I was an 80's kid & still a disciple of the super-strat guitar cult. Have a bunch of killer shredders, but never owned an original Kramer So I was very curious what this 80's throwback guitar could bring at this price point. And what it brings is legit shredding goodness. The neck/fretwork is really great, nice & even, no high or flat spots. Fret ends are nicely rounded & smooth. Frets were slightly tarnished out of the box , but polished up nicely when I changed strings. These are medium jumbo frets, whereas my preference is jumbo - but not an issue to me with how good overall this neck feels. I like the 14" radius, which is why I chose this over the '84 model. Set up was very good out of the box, what I assume is factory spec. I re-did the setup because I wanted to run 9's & lower the action. I did not need to adjust the truss rod, and was able to drop the action to my preference with no fret buzz (revealing how good the fret work is on this guitar), The only downside is the trem is almost all the way down on the posts now, and has no room for back pull. I may shim the neck so I can raise the bridge to get my flutter back in the game. But as it is now, it is a total fireball of shredder with very low action.Overall feel, this is a relatively heavy guitar for it's size being all maple. I think this is a positive, being nice & sturdy with a lot of sustain. I have an 83 custom Charvel even heavier than this, so to me this is familiar territory. This Kramer is bright sounding,… read more and I wonder if the angled pickup doesn't help here, even though a Seymour Duncan JB is the perfect pickup for this style of guitar. This angled pickup is a throwback to the days before "F spaced" pickups were created to line the pole pieces up to the wider string spacing. It was a compromise to install them at an angle so at least one pole was under 1 & 6 strings. But it has it's vintage charm here, and sounds killer when adjusting the amp EQ accordingly.

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