Pensa Custom Guitars

Knopfler had grown tired of having to frequently switch between the Stratocaster and the Les Paul during performances, hence the need for a guitar that could sound like both.

Knopfler's most famous Caramel Carve Top Pensa Suhr debuted at the 1988 Nelson Mandela concert.

[1] This served as a basis for a series of Pensa-branded handmade guitars still available from the company: the MK1 Classic Plus (bound mahogany body and neck with a 22-fret Brazilian rosewood fingerboard and carved quilted maple top, Floyd Rose locking tremolo, Gotoh tuners, black headstock, gold hardware and an active EMG pickup set with an 85 humbucking bridge pickup and two SA single-coils, master volume and master tone with switchable pull-out "presence control" mid-boost circuit); MK2 Classic (mahogany body with carved quilted maple top, Gibson scale maple neck with rosewood fingerboard, three Stratocaster single-coil pickups, studs bridge with stop tailpiece); and MK80 (Schecter Dream Machine tribute model).

[2] According to the company's website, the first electric guitar created by Rudy Pensa and John Suhr was called the "R Custom", built in 1984.

The two parted ways in March 1991[3] when Suhr left Pensa's workshops to work for Fender as a Senior Master Builder at the Californian company's Custom Shop and established JS Technologies, Inc. with partner Steve Smith in 1997.