Pensa Custom Guitars is an American company that manufactures electric guitar

Electric guitar

An electric guitar is a guitar that uses the principle of direct electromagnetic induction to convert vibrations of its metal strings into electric audio signals. The signal generated by an electric guitar is too weak to drive a loudspeaker, so it is amplified before sending it to a loudspeaker...

s and bass

Bass guitar

The bass guitar is a stringed instrument played primarily with the fingers or thumb , or by using a pick....

es in handmade fashion. The company is based in New York City. Pensa Custom Guitars was founded by argentinian luthier

Luthier

A luthier is someone who makes or repairs lutes and other string instruments. In the United States, the term is used interchangeably with a term for the specialty of each maker, such as violinmaker, guitar maker, lute maker, etc...

 Rudy Pensa. Pensa strives to make extremely high quality guitars. They are therefore among the most expensive guitars available to the general public. These instruments are perhaps best known for their use by former Dire Straits

Dire Straits

Dire Straits were a British rock band active from 1977 to 1995, composed of Mark Knopfler , his younger brother David Knopfler , John Illsley , and Pick Withers .Dire Straits' sound drew from a variety of musical influences, including jazz, folk, blues, and came closest...

 lead guitarist

Guitarist

A guitarist is a musician who plays the guitar. Guitarists may play a variety of instruments such as classical guitars, acoustic guitars, electric guitars, and bass guitars. Some guitarists accompany themselves on the guitar while singing.- Versatility :The guitarist controls an extremely...

 and composer

Composer

A composer is a person who creates music, either by musical notation or oral tradition, for interpretation and performance, or through direct manipulation of sonic material through electronic media...

 Mark Knopfler

Mark Knopfler

Mark Freuder Knopfler, OBE is a Scottish-born British guitarist, singer, songwriter, record producer and film score composer. He is best known as the lead guitarist, vocalist, and songwriter for the British rock band Dire Straits, which he co-founded in 1977...

 and typically cost US$3,000 and up.http://www.pensaguitars.com/history.htm

History

In 1980, Knopfler and Rudy Pensa met, and eventually together with John Suhr created the Pensa "MK". This model served as a basis for a series of Pensa-branded handmade guitars still available from the company: the MK1 (bound mahogany body and neck with a 22-fret Brazilian rosewood fingerboard and carved quilted maple top, Floyd Rose locking tremolo, Sperzel locking 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 SPC "presence

Presence (amplification)

In an amplifier, a presence control controls "presence". A presence control boosts the upper mid-range frequencies. Thus by increasing the presence with the presence control, the sounds of voices and such instruments seem more "present"....

 control" mid-boost circuit), MK2 (three Lindy Fralin Blues single-coils, stop tailpiece, matching headstock) and MK80 (three Seymour Duncan Classic Stacks, birdseye maple fingerboard, three mini toggle switches, 3-ply aged white pickguard, aged parchment plastic parts, gold hardware, matching headstock and Gotoh vintage bridge). Other custom options are also available.

According to the official Pensa Custom Guitars website, the earliest electric guitar created by Rudy Pensa and John Suhr was called the "R Custom", first built in 1984. Pensa and Suhr built instruments together under the brand name Pensa-Suhr. The two parted ways in March 1990 when Suhr left Pensa's workshops to work for Fender

Fender

Fender Musical Instruments Corporation, commonly referred to as simply Fender, of Scottsdale, Arizona is a manufacturer of stringed instruments and amplifiers, such as solid-body electric guitars, including the Stratocaster and the Telecaster...

 as a Senior Master Builder at the Californian company's Custom Shop

Fender Custom Shop

The Fender Custom Shop is a division of Fender Musical Instruments, housed within their headquarters complex in Corona, Riverside County, California. The Fender Custom Shop primarily exists to compete with smaller companies and independent luthiers that, in turn, build products reminiscent of those...

 and established JS Technologies, Inc.

Suhr Guitars

Suhr Guitars is an American company that manufactures electric guitars and basses, guitar amplifiers, and effect units...

 with partner Steve Smith in 1997. The name Suhr was dropped from the brand name after 1 year for guitars subsequently built under Pensa's stewardship.

Artists who use Pensa Custom Guitars

• Mark Knopfler
  Mark Knopfler
  Mark Freuder Knopfler, OBE is a Scottish-born British guitarist, singer, songwriter, record producer and film score composer. He is best known as the lead guitarist, vocalist, and songwriter for the British rock band Dire Straits, which he co-founded in 1977...
  
  
• Victor Bailey
• Lou Reed
  Lou Reed
  Lewis Allan "Lou" Reed is an American rock musician, songwriter, and photographer. He is best known as guitarist, vocalist, and principal songwriter of The Velvet Underground, and for his successful solo career, which has spanned several decades...
  
  
• Christian McBride
  Christian McBride
  Christian McBride is an American jazz bassist. His father, Lee Smith, and his great uncle, Howard Cooper, are well known Philadelphia bassists who served as McBride's early mentors...
  
  
• Pat Thrall
  Pat Thrall
  Pat Thrall is an American rock guitarist. Thrall is a native of the San Francisco area, and began his recording career in 1972. He played guiatar,vocals and percussion with the group Cookin Mama album: new day , that also had this brother Preston Thrall on percussion.Thrall has worked with former...
  
  
• Chuck Loeb
  Chuck Loeb
  Chuck Loeb is a guitarist who performs numerous styles of music, most notably jazz. Loeb's own solo projects have generally been commercially successful crossover jazz, which has "contemporary" or "smooth" jazz....
  
  
• Reb Beach
  Reb Beach
  Reb Beach is an American rock guitarist. He is a member of the bands Winger and Whitesnake...
  
  
• Vlatko Stefanovski
  Vlatko Stefanovski
  Vlatko Stefanovski is Macedonian ethno-rock jazz fusion guitar player.-Biography:Born in Prilep in 1957, he started playing guitar at the age of 13. Stefanovski was one of the founding members of Leb i sol with whom he recorded 13 albums between 1978 and 1991...
  
  
• Wyclef Jean
  Wyclef Jean
  Wyclef Jean is a Haitian musician, record producer, and politician. At age nine, Jean moved to the United States with his family and has spent much of his life in the country...
  
  
• Luis Alberto Spinetta
  Luis Alberto Spinetta
  Luis Alberto Spinetta , is an Argentine musician. He is one of the most influential rock musicians of South America, and together with Charly García is considered the father of Argentine rock. He was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in the residential neighbourhood of Belgrano...
  
  
• Gustavo Cerati
  Gustavo Cerati
  Gustavo Adrián Cerati Clark is an Argentine rock musician, singer-songwriter, composer and record producer. He was the frontman, lead vocalist, lead guitarist and lead songwriter of the Argentine rock band Soda Stereo, one of the most influential bands of latin rock music. In the early 90s, with...
  
  
• Nerina Nicotra
• Peter Frampton
  Peter Frampton
  Peter Kenneth Frampton is an English musician, singer, producer, guitarist and multi-instrumentalist. He was previously associated with the bands Humble Pie and The Herd. Frampton's international breakthrough album was his live release, Frampton Comes Alive!. The album sold over 6 million copies...
  
  

Source: "Pensa Players", Pensa Custom Guitars official website

Current products

• MK1
• MK2
• MK80
• 4-String bass
• 5-String bass
• (Guitars are also available on a build-to-order basis, based around an order form available from the Pensa Custom Guitars website).