I wanted was a Skyway bridge and a very unique shaped neck, but there was a lot of other criteria as well.
But a while back when I heard of what John Suhr was doing, his quality and precision, as well as his openness to new proven technology, the clincher being the Silent Single Coil System, I decided to trust him to do this project.
I wanted a thick "V" shaped neck, but there's all kinds of V shapes, I wanted a very subtile "V" shape where it doesn't immediately occur to you that it's V'ish, but not the bulk of the "C" shape.
Well I'm here to report that this neck is beyond what I was anticipating, it's as if John Suhr reached into my brain and pulled out the neck profile! I had thought the thickest you could get a neck on a guitar like this was limited to 1.000 inch, but John said he could go thicker, I wanted 1.050 at the 13th fret tapering down to 0.930 at the first fret, John said he would do it. I asked for a very dark piece of rosewood, John gave me that alright, but the great red streaks is something that sets the fingerboard visually on fire! And the finish, it doesn't know whether it wants to be black, or cherry, some times it looks absolutely black, sometime outright redish cherry. Good thing it's called BlackCherry.
And the Silent Single Coil System? Oh yeah! It only does what it's supposed to do, loose the humm, leaving every drop of Strat tone intact.
The Skyway is absolutely insane! I've already seen how the Skyway equiped guitars all have such big tone, but what a great combination when mated with a Suhr guitar! This guitar has a vibrant resonance thing going on I've not heard to this extent before, strike a full chord and it feels like this guitar is about to vibrate off my guitar strap. Acoustically it's the loudest of all my solid-body guitars, and by quite a margin. This bridge absolutely conducts the vibration from the strings into the wood of the guitar, and it's so damn playable! You can get very subtile with this tremolo, or wank the hell out of it and it still comes back in tune. I still remember the tone from those prototypes and my awe at Rick's elegant design that did away with pieces of metal that pivoted off each-other, and much less routing away of body tone wood. That flexure beam technology was clearly the only solution that didn't have some sort of "gotcha". Though I love the way this tremolo stays in tune, and has no parts that wear, my favorite part about this design is that so little wood needs to be routed away, as well as Rick's unrelenting efforts to design it so that as much of the vibration from the strings is transfered into the wood of the guitar as possible. Rick was very concerned throughout the design that this tremolo would still retain that Strat tone, not over-riding it but enhancing it, he succeed at this in a big way.
I must give a big thanks to John Suhr for such an incredible guitar, and Rick Huff who put the years into perfecting the perfect bridge/tremolo he offers today.
And now, the pictures!
(be sure to note the thickness of the neck from the side shot, and how about that fingerboard wood!)
There are more pictures here:
http://s45.photobucket.com/albums/f97/plexibreath/
Unfortunately, none of these pictures of this guitar do it justice, none of the pictures properly portray the slight green of the mint pickguard, and the actual black cherry finish in the pictures shows courser flecks in the finish, the actual finish has much finer flecks. I also was not able to do anything about the reflections in the finish, though I blacked out the background you can still see the reflections of grass or bricks in the finish. Still, enjoy the pics.
http://i45.photobucket.com/albums/f97/plexibreath/Suhr_mauve_bg_s.jpg
http://i45.photobucket.com/albums/f97/plexibreath/Suhr_black_bb_s.jpg
http://i45.photobucket.com/albums/f97/plexibreath/Suhr_maroon_bg_s.jpg
http://i45.photobucket.com/albums/f97/plexibreath/Suhr_fatneck_s.jpg
I own a hell of a lot of fine guitars. But I wanted to finally have my one bread and butter workhorse guitar. So years ago I started planning this thing, originally I was going to build it myself, the main thing I wanted was a Skyway bridge and a very unique shaped neck, but there was a lot of other criteria as well.
But a while back when I heard of what John Suhr was doing, his quality and precision, as well as his openness to new proven technology, the clincher being the Silent Single Coil System, I decided to trust him to do this project.
I wanted a thick "V" shaped neck, but there's all kinds of V shapes, I wanted a very subtile "V" shape where it doesn't immediately occur to you that it's V'ish, but not the bulk of the "C" shape.
Well I'm here to report that this neck is beyond what I was anticipating, it's as if John Suhr reached into my brain and pulled out the neck profile! I had thought the thickest you could get a neck on a guitar like this was limited to 1.000 inch, but John said he could go thicker, I wanted 1.050 at the 13th fret tapering down to 0.930 at the first fret, John said he would do it. I asked for a very dark piece of rosewood, John gave me that alright, but the great red streaks is something that sets the fingerboard visually on fire! And the finish, it doesn't know whether it wants to be black, or cherry, some times it looks absolutely black, sometime outright redish cherry. Good thing it's called BlackCherry.
And the Silent Single Coil System? Oh yeah! It only does what it's supposed to do, loose the humm, leaving every drop of Strat tone intact.
The Skyway is absolutely insane! I've already seen how the Skyway equiped guitars all have such big tone, but what a great combination when mated with a Suhr guitar! This guitar has a vibrant resonance thing going on I've not heard to this extent before, strike a full chord and it feels like this guitar is about to vibrate off my guitar strap. Acoustically it's the loudest of all my solid-body guitars, and by quite a margin. This bridge absolutely conducts the vibration from the strings into the wood of the guitar, and it's so damn playable! You can get very subtile with this tremolo, or wank the hell out of it and it still comes back in tune. I still remember the tone from those prototypes and my awe at Rick's elegant design that did away with pieces of metal that pivoted off each-other, and much less routing away of body tone wood. That flexure beam technology was clearly the only solution that didn't have some sort of "gotcha". Though I love the way this tremolo stays in tune, and has no parts that wear, my favorite part about this design is that so little wood needs to be routed away, as well as Rick's unrelenting efforts to design it so that as much of the vibration from the strings is transfered into the wood of the guitar as possible. Rick was very concerned throughout the design that this tremolo would still retain that Strat tone, not over-riding it but enhancing it, he succeed at this in a big way.
I must give a big thanks to John Suhr for such an incredible guitar, and Rick Huff who put the years into perfecting the perfect bridge/tremolo he offers today.
And now, the pictures!
(be sure to note the thickness of the neck from the side shot, and how about that fingerboard wood!)
There are more pictures here:
http://s45.photobucket.com/albums/f97/plexibreath/
Unfortunately, none of these pictures of this guitar do it justice, none of the pictures properly portray the slight green of the mint pickguard, and the actual black cherry finish in the pictures shows courser flecks in the finish, the actual finish has much finer flecks. I also was not able to do anything about the reflections in the finish, though I blacked out the background you can still see the reflections of grass or bricks in the finish. Still, enjoy the pics.
http://i45.photobucket.com/albums/f97/plexibreath/Suhr_mauve_bg_s.jpg
http://i45.photobucket.com/albums/f97/plexibreath/Suhr_black_bb_s.jpg
http://i45.photobucket.com/albums/f97/plexibreath/Suhr_maroon_bg_s.jpg
http://i45.photobucket.com/albums/f97/plexibreath/Suhr_fatneck_s.jpg