Suhr pickups

[Webfoot]

Anyone tried the V-54s or the Fletcher Landaus?

I played a SSS and SSH suhr guitars today and they were very pretty amazing.

[Zuper]

Both fantastic pickups. Clean and crisp with excellent definition.

[bluesrules]

So they both sound the same? Anymore details would be helpful.

[Webfoot]

I spent a couple of hours going back and forth between two guitars... one with V54s and one with FLs but SSH. Time just flew by. The V-54s seemed a like a traditional strat you dream of. Open, bell, chime, great in between settings. I could not ask for anything more. I played through deluxe reverb (so-so), richter (I think it was a 5E3) that sounded very good, and a mesa boogie express 50 watter (clean and hard rock channel). Played country, jazz, blues, hard rock... everything. Just excellent.

Now the FLs are voiced differently. Not worse, but different. More mid range but smooth. Not hard sounding at all but a surprising amount of air and still chime. Very well balanced also. More forward in sound but comfortable and easy on the ears. These were in Suhr guitars, so great tone wood and the amps were high quality once dialed in.

The V54s always sound like the best strat. When you pick up the FL guitar, however you notice it is different sounding. But after about 5 minutes of noodling, you are thinking this is an incredible sound. Humbucker was the SSH and was killer.

To me it seems if I was doing a power trio thing SRV/Henrix/Trower thing (little wing clean and all)... I would want the 54s. Or just noodling at home with jazz standards the 54s.

But if I was doing the standard rock thing or poppy jazz like steely dan, or even harder rock (fountains of wayne, red hot chili peppers etc.) I would want the FLs. Also in band context to be in the mix better and more even, the FLs. Th inbetween pus settings for the FLs were not pure straight but againt maybe more useable.

This is the first time I thought there was a compelling reason to have either two strats or at least two pickguarda with a set of each pickups that you could drop into your guitar. What made this experience was a big isolated room, good amps and a quiet background.

I think if you went into a noisy guitar center and were given a great guitar through a so-so amp. You would not pick up on the vibe. I was also impressed with the necks on the Suhrs. They were effortless and my hands always knew where 'home' was.

The worse thing is when I went back to my lone star strat I liked it even less. Actually it has excellent playability... but do not like the overall tone quality... acoustically it isn't happening and the pickups are Texas Special Alnico 5 and are just to hard sounding to my ears and not that musical.

[oscar100]

will be trying some next week - will let you know