Help me decide: Strat-style - Suhr or Anderson

secondwindow

secondwindow

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I have a Fender American Ultra Luxe Stratocaster that I'm thinking about replacing with a strat-style from Suhr or Anderson, probably with SSS.

My Fender is on the heavy side and the noiseless pickups aren't bad, but not too inspiring. The playability is fine and craftsmanship is OK.

I have a Suhr Modern Custom with dual humbuckers that I really like - sounds, looks, weight, playability, etc.

I've never owned an Anderson, but have thought about owning one someday.

I don't live near a Suhr or Anderson dealer, so I'll be taking my chances with buying online. Not an issue, so long as I can return it if it's just not for me.

The Suhr Classic S and Anderson Icon Classic are two models I've been comparing.

I'd appreciate any ideas you have to help me decide to keep what I have or get a Suhr, Anderson, or something else.

Thanks in advance!
 
Personally, I would just change the pickups if that's an issue. I have done this on many Deluxe Strats thru the years.
I do have An Ultra Strat but not the Luxe, although I don't know what the difference is.
You said, "playability is fine and craftsmanship is OK". imho playability is great and craftsmanship is great. But I am a Strat guy.
I paid $1,679.00 NEW for mine in 2020. I have other Strats and Teles, yes all Fenders.

$2,900 is a bit much for me for little gain (that's just the Suhr), if any. Just my opinion of course.
I have no doubt many will say get the one of the others. That's what makes the world go round!
 
Stratman68 said:
Personally, I would just change the pickups if that's an issue. I have done this on many Deluxe Strats thru the years.
I do have An Ultra Strat but not the Luxe, although I don't know what the difference is.
You said, "playability is fine and craftsmanship is OK". imho playability is great and craftsmanship is great. But I am a Strat guy.
I paid $1,679.00 NEW for mine in 2020. I have other Strats and Teles, yes all Fenders.

$2,900 is a bit much for me for little gain (that's just the Suhr), if any. Just my opinion of course.
I have no doubt many will say get the one of the others. That's what makes the world go round!
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Swapping the pickups in my Strat Ultra Luxe is something I've considered, too. The Luxe has SS frets, but I think that's the only difference that isn't cosmetic. My Luxe is heavy (to me), over 2 pounds more than my Suhr.

I agree - there's quite a price difference.
 
I swapped the pickups at my American Deluxe Strat 21 years ago, and never gone back to the noiseless. I've tried several ones. Now I have Seymour Duncan SSL-5 bridge, Fender Fat'50 on mid and neck. Great tone!

BTW: I rarely pick the Fender American Deluxe since I bought the Schecter Nick Johnston Custom Shop USA. It is in a superior league (Suhr/Anderson league, without busting the bank)
 
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Shur and Anderson both make wonderful guitars so you won’t go wrong with either. Weight is important to me so whatever the replacement, I’d be looking to move that heavy strat along.

Every Anderson I’ve played (a total of 3 I think) has been great. Not just good, but great. I’m confident you’d be happy with one. They are more expensive than Suhr mostly because they aren’t made on the same scale as Suhr. I don’t like the 3 strap button design choice but their neck joint is very cool. Their pickups tend to be more modern voiced while Suhr pickups are intended to be vintage voiced if that matters to you.

You already know what the Suhr level of quality is. If you want noiseless I would go for the Suhr. The SSCII is very effective and the pickups still sound like true single coils. I have it in two guitars and have never dealt with 60 cycle hum on either. The downside is that it adds about half a pound so the Classic S guitars with it tend to be around 8 pounds. They can be found under 7.5 pounds but you’ll have to look for them intentionally.
 
Both Suhr and Anderson are great. Each have their own things going on but at a very high level of quality. I’m a Suhr guy myself but wouldn’t mind an Anderson some day!
 
A thing to consider when buying online:

I have a beautiful Suhr Modern Satin with a nasty dead note (I bought it on-line, second hand). And that is not my first experience with dead notes at expensive guitars. A dead note (the guitar body absorbing the vibrational energy at one specific frequency, causing the note to decay abruptly) can happen even at the most expensive brands.

Make sure that there is a solid return policy, and ask the seller if he can do a thorough check of dead notes. Specially at strings 1, 2 & 3 around the 12th fret.
 
Piing said:
I swapped the pickups at my American Deluxe Strat 21 years ago, and never gone back to the noiseless. I've tried several ones. Now I have Seymour Duncan SSL-5 bridge, Fender Fat'50 on mid and neck. Great tone!

BTW: I rarely pick the Fender American Deluxe since I bought the Schecter Nick Jonson Custom Shop USA. It is in a superior league (Suhr/Anderson league, without busting the bank)
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Good tip! I hadn't heard of that Schecter model. I'll check into it.

I owned a Schecter strat in the late 80s. Maybe I should have held on to it. Sold it to fund a Zion I bought at Masterpiece Guitars in Stuttgart, Germany.
 
OrganicZed said:
Shur and Anderson both make wonderful guitars so you won’t go wrong with either. Weight is important to me so whatever the replacement, I’d be looking to move that heavy strat along.

Every Anderson I’ve played (a total of 3 I think) has been great. Not just good, but great. I’m confident you’d be happy with one. They are more expensive than Suhr mostly because they aren’t made on the same scale as Suhr. I don’t like the 3 strap button design choice but their neck joint is very cool. Their pickups tend to be more modern voiced while Suhr pickups are intended to be vintage voiced if that matters to you.

You already know what the Suhr level of quality is. If you want noiseless I would go for the Suhr. The SSCII is very effective and the pickups still sound like true single coils. I have it in two guitars and have never dealt with 60 cycle hum on either. The downside is that it adds about half a pound so the Classic S guitars with it tend to be around 8 pounds. They can be found under 7.5 pounds but you’ll have to look for them intentionally.
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I had no idea the SSCII added that much weight - something to watch out for.

My strat weighs 9.25, which seems pretty heavy to me.
 
Piing said:
A thing to consider when buying online:

I have a beautiful Suhr Modern Satin with a nasty dead note (I bought it on-line, second hand). And that is not my first experience with dead notes at expensive guitars. A dead note (the guitar body absorbing the vibrational energy at one specific frequency, causing the note to decay abruptly) can happen even at the most expensive brands.

Make sure that there is a solid return policy, and ask the seller if he can do a thorough check of dead notes. Specially at strings 1, 2 & 3 around the 12th fret.
Click to expand...
That’s good advice to check for dead notes. I haven’t always done that until fairly recently. Nowadays, I check every string at every fret. So far, so good. I find sweet spots now and then, but no dead notes.
 
Here's a great cautionary tale about dead notes. This one just put a knot in my stomach to read:

https://forum.fractalaudio.com/threads/new-suhr-has-dead-notes.159402/

@unix-guy might weigh in on how it's been since then.

I actually created a checklist of the things I care about when looking at a new guitar. I can easily get focused on some aspect and forget about other stuff that's important, so I make sure to go down the list line by line, but the most important item on there is to check for dead notes. And keep in mind they can come in different forms; it may be a note that just disappears into a harmonic, which happened to me on my Gibson Shred V (which went away when I replaced the Kahler with a Hipshot fixed bridge), and it may be just a note with very little to no sustain, and I'm sure there are other manifestations. I thoroughly checked my latest guitar at the store, including a sustain test on every note, but I still missed just a single note with noticeably less sustain than the rest; not the biggest deal, but what gets me is that I missed it even though I was looking for it specifically. I was too enamored with everything else about it and didn't take enough time with the sustain test.

I like so many things about Anderson and Suhr, and in that price range I'd personally slant toward a Vigier. One of Vigier's selling points is that their weirdo neck construction (with no truss rod) supposedly eliminates the potential for dead notes altogether.
 
Both the Suhr and Anderson are reliable quality guitars with pro and cons.
The Suhr has a far better bridge and people tend to like the pickups although they air on the hi fi IMO. But they do seam to suffer from dead and over loud spots a bit more than the Andersons do. On the Anderson the A neck joint is much better but the pickups often get swapped out and the bridge is OEM Korean not Gotoh. The issue of dead spots usually follows the body and can happen at any price point to any company. It is if it is picked up in QC, and it hardly ever is. It happens when the resonant frequencies are dissonant in the neck and body. The further they are apart the less likely you are to have an issue (same as dissonant notes in different octaves.) High end companies have ways of selecting neck and body wood to minimise the chances but until the guitar is finished you can never be 100% that it will be fine. The best way is go and play as many as you can find and let your ears decide. If you are stuck and can only buy blind phone the dealer and explain your issues and leave them in no doubt that if it has this problem even a bit it's coming back but you will need to be flexible on colour.
 
State of Epicicity said:
[snip]
I actually created a checklist of the things I care about when looking at a new guitar. I can easily get focused on some aspect and forget about other stuff that's important, so I make sure to go down the list line by line, but the most important item on there is to check for dead notes.
Click to expand...
I'd love to see your checklist, if you don't mind, since I'm somewhat in guitar-shopping mode.

So far I haven't found anything I liked enough to microscope, but hopefully I will.
 
Dave Merrill said:
I'd love to see your checklist, if you don't mind, since I'm somewhat in guitar-shopping mode.

So far I haven't found anything I liked enough to microscope, but hopefully I will.
Click to expand...

Things to check for in a new guitar

[ ] Stainless Steel Frets
[ ] Check for notes that fret out just from regular playing
[ ] Feel for upper fret access
[ ] Dead / Wolf Notes
[ ] See if middle pickup is in the way of picking
[ ] Do wide bends on every note to check for bad frets
[ ] Check that trem stays in tune with dive bombs, aggressive wiggling, pull backs, and regular left hand note bends
[ ] Check that G string stays in tune: Do double-stops with D & G string 4ths and 5ths dives and pull ups, and do double-stops with G & B string 4ths and 5ths dives and pull ups
[ ] Check for sustain in general, this goes with checking for dead notes
[ ] Check for any echoes from trem when you abruptly mute a power chord with high gain
[ ] Look for grain of neck to be quarter sawn, not flat sawn
[ ] Make sure there is no harshness at low gain. Play open wound strings and see if pick attack is harsh.
 
And of course tone and feel are the biggest things, but those are so inherent it's needless to list them. I listed all the stuff I might get distracted enough to forget haha.
 
State of Epicicity said:
Things to check for in a new guitar

[ ] Stainless Steel Frets
[ ] Check for notes that fret out just from regular playing
[ ] Feel for upper fret access
[ ] Dead / Wolf Notes
[ ] See if middle pickup is in the way of picking
[ ] Do wide bends on every note to check for bad frets
[ ] Check that trem stays in tune with dive bombs, aggressive wiggling, pull backs, and regular left hand note bends
[ ] Check that G string stays in tune: Do double-stops with D & G string 4ths and 5ths dives and pull ups, and do double-stops with G & B string 4ths and 5ths dives and pull ups
[ ] Check for sustain in general, this goes with checking for dead notes
[ ] Check for any echoes from trem when you abruptly mute a power chord with high gain
[ ] Look for grain of neck to be quarter sawn, not flat sawn
[ ] Make sure there is no harshness at low gain. Play open wound strings and see if pick attack is harsh.
Click to expand...
[ ] Does it chug? ;)
 
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