The problem with the lithium pickups, fwiw, was that they are awful when paired up with anything impedance sensitive, such as fuzz pedals and some vintage distortions. I've found that also translates into the modern world of modeling too--and that's currently my bread and butter for gigs and dates.
Looking for a new main strat (Anderson Classic Alternatives?)
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laxu
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Can you elaborate? I don't have any fuzz pedals atm, but I haven't noticed the Kiesel Lithiums to behave any different to any of my other guitars with high output pickups.
May just be me being picky, most things they ran through fine, but anything impedance sensitive, so like SD9 style pedals or Fuzz Faces and that kind of thing would be very splatty or overtly bright, it's typical of most humbuckers to react weirdly with Fuzz Face pedals for example, so It's not a knock against the lithiums in that regard. They are a really high output pickup--not exactly the territory you want to drive vintage style effects since nothing like that existed back in the day.
OrganicZed
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Your list of desired specifications is going to be hard to fill without a custom build.
Like you said, Suhr has an insane wait time for custom orders right now (almost 2 years). I have not experienced the wide variation in quality that you describe encountering. I have five Suhr guitars and I bought them all online without playing them first. Only one had a real issue. The neck had developed a hump at the neck / body joint area. Suhr paid to ship the guitar to them to diagnose and address the issue. John Suhr himself did the repair. He pulled the frets, planed the neck flat again, did a re-fret, and then had his team refinish the neck. The fretwork is literally perfect now. Unfortunately, it took 10 months for them to finally get the guitar back to me. I'll cut them some slack though because John's wife was going through cancer treatment and he had been taking a bunch of time off to help her get through it. The other four have been great right out of the box.
Given the substantial wait time for Suhr orders, I decided to custom order with Tom Anderson in 2022. I had played several of them at a store locally and I found them to be great guitars. It only took 5 months from order to delivery which I found to be very reasonable. It is my favorite guitar. I would not hesitate to do another custom order with them if I had the funds.
Like you said, Suhr has an insane wait time for custom orders right now (almost 2 years). I have not experienced the wide variation in quality that you describe encountering. I have five Suhr guitars and I bought them all online without playing them first. Only one had a real issue. The neck had developed a hump at the neck / body joint area. Suhr paid to ship the guitar to them to diagnose and address the issue. John Suhr himself did the repair. He pulled the frets, planed the neck flat again, did a re-fret, and then had his team refinish the neck. The fretwork is literally perfect now. Unfortunately, it took 10 months for them to finally get the guitar back to me. I'll cut them some slack though because John's wife was going through cancer treatment and he had been taking a bunch of time off to help her get through it. The other four have been great right out of the box.
Given the substantial wait time for Suhr orders, I decided to custom order with Tom Anderson in 2022. I had played several of them at a store locally and I found them to be great guitars. It only took 5 months from order to delivery which I found to be very reasonable. It is my favorite guitar. I would not hesitate to do another custom order with them if I had the funds.
Yeah, quality gap is probably not the right word, they were decent guitars, but when I'm paying $3500+ for a guitar I'm expecting it to be better than decent. I just felt like they had great workmanship but that the wood selection wasn't as good or something, like they weren't resonant guitars, and many of them I've played have been fairly heavy. 8lbs and more is not uncommon for Suhr anymore.
In fact, I was considering just punting and buying a Classic S Antique for the last few days, but finding one around 7 1/2 lbs is nigh on impossible. I've been told by a dealer the silent system they install adds quite a bit of weight over the older illitch system they were using.
I think I'm calling tomorrow to order my Anderson. Build is something like:
Shorty
Nitro Stage 3 double decker surf green over burst
HSS, HC2, SC1, SC1
vintage tremolo
Chocolate Maple with Surf Green logo
tort guard
Jumbo frets
Quote I've received was around $4800. That's a lot of pain, but I guess 20% now and 80% later is a bit easier to stomach, but still a lot of frickin money.
I have a Mark VII and PRS CE up for sale to fund the purchase, but it's still gonna require a bit out of pocket probably.
OrganicZed
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Yes, the SSC II adds almost a half pound. I’d heard John Suhr say in interviews that they reject most of the wood that the vendors bring in due to weight (either too heavy or too light). He prefers guitar bodies in a fairly narrow weight range for tonal reasons. Another factor is the steel block that they use on the Gotoh 510. It all adds up to their classic series guitars being in the 7.8 - 8.3 pound weight range.
You won’t regret ordering the Tom Anderson once it arrives. I agree, that is a lot of money but their guitars are pretty special. Be sure to talk with your dealer about the details of the build. My dealer Trent at Morgan Music suggested going for Alder instead of mahogany and swapping the black gloss headstock for clear satin. Those two changes cut the price by $700 and I’m very pleased with how my build turned out.
You won’t regret ordering the Tom Anderson once it arrives. I agree, that is a lot of money but their guitars are pretty special. Be sure to talk with your dealer about the details of the build. My dealer Trent at Morgan Music suggested going for Alder instead of mahogany and swapping the black gloss headstock for clear satin. Those two changes cut the price by $700 and I’m very pleased with how my build turned out.
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Oh yeah, gorgeous guitar btw. I actually went to the dealer I'm getting it from. He's been helping me along the process--actually he got me straight on pickups. How do you like the Baby Floyd? I've been up on the air on that part.
OrganicZed
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I like it. As far as I know, TAG doesn't offer the option to do a fully recessed vintage style bridge (Suhr will do a fully recessed Gotoh 510). If you want more usable range on the vibrato without going all in on the double locking setup then the baby floyd is the way to go. If you order their vintage style bridge their standard setup is for dive only. You can float them, but the pull up range will be pretty limited. I'm sure you'd be able to request that the bridge is set to float from the factory.
The baby floyd holds tune very well and offers a good amount of range in both directions. I can dive the strings until they are totally slack or pull the bridge as sharp as it will go and it comes back into tune. The upward range is not as extreme as my Suhr with the Gotoh 1996t (double locking Floyd variant). I've seen some people saying that this style of bridge makes the tone thin but that has not been my experience at all.
In my experience the block has a huge impact of the tone of a floyd, I know you can swap the blocks on your trem--have seen it done. I suspect Anderson may already be using a better block than stock. I played one the other day, and it was not what I expected, much meatier and sounded more like a two-post strat bridge.
FWIW, I actually inquired about a recessed 2 post vintage tremolo. I guess they are contemplating it because they said, not in the immediate future, but they've done a few for artists and are trying to find out if it makes sense to offer that at some point.
I'm playing a G&L S-500 for about half of the time right now, and it's not recessed. I can pull up about a whole step, I suspect floating the Anderson will be similar. I may still get the baby floyd, although I've been advised not too by some close friends just because they wished they hadn't got a floating bridge on their guitars of the past lol.
Just put a block in the string cavity and stop worrying about it
OrganicZed
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unix-guy
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The baby Floyd is very solid. Mine came with the vintage bar/socket. I didn't like the angle of the bar so I swapped the socket/bar with a Schaller style with the socket cap.
The vintage 2-point is pretty similar to the Gotoh 510.
Tuning stability on both Andersons is excellent.
Of the 3 types, I like the feel/control of the Gotoh 510 the most. All of them are good for me and I am a non-stop user of the bar :)
The 2 guitars I have with a 510 (both Charvels) I have replaced the stock saddles with Wilkinson locking saddles.
My Suhr has the Gotoh 1996t which I'd rate very high compared to Ibanez Edge trems (also made by Gotoh). I prefer double locking systems but I'm getting more comfortable with the non-locking.
The vintage 2-point is pretty similar to the Gotoh 510.
Tuning stability on both Andersons is excellent.
Of the 3 types, I like the feel/control of the Gotoh 510 the most. All of them are good for me and I am a non-stop user of the bar :)
The 2 guitars I have with a 510 (both Charvels) I have replaced the stock saddles with Wilkinson locking saddles.
My Suhr has the Gotoh 1996t which I'd rate very high compared to Ibanez Edge trems (also made by Gotoh). I prefer double locking systems but I'm getting more comfortable with the non-locking.
The guitar sitting right next to me is a partscaster. While it's served me well, the jank is strong with it
Seriously, I have a really bad neck pocket--it's gotta go in for a tone up, and I'm going to ask them if there's anything they can do to address that when it goes in tomorrow.
So, it's Olympic white, that has yellowed over the 20 years I've owned it. The neck is a wenge conversion neck from warmoth, the body is actually a Jimmie Vaughan strat body. Anyway, the neck pocket has always been massive, and everyone who's worked on it has told me that they had a little trouble with string alignment. Last night I had to take the neck off to tweak the truss (even though I have the side adjust, I ran out of usable range) and I haven't had the neck off by myself in like 15 years. Anyway, I noticed that the guy who did the upgrade work for me and put all the new parts in it mounted the pickguard before he mounted the neck which means that the pickguard has the neck in the center of the pocket rather than on the southern edge, so I need to have the pickguard cut/shaved so it will fit properly. Once that's done, I think the string alignment will be better and it'll be more playable than it is right now.
To clarify, this is one of my main guitars right now. I have this and a USA G&L S-500 that are doing the lionshare of the work. I'm hoping that the new guitar will allow me to put this back in the case as a backup.
I'm neither wealthy or a pro musician, but I do get a bit of money from time to time playing gigs and doing studio work on nights and weekends. I've never bought a guitar for more than $2k even. In fact, that strat pictured above is literally my first real guitar. I swapped the neck a few years ago after it had it's first re-fret and it's still going (albeit with totally different pickups etc.--basically the whole ship of Theseus analogy vibe here) that's not to say I haven't spent more money on amps and stuff. I'm within my means to buy this guitar, but it's definitely stretching what I think is reasonable.
As jank as that guitar is, It's kind of my session secret weapon. I don't usually take it out until they have me cutting solos at the end, and 95% of the time they don't want me to play a different guitar, and it's usually done in 2 or 3 takes. I've played for people where I cut their solos in 20-30 minutes for a whole EP.
cragginshred
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Had 3 Suhrs own and play 3 Anderson! Smaller shop with less hands on them and insanely good customer service. Suhr has these great kevlar quality softshell cases. Well mine broke after a few years of use and they would not warranty it . Anderson same thing and they sent me a new one no questions asked
Mooselake
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Just wanted to chime in on my Suhr experiences, so sorry for getting a bit OT. They've really been outstanding to me. I own 2 Suhrs, a strat clone and a tele clone. Without going into too much detail John has been extremely helpful to me both in finding just the instrument I wanted spec-wise (winning instrument was a strat clone that was part of a Suhr "Select" run for a dealer I eventually mail ordered from, so cheaper than a custom build to the same specs, section of the neck in my avatar), and with restoring an Ibanez (AT100) that I picked up used. I'm a complete nobody and in both cases John reached out privately on a certain other website and offered to help. He's a class guy and very enjoyable to interact with. They build a lot of guitars and amps and pedals/effects so it's not a surprise experiences vary. But in the unlikely event I'm in the market for a new guitar I'll look there first.
I did play a used Anderson once in a guitar shop, years before I bought the first Suhr. It was a very nice instrument, on par with the Suhrs, but it had one of those bridge/nut arrangements where you need to keep tools on hand to change strings or even tune/retune it, which I don't like, so I didn't buy it. But it's hard for me to imagine one could go wrong with them.
I did play a used Anderson once in a guitar shop, years before I bought the first Suhr. It was a very nice instrument, on par with the Suhrs, but it had one of those bridge/nut arrangements where you need to keep tools on hand to change strings or even tune/retune it, which I don't like, so I didn't buy it. But it's hard for me to imagine one could go wrong with them.
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Eagle
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Gibson Murphy Lab is using something close but Fender Custom shop isn’t. I have sprayed DuPont NOS and it’s very different from what you see now. More brittle and fragile.depends on what kind of Nitro they are shooting. it absolutely can, but it's generally going to cost you a lot more money to have that kind of nitro sprayed.
To my knowledge that's what Fender Custom Shop uses. It's NOT what PRS or Production level Gibson uses. I can attest to PRS personally as my guitars had the typical ridiculous flakey PRS finish (despite being the new Nitro) that they refuse to take care of when there are issues. Only one of the guitars had the flaking though, and it's been sold a while ago with that disclosed.
Edit: Fwiw, I don't think Gibson custom shop is using a much different finish and this is part of the reason their relics often wind up looking hilarious. It's well documented their finish wears like older guitars pretty well--there was a miles-long thread on 'the other forum' a while back from a guy angry his aged guitar was starting to show new wear
Yeah, I asked around town with some friends who work at guitar shops as well as a technician that gets the lionshare of my work.
Apparently Gibson production is basically using poly with a small amount of Nitro-base added to it so that the new guitars will check. They will not age the same way old-school guitars do.
Also, it was said to me that old Dupont cans float around of the vintage stuff--there's a video of someone spraying it--but it's basically illegal to do so in some states, and the EPA banned the production of several ingredients therefore making it basically impossible to get 60s nitro. Anything claiming to be that finish just shares a similar chemical makeup, but it's just not the same stuff.
Granted, some of them wear just the same as the old stuff does, but technically it's just similar. (poorly?)
It's also been made abundantly clear in MANY places and by MANY builders that Nitro doesn't really do anything for the sound that a thin poly finish doesn't do exactly the same. And even now--and this is coming from people I know locally who work on guitars for money (usually their living) most poly guitars are not sprayed on so thick that it's going to be a problem.
Back in the 90s I ran into a few cracked guitars from fender (2 that I recall specifically) where you could see straight through to bare wood. The finish was caked on very thickly. One was a Mexican P-Bass, and the other was a Strat, but I don't remember whether it was Squier/Mexico/USA. I think the companies have sort of got it under control now because it spreads like wildfire when someone's putting out sub-par stuff. The only time I hear about thick finishes now is weird Amazon brand guitars etc.
I want the Nitro for aesthetic reasons really. Never had the opportunity to own a vintage guitar, and being that I'm 39 and still not rich, I probably never will.
