A repairman, a CNC programmer and a factory of their own.

Suhr is the guitar and amplifier brand of JS Technologies, Inc., a private company in Lake Elsinore, California, in Riverside County. The name, pronounced “sur,” is that of its founder, John Suhr, and the company dates itself to 1997. An archived copy of its history page, from 2009, says that in October 1997 “John Suhr and Steve Smith establish JS Technologies, Inc.” and began by making the Suhr Classic. Premier Guitar, in a tenth-anniversary profile published in January 2008, likewise described Suhr Guitars as the company “he and Steve Smith founded.” The current About page tells the story through John Suhr alone and does not mention Smith; we found no source on whether Smith still holds a stake, so we say nothing about that.

Suhr’s route there ran through New York. He told Premier Guitar that he began tinkering with guitars in New Jersey in 1973, while playing in bands, and that the archtop maker Bob Benedetto, who made a neck for one of his Stratocasters, advised him to learn the craft on his own. He later took a repair job at Rudy’s Music Stop in Manhattan, starting, he said, at a bench in the boiler room. There, with the shop’s owner Rudy Pensa, he built the Pensa-Suhr guitars. The company names Mark Knopfler, Lou Reed, Steve Stevens and Reb Beach among the players he built for, and Suhr told the magazine that the Pensa-Suhr owned by Eric Clapton had been a gift from Knopfler.

In 1991 he left New York to work with the guitar-rig builder Bob Bradshaw, designing the CAA 3+ preamp and the OD-100 amplifier head for Bradshaw’s Custom Audio company. Then came Fender. English Wikipedia dates his time as a Senior Master Builder at the Fender Custom Shop to 1995–1997, and he told Premier Guitar that he joined in 1995. He left, he said, because he wanted more control over the product and had pushed for CNC machinery against “red tape.”

Machines, measurement and a Fender vocabulary.

Steve Smith supplied what Suhr lacked. He was, Suhr told Premier Guitar, a software representative and CNC programmer who had done programming work for Rickenbacker; Suhr learned computer-aided design, and Smith “could cut whatever I threw his way.” The money came from a group of investors, “mostly family, some friends and even Peter Frampton,” Suhr said. A 2000 article in the trade magazine Wood & Wood Products, cited by English Wikipedia, covered the company’s use of CNC routers to make necks and bodies.

The company’s 2009 timeline records how the workshop grew: a finishing booth in 1998, when John Suhr painted every guitar himself; a laser engraver and the Classic T in 1999; a Haas CNC machine in 2001, to join the Reichenbacher machine it had started with; its first bass, the Classic J, in 2003; a Plek fret-dressing machine and the return of the OD-100 amplifier in 2004; the noise-cancelling SSC single-coil system in 2005; the Badger amplifier and the Pro Series guitars in 2006; and the 24-fret Modern in 2008, which it says became its most popular model within a year. Suhr was candid that the SSC was not his own invention. “Ilitch Electronics is the inventor,” he told Premier Guitar; the US patent, granted in 2007, names Ilitch Chiliachki.

Its shapes are largely Fender-derived — the Classic S, Classic T and Classic JM follow the Stratocaster, Telecaster and Jazzmaster, English Wikipedia notes — alongside the Modern and the Standard and, from 2018, the single-cut Aura. The Aura was announced for the company’s 20th anniversary as a run of 100 guitars on which, the company said in 2019, John Suhr was doing all the fretwork by hand. Suhr also makes pickups, pedals such as the Riot distortion and the Koko Boost, and amplifiers including the Badger, Hedgehog and PT100, plus signature guitars for players including Mateus Asato, Pete Thorn and Ian Thornley.

Boutique electric guitar makers.

Boutique guitar makers often began at repair benches or larger firms. John Suhr did repairs at Rudy’s Music Stop in New York and worked at the Fender Custom Shop, Tom Anderson worked for Schecter, and Joe Knaggs spent 25 years at Paul Reed Smith before going it alone, Wikipedia and Maryland’s Times Record say.

Three of the makers in this guide are in southern California. Suhr is at Lake Elsinore and was founded in 1997 by John Suhr and Steve Smith, Wikipedia says; Guitar World called him an independent builder in 2025. Tom Anderson’s company, founded in 1984, based at Newbury Park and now called Anderson Guitarworks, has a business partner, Markus Spohn, Guitar World reported in 2026. James Tyler Guitars, whose founder died in 2024, Guitar World reported, says the work on its American line is still done in Los Angeles.

Knaggs Guitars was founded in 2009 by Joe Knaggs and Peter Wolf and works in Greensboro, Maryland, the Times Record reported in 2017. Premier Guitar profiled Bill Nash of Nash Guitars, in Olympia, Washington, in 2009.

Dennis Fano founded Fano Guitars in Pennsylvania and sold it in 2009 to the Premier Builders Guild; in January 2025 it merged with his later brand, Novo, under a British-based parent, Psonic Design Lab, with production moving from Arizona to Nashville, Guitar.com reported. Vigier, at Grigny near Paris, stayed with its founder until Audiofanzine reported in November 2024 that the workshop would close.

This guide sets out what can be checked about each brand — who founded it, who owns it, and what it says about where its products are made — and marks clearly what rests only on the company’s own word.

“Lake Elsinore, California” on the headstock.

Where Suhr guitars are made is unusually well documented, partly because the company changed what it says. In 2010, English Wikipedia records, it launched a cheaper brand, Rasmus, made in Asia with final setup in Lake Elsinore, and dropped it in 2012 for the Modern Satin series, made in Lake Elsinore. Then, in February 2023, Suhr announced that its headstocks would no longer read “Made In U.S.A.” but “Lake Elsinore, California.” “We source woods and hardware from all over the world,” the announcement said, and US rules “prohibit the use of ‘Made In U.S.A.’ when using a certain percentage of materials not originating from the United States.” It insisted that “nothing is changing” except the engraving, and said it had built its guitars, amplifiers, pedals and pickups at its home in Lake Elsinore for 25 years. We give that as the company’s statement; it is a rare case of a maker explaining a change to its origin mark in public.

The company remains private, and we found no record of it being sold. Its About page says John Suhr is “now joined by his son Kevin,” and its most recent news post we found, from April 2024, introduced a two-post tremolo bridge designed by John Suhr. In 2016 the NAMM Oral History programme interviewed him as the founder of JS Technologies. The company’s old domain, suhrguitars.com, has given way to suhr.com, and it publishes no colour or typeface guidance that we could find.

For a design guide, Suhr shows how a Fender-trained builder turned traditional shapes into a brand built on machining, measurement and a precise line about where its guitars come from. Compare Fender, whose Custom Shop employed Suhr before he went on his own, and Seymour Duncan, another Californian pickup maker. For this guide we use a workshop brown, an amber and a cream with a serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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