My Custom Suhr Guitar Decision Making Journey (Part 3)

This is part 3 of a 4-part blog. You can read part 1 and 2 here: An Update On My New Suhr Lefty Modern Guitar and My All-Time Favorite Custom Suhr Modern

Every little decision is another step forward towards the birth of this guitar.

Finally having made up my mind that the guitar had to have a humbucker – single coil – humbucker (hsh) configuration, it was time to figure out which wiring configurations I wanted.

I figured: if I have spent THAT long to really make this the best possible guitar ever, and have gone through so many decisions up to where I was now with the vision of this guitar, I could as well go all out then, reach for the stars, and get an entirely custom-designed pick-up configuration as well then.

I decided that I wanted:

Every possible Fender Stratocaster single-coil sound
Every possible Les Paul humbucker sounds
Get as close as possible to the Telecaster sounds
And get close to also getting the SG guitar sounds.
10 different pick-up configurations, giving me a wide array of 10 different guitar sounds. (the way to do this is by having a 5-way pick-up selector switch, with a push-pull knob affecting all the 5 positions on the switch. This gives you 2 pick up configurations assigned to every setting of the selector switch, depending on the position of the tone knob is pulled up or pushed down)

Now: THAT was tough.

Again: many hours of research, which led me to come up with the configuration I thought was going to get me very close to all the sounds I wanted.

I hand drew it out and sent my idea to Suhr.

hsh configurations

I felt very adamant about wanting THAT particular configuration in that particular order.
The reason why I felt strongly about wanting this specifically, is that the first 6 selector switch settings have exactly the very same 6 configurations as the Guthrie Govan Suhr.

(My current Guthrie Govan inspired Suhr Modern has a 5-way switch + push-pull on the tone knob giving me the 6th pick-up configuration/sound)
It was going to make it a lot easier for me to intuitively know where all the sounds are on my new Suhr.

After a couple of days, I got news back that their team had studied it, and had concluded that this could not be done.

I was not sure if that meant that it literally really could not be done, or if they were simply reluctant to put in the time it was going to take to figure this out.
After all: they already had spent a lot of time communicating back and forth with me about a billion guitar-making decisions.

I responded back, with a picture I had found on the Ibanez site. The graphic shows the pick-up configuration on the signature Herman Li Ibanez guitars.

Somehow, at this point, some sort of misunderstanding happened.

I never intended to want the Herman Li pick-up configuration in my new Suhr. I wanted my configuration to be what I had hand-drawn.

I only emailed the people at Suhr Guitars this graphic of the Herman Li pick-up combinations, to dispel their claim that it was not possible to have 10 different pick-up sounds with an hsh and a 5-position selector switch.

However: a couple of days later, the amazing people at Suhr got back to me with the amazing news, that my request would be possible after all, and with this following pick up configuration chart:

Herman Li Pup Diagram

I studied it and something seemed off.
I compared it to my hand-drawn chart, and it seemed like there were mistakes in the diagram.

Then I realized:
this diagram was a map of the Herman Li configuration which I had emailed merely as an example, NOT of the hand-drawn configuration I had sent, which represented what I really wanted.

After lots of emailing back and forth, lots of deliberation, and decision-making, we finally came up with a compromise I am super happy with.

The following diagram shows the guitar pick-up schematic I settled on.

It is actually also an improvement over the Herman Li pick-up wiring.
When you compare both the above and the below diagrams, then you see that in the 4th position (of the pick-up selector switch) of the Ibanez Herman Li model, P/P In (push-pull knob in) and P/P Out both give the same pick-up setting.
The Ibanez in other words gives 9 different configurations.

In the below custom wiring scheme, you can see that I get 2 different configurations in the 4th position, which gives me 10 different pick-up sounds.

Vreny Suhr Modern hsh Configuration 5.30.13

This is going to be the best, most amazing guitar I ever owned or played.

(To be continued soon with Part 4 of this guitar building journal, The final part, including the ultimate spec sheet of my dream guitar)

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.