My All Time Left-Handed Custom Suhr Modern (Part 2)

This is a continuation of the blog An Update On My New Suhr Lefty Modern Guitar

By the time from the initial inception and decision in February 2010, to when I planned to finally order this custom Suhr guitar in May 2013, over 2 years had passed by.

During that +2 year wait, I had done extra research and had reviewed and modified some of my initial decisions and choices.
little did I know at that point that there was still a lot more decision-making to be done.

The toughest decisions I had to make, had to do with the sound choices. In other words, which guitar pick-ups, which wiring, and which configurations, and so on.

I really wanted gold covers.
I had this whole vision of all gold hardware, gold Floyd Rose, gold screws, and gold locking tuner mechanisms.
I felt like the pick-ups needed gold covers for everything to visually connect, balance and fit.

On the other hand: I LOVE the extra versatility you get from a humbucker – single coil – humbucker configuration, giving you so many more different guitar sounds… BUT… I HATE the visual look of gold-covered humbuckers with a single coil in between.
It visually makes the single-coil look out of place and throws the whole visual balance out of whack.

So the next option is to look into gold-covered single coils.
That would give me all the sounds I want having the HSH pickup configuration, yet have a nicely balanced visual appeal, all pick-ups having a gold cover.

John Suhr’s people got back to me strongly advising against this. They had experimented with gold-covered single coils and felt that there were too many issues with them. They never really got them to sound up to the sonic level of sonic quality that Suhr guitars stand for.

Well, that solved that: I don’t want a guitar that looks amazing but sounds crappy haha.

It took me forever and ever to make up my mind on whether I should go with the more integrated visual look of 2 gold-covered humbuckers versus the lesser visually integrated BUT more stylistically and sonically versatile humbucker-single coil-humbucker configuration.

And then something really darn cool happened.

Thank god, yes “THANK GOD” for doing research.

Spending for ever on the internet, in my quest to figure out what the best decision would be, I suddenly saw something which I know Suhr had never done before:

6) 1675a

Yes, hooray for zebra pick-ups with gold magnets and pick-up screws.
If I had not seen this picture, I would absolutely never have thought of this as a possibility.

You never know what you don’t know, right? 🙂

This would completely resolve my issue: I could have the better-integrated look of the pick-ups interacting and connecting with the gold hardware, AND I could have all the extra sounds you get out of an HSH configuration.
I could have both. Amazing.

The only problem now: convincing people at Suhr to want to do this for me.
I pleaded and begged to tell them that I would pay whatever the cost or whatever extra man-hours it would take to do custom-built guitar pick-ups for me with gold magnet poles and screws.

To my utter amazement and happiness:
They agreed! (The only condition being that they could not do this in the single-coil, which I could totally live with)

This made my original guitar idea much better, or like I said in the previous post: A great example of how “adversity” can turn out to be your best friend.

(I will continue my account of this custom guitar building journey with part 3 next week)

Conclusion

Hit me up anytime at vreny@zotzinmusic.com if you have any questions, or if you would like to book a lesson.

These free lessons are cool, but you will never experience the progress, joy, and results that my students experience in lessons when you’re learning by yourself from blogs and videos.

That is why people take lessons: way better results and progress, much more complete information, exposed to way more creative ideas than you can get from a blog or YouTube video.
There is only so much that self-study can accomplish.

If you want to see amazing results and progress in your guitar playing, buy your first lesson here and get started ASAP.