Is the Suhr Classic JM the Best Offset Guitar?
Hello folks. Sorry for the sort of click bait title. Not my thing, but my coaches suggest that such things encourage more people to come by. I am serious though. Following a rather long wait after order, I received my Suhr Classic JM. It is an offset style guitar and mine is equipped with Suhr SSV humbucking pickups. Being a serious fan of offsets including the Fender Jazzmaster and the Fender Jaguar, I was very intrigued when I first heard a JM and my pal Rob advised me he plays one a great deal, although his has S90s, encouraged me to give it a try.
About Suhr
John Suhr has been building guitars for over 35 years. He worked for Rudy Pensa in New York City where the Pensa-Suhr guitars were built and sold with Mark Knopfler being one of the more famous users. In that list you can count accomplished players such as Eric Clapton, Peter Frampton, Lou Reed and Little Steven amongst many others.
He left NYC to work with Robert Bradshaw on amplifiers and preamplifiers for four years and then joined Fender as a senior master builder in Fender’s Custom Shop, but left some time ago to form his own guitar company which opened in 1997. You might say that every Suhr is at minimum the same quality as Fender Custom Shop instruments. I do, based solely on my personal experience. Suhr is still a smaller highly focused builder and the legacy continues as Kevin Suhr (John’s son) has also joined the business.
I have had the pleasure to own two Suhrs for over a decade and was very excited to bring the Classic JM home.
Suhr Classic JM
The Classic JM is an offset body guitar that looks Jazzmaster like. However, when you pick it up, it is physically sleeker and in my opinion much more refined. You can order a Classic JM with either S90 pickups or Humbucking pickups, both types being made in house by Suhr. I like Suhr pickups very much and have installed them in other guitars replacing factory pickups that I found a bit wanting. I ordered my guitar with the Suhr SSV humbuckers. I find them to deliver a wide range of tone without compromise in response no matter how hard you drive them. When played through a clean amp, they ring and have beautiful overtones and are never muddy. Push them into an amp on the edge of breakup and they bite without compromising the high end and even into a very hot amp like the Soldano Mini 30 they never degrade into goo as do so many other humbucking pickups. If you choose the S90 equipped version, there is a 9V battery used for the Suhr SSCII noise control system that prevents single coil noise.
The guitar has a single master volume and separate tone controls for the neck and the bridge pickups. The switch is a simple three-way. No coil taps, no push pulls, just clean and easy simplicity.
You can order the Classic JM as a hardtail with a string through body configuration, but I chose the Gotoh 510 Tremolo option (advertised as Trem when we all know it’s really a vibrato) and I find the unit to return to tune flawlessly and to be very smooth. Unusual for me, there was nothing that I had to do to tweak the guitar on receipt. It was perfectly set up which includes the tailpiece, a place where I commonly have to spend some time.
The body is made of alder and is quite lightweight. Multiple finishes are available including 3 tone burst, black, white, sonic blue and the gold that I selected. All are gloss as any high quality finish should be. Fake aging is only available on custom builds, so better that if you want the guitar to look 50 years old, play it for 50 years.
The neck is a satin finished maple, incredibly smooth with an Indian Rosewood fingerboard. It is a 60’s C shape and offers a 10-14 degree compound radius. The nut is Tusq and the frets are medium stainless steel. Given that even the really inexpensive guitars coming direct out of China are now coming with stainless steel frets, I look for and expect stainless steel because of durability and that they do not tarnish like nickel silver frets will. The tuners are Suhr locking tuners and are of the staggered height type so there are no friction creating string trees.
Playability
I like offsets in general. I always use a strap as I know myself well and that I can be clumsy. However, offsets are one of the few guitar shapes that I can play sitting down without a strap if I had to. The story is that Leo Fender designed the offset for the Jazzmaster to make playing more comfortable for jazz guitarists who may play sitting more than standing. I just know that it’s really comfortable for me. I also like to gently keep the vibrato arm in the first joint of my little finger and I find the arm positioned in the right spot and not too long. On Strats and my Fender Jazzmasters, I would opt for shorter arms if they were readily available. While greater arm length offers finer control based on the lever principle, I prefer the subtlety that a short arm can provide a la Jeff Beck or David Gilmour.
The neck is very comfortable. I tend to favour chunkier necks over really thin necks such as are found on Ibanez guitars. The thinner necks create more fatigue for me, and as I am not a shred style player, I prefer a neck that I can get a grip on. It’s not so deep that I cannot get my thumb over the top of the fretboard which suits my wants very well. The satin finish on the back of the neck is extremely smooth and creates no drag whatsoever. I like a compound radius and the 10-14 degree radius works very well for me.
To my ear the pickups sound terrific. I have played the guitar into a blackface Fender Twin, a Vox AC-30 and an early 70’s Marshall JMP. I’ve also run It through the Soldano Mini and the Bogner Ecstasy. It works well with all kinds of amps and is equally wonderful through the Neural Quad Cortex and the Kemper Stage.
I’ve also tried it direct to desk using Neural amp plugins for the Soldano SLO-100 and the Tone King Imperial Mark II. I particularly liked how it worked with the Tone King plugin which I have written about in the past as being indistinguishable in a recording from my actual Tone King Imperial Mk II.
The guitar sounds good through pedals as well, although so far, I have only really played it for a greater length of time through my all Strymon board or through the Quad Cortex for the samples.
Audio Samples
The samples are recorded as follows. Suhr JM Classic into a Neural Quad Cortex. The QC is using my Fender Blackface Super Reverb with 4x10 cabinet capture. Mikes in use are a Dynamic 421 and a Ribbon 160 both off axis with the 421 4 ft away and the 160 3.5 feet away. For those unfamiliar with the Quad Cortex those are accurate captures of the Sennheiser 421 and the Beyerdynamic 160. The amp controls were set in their neutral position with the volume turned down to maintain cleanliness and the bright switch on. The clean sample uses an LA-2A optical compressor prior to the amp input with a tape delay and chorus in parallel before recombining for the 4x10 cab. After the cab, there is a plate reverb. The pickup selector is in the middle position with the volume set to seven and the separate tone controls at no cut. The overdrive sample removes the compressor before the input but adds a K type overdrive with the Gain at 2 o’clock and the Volume set to provide unity gain. After the preamp comes the same tape echo, then the 4x10 cab and finally the Super Reverb spring reverb. The pickup selector is in the neck position and the volume is at eight with the neck tone rolled off to 5. While short, I hope that you can get a sense of the tonality and openness of the pickups. I used effects this time because that is how I tend to play, although the guitar straight into a tube amp is extremely pleasing on its own, especially if you have a higher headroom amp that will go into OD naturally when pushed, hence my choice of the Super Reverb.
The Quad Cortex is connected in stereo to a UA Apollo Twin X into Logic Pro. The tracks were recorded on different channels. Both tracks go through a NEVE 88RS preamp, to bring the line levels where I wanted them. In the output stage there is a Teletronix LA-3A mastering compressor and a Pultec M-EQ 5 equalizer. Then the tracks get bounced directly into a single MP3 file.
My Conclusions
While it took a while to get the guitar, which I admittedly ordered during the pandemic, I am really enthused by it. I have lots of guitars to pick from and I find myself grabbing this over my Fender Jazzmasters at this point even though they have both been tweaked with better pickups and bridges than came from the factory. The Suhr Classic JM just feels “right”. I admit to a guitar disease, and I am giving serious thought to placing an order for a Classic JM with S90s, and the hardtail in Sonic Blue. It would take a while and be worth it. Given the serious quality issues that I have experienced with both Fender and Gibson products in the last couple of years, and that they aren’t doing anything innovative, I am advocating makers like Suhr because you get a better guitar for less than Custom Shop prices. You can find out more at https://www.suhr.com
