SUHR CLASSIC ANTIQUE
“While the appearance and chassis of this superb Suhr are familiar it’s, typically, the finer details that have been upgraded – not least with the decades of John Suhr’s experience”
as we move into the £2-3k area most players lean towards Suhr. While our Antique version is lightly aged, the standard Classic Pro would cost £2,099.
Aside from the more pointed headstock and the two-post Gotoh 510 vibrato, visually, it ticks the classic recipe to a tee. The weight is excellent and who’s going to argue with the vintage tint to the quartersawn maple neck or the nitro finish, which adds to the allure of a hardworking guitar that’s far from over-relic’d. While the appearance and chassis are familiar it’s, typically, the finer details that have been upgraded – not least with the decades of John Suhr’s experience. It has the feel of an old working guitar that’s been repaired and modded along the way.
Medium gauge stainless frets, for example, sit on a compound radius ’board. Truss rod adjustment is behind the nut, not vintage-style, and all the better for it, allowing a perfectly dialled in set-up.
The hardware, in our modded scenario, has been ‘replaced’: rear-lock Suhr tuners with staggered post heights dropping in pairs from the highest E and A to the lowest B and E. And then there’s the Gotoh 510 vibrato. A superb two-post unit with steel block and pressed steel saddles but (deep drilled) and with a tension adjustable push-fit arm.
The overwound ML (Mike Landau) single coils have a light magnet stagger – plus we get the Suhr SSCII hum-cancelling system – and are controlled by a five-way pickup selector, master volume and the ‘re-wired’ tone set-up of tone 1 (neck and middle), tone 2 (bridge).
Again, the six standard colour options are classic, there’s a maple fingerboard option plus you can choose to have an SSV ’bucker at the bridge. It’s a finely tuned, high performance instrument that retains – not least in this Antique guise – a very familiar look and feel. Superb.
SOUNDS & FEEL
With very similar weights, nicely on the right side of 3.6kg/8lb there’s very little to distinguish between our trio in terms of strapped on or seated feel. Materials aside, the same can be said for the finishing, too. The real feel difference then lies in the neck shapes, fingerboard, frets and, of course, set-up. Neck depths and widths give us some comparison and it’s interesting that the widest nut with the widest string spacing is the Fender. Depth-wise all three are remarkably similar by the 12th fret; the Fret-king is a little deeper in lower positions but it’s the shape that’s the crucial thing, yet again they are more similar than the pricepoint might suggest. The rounded lower positions of the Fender fill out width-wise while the shape moves to a flatter, classic C; the Fret-King is very similar, slightly fuller in the lower positions but similarly shaped in the upper portions; the Suhr feels like it has a little more shoulder. All three are perfectly fit for purpose.
Fingerboard radius is – seemingly – an emotive specification but our advice is to play ’em. Again they are remarkably similar and we think Suhr has the edge for the high fret virtuosos not least in that the set-up is just a little more dialled-in with the smallest relief and lowest string height, with not a buzz or choke in sight. The Fender feels a bit more ‘production’ but mixes a low treble string height with more room on the bass. The Fret-King’s strings, we felt, didn’t reflect the guitar’s potential so we went up to 10s and adjusted both string height
and relief accordingly. Fret size is similar on the Fender and Fret-King; the Suhr, the only one that uses stainless steel, is slightly narrower and super-smooth but we have to say the other two are pretty damn good.
Vibrato set-ups are also slightly different; the Suhr is virtually, but not quite, flat on the body; the Fender has the most tilt and the Fret-King sits in the middle. If you want to deck the vibratos on any, get out that screwdriver. And again preference reflects locking tuners with no string trees (Fret King and Suhr) against standard tuners and a single tree (Fender). If vibrato antics are your bag the former should give you a gnat’s more tuning stability while again the Fender feels very everyman – with strings properly attached and stretched to typical use, it’s more than good.
As set, the Suhr supplies just shy of a full-tone upbend on the G and pretty slack on full down-bend. The Fender up-bends a tone-and-a-half on the G string, again with plenty of down-bend, almost to slack. The Fret-King is a little more limited with approximately a full tone-up but downbends are limited by the block hitting the back of the cavity. Both the Suhr and FretKing have full steel blocks; the Fret-King’s is deep drilled, not the Suhr, while the Fender block is tapered and deep drilled.
The unplugged acoustic response should be another illustrator of quality, and for all its class the Fret-King does sound a little brasher and sharper with slightly less resonance noticeable with less body vibration; there’s plenty of attack but less development in terms of the sustain envelope. The Fender pulls back some of that brashness for a little more balance, more give in its vibration and more sustain development after a chord. The Suhr subtly increases that with less metallic attack and a little more enveloping sustain as you voice chords up the neck. Some makers and players dislike the ‘sound’ of stainless steel frets but we couldn’t hear that on this platform – there’s a beautifully buttery smooth feel without that ‘clack’ we have experienced on a more vintage-specific Strat refretted with stainless steel.
Time and time again we say it: the Fender Stratocaster is arguably the most distinctive sounding electric guitar there is yet why is it that they all sound subtly, or profoundly, different? The Fret-King might employ Fishman’s extremely good active pickups but there’s not really any active artefacts: the sound is clean, clear and on the brighter side. Of course, it has those two voices: the first (with the lower tone switch down) is the thinner and brighter, pulling up the tone switch introduces a bigger, slightly rounder and slightly darker voice. We prefer the latter and we’d probably swap the switching around so that it’s voiced in down position.
The Fender scores a direct hit, sounding like a Strat should! It’s very organic, a little softer and springier and not huge in the heft department. The magnet stagger, however, does emphasise the dominant G string and the softer B and E, which for so many rootsy styles just sounds right, but can take a more experienced player to eke the best from it.
The Suhr? There’s an extremely good reason why these guitars end up in so
“The Fender Stratocaster is arguably the most distinctive sounding electric guitar there is, yet they all sound subtly, or profoundly, different”
many pros’ hands: it’s like we’ve added an expander to the sound. Big, beefy, authoritative, hugely organic and dynamic.
There’s plenty to like about each of these. The Fret-King, aside from being completely quiet, does some great funky, poppy rhythm with quite vicious compression and careful adjustment of the high-end and presence. The Suhr is just a drop-in for hairier or quite gained roots rock and blues. The politer Fender needs a little lift to match the latter. That harder hitting voice 2 on the Fret-King captures a really viable textured rock voice while the Fender and Suhr relax into soulful rhythm.
One consideration may well be pickup hum. The Fender’s mixes are humcancelling but not the solo pickup voices. The Suhr didn’t seem bothered by hum at all and, as we said, the Fret-King’s Fluence pickups… what hum?
VERDICT
We like quality, but justifying £2k, £3k or more, is hard. That said, if money wasn’t a problem, we’d take the Suhr: state-ofthe-art bolt-on making aimed squarely at the hard-working guitarist. With a little dialling in, however, the lowly-priced FretKing, with its own state-of-the-art active engine, supplies plenty of potential, not least for the practising and recording player or those of us that have to coax a lot of sounds for grass-roots and function gigs.
Many makers and players love to knock Fender just like we’re all happy to knock major artists or celebs. That might be the way of the world but for an awful lot of Strat-lovers among us, the American Professional is an excellent tool that’s sensibly priced with impressive spec.
Our advice is not to obsess about on-paper specification but get out and play as many as you can. Just remember, the ‘best’ guitar is the one that suits you and your budget.