Kramer 422 S/D

Ok, I wanted to follow up on my previous review. I sent my original 422 back to MusicYo, and I received a replacement yesterday. See my original post (a couple back) for the details on the guitar. Quickly: Strat-style double cutaway, floyd rose licensed bridge with the quadrail pickup in the bridge and humbucker in the neck. Rosewood board, came with a gig bag. Scale length at 25 1/2" -

I was hoping for better things with this one. I did get different, but not better. Really honking tone out of this one, but still has a really annoying treble (amazing combination, but not in a good way!). I just can't get a decent rock tone out of it. Also, the pickup (quadrails) fed back really badly at anything approaching garage band level. I would hate to take this into a club. This one is also noisy, I can't believe the 60 cycle hum from a humbucker!?! I finally decided to void my warranty and pull this POS apart. I tossed in an old Seymour Duncan JB and got much better tone happening. You can't expect more than ok at this price range, though. I hate this stock pickup!!! Kramer/Gibson: Please blow off the cool advertising idea for this and put in a decent pickup instead!

Action too high...strings were rusting...When I bent a string in the upper areas of the neck the string about scraped the neck pickup...Finish of paint pretty decent, and the routing was fairly neat...Tuners were much better on this one, maybe the first was a fluke...volume know had no taper, it was on, or off!

This guitar would not stand up to gigging...I would probably throw it at someone! Hardware seems ok, paint would be fine...

This thing just sounds like crap, and the factory/dealer setup was horrible. Someone needs to check them out when they get pulled off the boat. Something tells me we are using uncured wood...

MusicYo was pretty cool...They sent me a replacement right away. I'm going to keep this one, the challenge is if I can get this into a playable state. I can't remember who I talked to on the phone last week (the guy that followed up my email) but he was friendly and cool.

I've been playing forever, and played/owned about every "superstrat" that ever hit the market. I was hoping for more from this. Good customer support, though.

Guitar was manufactured in 2001, in Korea. Bolt on neck with a licensed Floyd Rose trem, and Kramer's Quad rail pickup in bridge, with another humbucker at the neck. Rosewood board on maple neck, black hardware. Came with a gig bag.

Kramer has obviously earmarked this guitar towards the hardrock crowd. I played this through a rack system (MesaBoogie tri-axis, stereo 2:90 power amp, and T.C. Electronics G-Force providing the tone). I also ran this straight into a Marshall JCM 800 head, and 2x12 Mesa cabinet with Celestion vintage 30's. I had high hopes for this guitar, as I owned a couple of 80's Kramers. I found the guitar to be very one dimensional, pretty thin unless I heavily eq'd its tone. It was also very noisy, I found the ground wire to the electronics had a cold solder joint. After I fixed it, the guitar still had too much buzz for a humbucker equipped ax. After I used $3000 worth of tone shaping tools on it, I was able to get a decent tone, but the pickups are just a poor match with the rest of the guitar. I also could not get a very round clean tone, the guitar was too cutting, with a flabby bottom end.

The finish was marginal. The neck pocket was loose, which is the kiss of death for a Floyd equipped guitar. This causes all types of tuning stability and tone problems. The frets needed polished, and the edges were rough on all the frets above the twelfth. The Quad pickup was slightly misaligned, which contributed to the brittle tone. The paint was fine, guitar looked good until you started checking the fit of the parts. Action was high, and the strings showed signs of corrosion, the guitar may have been sitting for a while. The tuners were of mediocre quality, but with the locking nut they will probably be ok. The pots worked properly, with no scratchiness.

For this guitar to be road worthy, it needs a serious job of tweaking. A good setup, different pickups would help it quite a bit. I think the finish will stand up ok, its probably polyester and looks pretty durable. Hardware seems ok, with the exception of the junky tuners. They would have to go. I would definitely not gig this without a backup.

Well, with all the flaws I sent the guitar back. I ordered through MusicYo.com, and they gave me no static when I talked to them about sending it back. It took them about two days to respond to my email, not too bad. They seemed to want to make the deal right with me.

I've been playing for over twenty years, and have owned over 100 guitars through that time. I still have a USA Hamer, an old USA custom ESP, and a bunch of strats. I have a pile of equipment that I use for different types of gigs and recording. I kind of bought it on a whim, I've heard some good things about it. Not this one, though. Poor tone and finish, playability was marginal. Tonewise I compared it to the two Fender Floyd-equipped guitars I have, one with Seymour Duncan pickups, the other with Fenders DH-1 humbucker. I also used my Hamer and ESP for comparison. In relation to its cost, the guitar is poor. Definitely not a professional ax. Maybe if I could handpick one it would be good for an intermediate player.

This guitar features 24 frets, solid Alder wood body, one Quad Rail pick up and two Double Rail pickups with a 5 way selector switch. The neck is super thin and very fast.

A very versatile guitar that can crank out heavy metal to blues and some great clean sounds. No pickup noise at all and the guitar produces a nice thick sound.

My guitar arrived perfectly set up and only required minor tuning. The fit and finish of the guitar was very good.

A well built guitar that should handle any kind of playing situation.

Great customer service. Emails are answered within 24 hours and Music Yo offers a 30 day return policy. Combine that with the price and you can't lose.

I have been playing for 20 years. I previously owned a Kramer Focus 6000 that I bought new in 1988 for over 4 times as much as the Striker. The new Striker is a much better guitar.

I also own a Taylor 614c acoustic guitar and an Alesis Synth.