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Buyer
Beware
Be extremely careful when buying a Kramer guitar, many of the
new ones are extremely low quality Korean made guitars. It is not always easy to
spot an original from a new one. An experienced guitarist can feel the
difference immediately just by picking up the instrument and feeling the
stability, neck feel & overall vibe.
This is George Lynch's Kramer
ESP proved again how slimy they could be when they removed the original
neck
And replaced it with an ESP. They ruined a $50,000.00 guitar.
There are tons of Ebay maggots who are making fake Kramer's especially the EVH
model which was never even produced by Kramer. See
below for EVH section, things to be careful of.
The Original BKL Kramers were Aluminum neck collector type
guitars. They weren't the greatest guitars ever made either but I think they
were much a much better value than the Travis Bean guitars from which the
company sprang from. Those old Kramer aluminum neck basses were actually
pretty good.
This guitar is available today again through a
special arrangement with Floyd Rose.
See
Abstract Enterprize
The 1983 through 1990 Pacer's, Baretta's, American's,
Nightswan's and Signature models are all very high quality. They were made much
like the J. Frog Guitars that are built today. If
you have a hard time locating one of them Ed Roman Guitars can usually help you
or better yet sell you a J. Frog which is like a blueprinted Kramer on steroids.
You can Feel the quality on an American Kramer like this
Don't confuse these with the guitars currently available
on the market today.
Today Gibson owns the rights to the Kramer name. Gibson in
their infinite wisdom has chosen to use the Kramer good name as a way to sell
extremely cheaply made Korean guitars through their Music Yo website. Gibson has
similarly done the same thing with the Steinberger
name which they acquired some years ago.
Gibson spent tons of money advertising the Epiphone line which
was one of their earlier acquisitions and due to the advertising dollars spent
they are enjoying a measure of success. Personally I believe the Epiphone
guitars are extremely overpriced and over rated. They are actually considered as
decent guitars in some circles based on the fact that they are so overpriced.
Typical consumer mentality will assign a quality stamp to an expensive item.
That's what I call a double scam!!!!
(See Overpriced Guitars)
Excellent Guitar and these can be bought inexpensively
The pickguard lowers the value of these but not the quality.
Guest Article By Joseph
Manlius
Eddie Van Halen Played A Kramer,
Eddie Van Halen Played An Ernie Ball
Eddie Van Halen Played A Charvel
Eddie Van Halen Played An Ibanez
Eddie Van Halen Played A Peavey
Eddie Van Halen Played A Fender
Eddie Van Halen Played A Steinberger
BS to most of this !!!
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Don't Believe The Hype Read
Below
Be careful of
low quality Korean & Chinese Kramers
being assembled as EVH replicas.
Eddie is best known to have
played a Kramer, I doubt that any of his real player guitars were ever really
Kramers. It doesn't take too much intelligence to notice that all of Eddie's
supposed Kramer's had non tilt back headstocks. How many real American
Kramers have you ever seen with non tilt headstocks? Kramer never offered
a non tilt headstock except for a short period of time with the cutball
headstock and you rarely if ever see Eddie playing that one.
Ironically, the only Kramer guitars that could have passed
visually, for a real EVH guitar were the cheap imported models. Several
of them actually came with the correct EVH headstock. There were millions
of those guitars made, that's what you will typically get when you buy a candy-
striped Kramer on FeeBay.
Coupled with the fact that the
first Van Halen/ Kramer advertisements had Kramer superimposed on the headstock
so badly that the logo hung partly off the headstock. What a joke that
was !!!
It's common knowledge, Lynn
Ellsworth made the original Charvel bodies & necks, Original J Frog bodies &
necks. He made Eddie's components and Eddie built his guitars himself.
The Black & Yellow Charvel that
Wayne gave to Eddie was hardly ever used. I have it on good authority that Eddie
hated it. How many pictures have you seen Eddie actually play that guitar. I've
seen more pictures of those multicolor stripe ones than the yellow Charvel. It
only became famous because it got on to the second VH Album. As far as the
New Charvel's Eddie hates those too.
The Peavey's & Ernie Ball
Guitars were all specially built for Eddie, The ones that hit the market were
definitely not what Eddie was playing. In the case of Peavey Eddie drove them
crazy because he was complaining about the guitars. When they first came out
they were horrible.
Eddie did Peavey an enormous
favor, I wonder if Peavey even realized that Eddie actually raised the bar for
them. Their guitars today are 200% better than they were before Eddie ever got
involved with them. Eddie left Peavey about 8 months before his 5 year contract
was up and openly became involved with Fender Charvel.
Hartley Peavey is too much of a
gentleman to have sued Eddie. I am sure if Eddie was with Gibson
they would have probably sued his ass off.
Eddie did like the Steinbergers
and I am pretty sure that his Steinberger guitars were stock. Eddie used to
actually visit Ned's house in Maine to pick up his guitars. Eddie continued to
deal directly with Ned when Gibson finally bought Ned's interest in the company.
Charvel has also benefitted from
their recent association with Eddie. Those first guitars (The Art Series) were
atrocious, Eddie's guitar tech told Ed Roman that Eddie hated them and would
only play them for one song a night because that's what the contract called for.
The relic model for $25,000.00 was the joke of 2007 and pure crap to boot. Ed
told me the Art guitars were priced OK but they didn't play worth a damn. Ed
also told me that he sold over 100 Art guitars before they were even shipped.
These guitars came in and went out so fast that no one took notice of the fact
that they weren't made well. However, Charvel has
now come out with a new American made model, for under $1000.00. According to Ed
it is far better than even those San Dimas custom shop models that sold for
$4,000.00. Just as in the case of Peavey, Eddie has raised the bar &
literally forced Charvel/Fender to get on the stick.
to be continued...
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