1980's USA Kramers

[WhoFan]

What is the best Kramers from the 80's to keep an eye out for..... a local store had a white USA strat style in with 2 single coils, one JB and a floyd but i felt they wanted too much for it...... they wanted almost $500 Canadian... I used to like the looks of the single humbucker Barretta's.....

The only Kramer i owned was a POS Striker..... Plywood cr*p.....

WhoFan

 

[guitarsrock5]

Re: 1980's USA Kramers

dude that a good price for a usa kramer! get it! musicyo sells the american kramers but they are made in korea for $800. for an 80s kramers thats a good price!

 

[MattPete]

Re: 1980's USA Kramers

There were 2 main strat style guitars: Barettas and Pacers. Pacers were available in single hum, HH, and HSS. Sounds like you were looking at a Kramer Pacer Deluxe. Yes, they are (assuming it's been taken care of) that good.

 

[Sirion]

Re: 1980's USA Kramers

A little off topic, but I am working on putting together a guitar based arond a Kramer Pacer Imperial 1989 model. It won't be autenthic when it is finished, but it will certainly be personal!

The color is hotter than it appears here! :laugh2:

Oh, and the high-end Music Yo productions are currently being moved to USA

 

[WhoFan]

Re: 1980's USA Kramers

Thanks for some of the info guys! Kramers were a huge part of my youth.....

I saw on a website once that Kramer changed their headstock design 3 times between 1984-90...... Used Kramers do not come up that often these days but i'm looking.

So when did Kramer offically close production? 1993? 1994?

 

[TwilightOdyssey]

Re: 1980's USA Kramers

Great Kramer story from George Lynch's web site re: a 1984 Baretta he purchased:

In 1984, while Dokken was on tour with Twisted Sister, George picked up this red Kramer Beretta in New Orleans. To the owner of the store, he traded even for a Charvel tiger striped Dinky. This was the first Kramer George owned and it was from the early years of the Beretta design. It has a very heavy two-piece maple body and a rosewood fingerboard maple neck that measures 1 11/16" at the nut. During this time, Kramer was the only standard production line of guitars to feature the Floyd Rose tremolo and Seymour Duncan pickups.

As George tells the story: "What happened was I was in New Orleans and a guy who runs a music store called the Music Post came up and said, 'You've got to try these Kramers. They're great, all maple bodies, made in USA, better than anything else you could buy except maybe a Jackson.' So I got all excited about it. We were supposed to leave town forty-five minutes after the show, so I checked with the road manager. He said I could go see the guitar is I was back in forty-five minutes. So we hauled ass down to his music store, which turned out to be about forty-five minutes away. I checked out the Kramer and knew I had to have it. So I swapped him on the spot for my Charvel. " Then I realized it sucked."

 

[kramer]

Re: 1980's USA Kramers

While the barettas and pacers are good guitars, my favorite American Kramers are the Nightswan and the Stagemaster/Liberty. These two models are becoming increasingly rare however, it's been quite a while since I've seen a clean swan on ebay.....and they used to pop up all the time.
Kramer officially shut down production in June of 1990, and since have undergone several attempted revitalizations, the latest of which is of course being acquired by Gibson in 1996. Much more info on all kramer models (US and otherwise), and on the company's history can be found at Vintage Kramer.
Matt

 

[D-EJ915]

Re: 1980's USA Kramers

I like the Voyagers, those spiky axes were sick...hehe, 3 pickups...heheh...

 

[Mr 9finger]

Re: 1980's USA Kramers

What is the best Kramers from the 80's to keep an eye out for..... a local store had a white USA strat style in with 2 single coils, one JB and a floyd but i felt they wanted too much for it...... they wanted almost $500 Canadian... I used to like the looks of the single humbucker Barretta's.....

The only Kramer i owned was a POS Striker..... Plywood cr*p.....

WhoFan

That all depends. If it's a Pacer Deluxe w/ a pickguard, then no, it's not worth that much. If it's a Pacer Custom I or Custom II in good shape then yeah, $500 is reasonable price for it.

The newer Yo Kramers don't hold a candle to the old American Kramers. Supposedly they are coming out w/ a reissue Baretta and Nightswan that are bang on from the older ones!

 

[Vincent]

Re: 1980's USA Kramers

I just sold an American Stagemaster II Deluxe. Got a piddly AUD$890 for it!!!

 

[MattPete]

Re: 1980's USA Kramers

Never heard of the Pacer Custom -- maybe that was after my time.

IIRC:
Deluxe: HSS (only one with pickguard)
Imperial: HH
Carrera: HH (all black with ebony board)


Here's an excellent example of a Pacer Deluxe. They came stock with SD JB bridge pickups and SSL1 neck and middle:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=41438&item=7333870489&rd=1&ssPageName=WDVW

 

[guitarsrock5]

Re: 1980's USA Kramers

i like the pacer special the one eddy had for his 5150 that one looks wicked kool!

 

[Hot _Grits]

Re: 1980's USA Kramers

Great Kramer story from George Lynch's web site re: a 1984 Baretta he purchased:

-haha, the heavy solid maple kramers were due to a factory screwup. The wood room had a stock of curly maple blanks reserved for future use as figured tops, and some bozo thought they were body blanks and made whole bodies out of 'em. So every now and again an incredibly heavy, bright Kramer pops up.

the standard wood for most late 80s kramer was alder. One exception was the nightswan, which had a mahogany body and had many features designed to give Viv Campbell a tone and feel more like his beloved Les Paul custom.

 

[MattPete]

Re: 1980's USA Kramers

How many of those Barettas were made out of maple? Back in highschool, a budy of mine had a Baretta, and it weighed a ton compared to my Pacer. Since my Pacer is alder, I figured that his Baretta must be made out of a heavier wood.

 

[Mr 9finger]

Re: 1980's USA Kramers

Most of the pre 85 American Kramers were made out of maple. They didn't start using Alder and Poplar until later.

And for what it's worth, only about 5% of the guitars after the aluminum necked guitars were actually entirely built in the Neptune New Jersey factory. Most of the Kramers we know and see, were made of parts subcontracted from other companies. For instance, alot of the nana head neck era, the bodies came from a sports and the necks came from Lasido a division of Larivee. In the later year almost all of the necks and bodies came from ESP in Japan.

 

[JB_From_Hell]

Re: 1980's USA Kramers

^^^^ Listen to this guy, he knows his sh1t.

 

[WhoFan]

Re: 1980's USA Kramers

Most of the pre 85 American Kramers were made out of maple. They didn't start using Alder and Poplar until later.

And for what it's worth, only about 5% of the guitars after the aluminum necked guitars were actually entirely built in the Neptune New Jersey factory. Most of the Kramers we know and see, were made of parts subcontracted from other companies. For instance, alot of the nana head neck era, the bodies came from a sports and the necks came from Lasido a division of Larivee. In the later year almost all of the necks and bodies came from ESP in Japan.

Yes i heard about Kramer out-sourceing their parts... I had heard a lot of the necks came from Lasido too... And i did heard that the later ones were ESP's..... Thanks for confirming. The Kramer i saw a while ago must of been the very late 80's as it had the angle back pointy headstock and large Kramer writing on it. It looked cool and was pretty heavy... The finnish is quite thick on them but not as thick as my 87 usa strat!

I remember when i was trying to buy Kramers back in the late 80's that it was really hard to find ones with Maple fingerboards in Toronto!!! Did the maple just out-sell the Rosewood ones or did Kramer only make a few with Maple? I always felt that they didn't use a lot of maple because Eddie used it.

WhoFan

 

[Hot _Grits]

Re: 1980's USA Kramers

How many of those Barettas were made out of maple? Back in highschool, a budy of mine had a Baretta, and it weighed a ton compared to my Pacer. Since my Pacer is alder, I figured that his Baretta must be made out of a heavier wood.

From vintagekramer.com:

There is one interesting story that has been told about a very limited run of guitars for Kramer in the middle of 1985. The story goes that Bill Isacsson was running Kramer¦s shop at the time and ran across about 20 board/feet of curly-birdseye maple from a wood supplier, (Sports¦, in Connecticut. Bill couldn¦t pass the wood up and (hid¦ it in the warehouse somewhere. While Bill was on vacation, someone found this wood and they made guitar bodies out of them and then painted them like all of the other bodies. These guitars were much heavier than the other bodies due to the dense wood that maple is. Most of the bodies are not as rounded either, because of the difficulty in cutting and sanding this wood. If the light is reflecting off of these bodies just right, little dimples in the paint can be seen from the grain texture of the wood. This is just a story that I have been told and it hasn¦t been confirmed, but.....one of my ¦85 Barettas just might be one of them. It sure meets the description.

-so yeah, post 1984.

 

[Mr 9finger]

Re: 1980's USA Kramers

Yes i heard about Kramer out-sourceing their parts... I had heard a lot of the necks came from Lasido too... And i did heard that the later ones were ESP's..... Thanks for confirming. The Kramer i saw a while ago must of been the very late 80's as it had the angle back pointy headstock and large Kramer writing on it. It looked cool and was pretty heavy... The finnish is quite thick on them but not as thick as my 87 usa strat!

I remember when i was trying to buy Kramers back in the late 80's that it was really hard to find ones with Maple fingerboards in Toronto!!! Did the maple just out-sell the Rosewood ones or did Kramer only make a few with Maple? I always felt that they didn't use a lot of maple because Eddie used it.

WhoFan

Almost everything with a pointy headstock came from ESP. If the Kramer you saw wasn't an American or Focus, then you were probably looking at one of the 100 series or strikers. Which were made in Korea out of plywood, and yes, they are heavy as a load of bricks.

From what I gather, Kramer didn't make all that many maple boarded guitars. They are quite DESIRABLE and will normally pull $100 or more than their couterparts w/ a rosewood board.

 

[WhoFan]

Re: 1980's USA Kramers

The Kramer was a usa one i saw.... It was not the cheaper ones....

GW