Kramer Baretta ST404SX

This new line of Gibson products sold through musicyo are made in korea, but don't let that fool you, they are great guitars. It has 24 nicely rounded polished frets, one volme, one tone, 3 way selector, 2 quad rail humbuckers. This guitar is a Neck thru constuction style which is usually reserved for much higher priced guitars. It has locking tuners and a new sort of trem which lock when you are not using the bar. It is a great feature. I would give it a 10 if it had another tone and volume control.

I run the guitar through dod distortion and then through mxr phase 90 and to a 100 watt crate head and a 300 watt fender 4/12. This guitar is by far the best sounding guitar I have ever owned. The pickups were a little to muddy for me so I took out the neck pickup and put in an alnico pro II humbucker from seymour duncun. I left the bridge pickup in because its really tight.

The guitar was sent to me not up very bad....the action was too high, the neck relief was way off but that not anything that can't be fixed in a short amount of time. Every is very stable....great guitar

This guitar is like a rock, no worries about whether it will last or not. The strap buttons were huge but I went ahead and put strap locks on it anyway just to be sure. No, I wouldn't use it without a backup. Not because of the guitar, but because you never know when i string will break.

I had a lemon the first time and I sent it back and they airmailed me a new one....can't get any better then that.

Great value....great guitar.....no other guitar in this price range can even start to compare to this kramer.

24 Frets, 1 volume, 1 tone, one three way selector. Comes with 2 "QuadCoil" pickups. Locking gotoh tuners in the shape of skulls and crossbones.

Bassy. Very bassy. It's got a nice sound, sounds great with distortion, sounds great clean. Sometimes clean, the bass will get a bit too high, which can be bad.
Otherwise, it's fine. I' using it with a Peavey Rage 158, total crap. At a friends (wealthy friends) house I put it into a big crate, sounded beutiful.

Well, I gave it to guitar center once I got it. Pick ups were a bit too low, and it needed a tuning and intonation.
The paint on the actual body was fine, but on the tremelo it scraped off very easily.

This guitar easily survives the road. I wouldn't know, personally, but it's very durable.
Finish is very nice. I would use it without a backup.

Never needed any support.

This thing is $250, plays like it's $1000. I would buy it again in a second if it was stolen. It's got sweet sustain, and it'll emulate ANYTHING. I was playing things from Santana to Third Eye Blind to Blink182 to Limp Bizkit, and it sounded great.

It is a beauty.

Korean made, 24 fret maple neck-thru, alder sides, rosewood fingerboard, "quad-rail" pickups, 1 vol. 1 coil tap tone, 3 way switch, steinberger "jam-trem" bridge, gotoh skull&crossbones locking tuners, metallic blue finish - neck & body.

Has a fat & ballsy sound, sort of Gibson-ish although a little darker/muddier. Coil tapping really changes the timbre to a more "stratty" vibe, although I don't personally care for the squeaky clean chimey sound unless I'm playing squeaky clean passages. Playing thru a marshall JCM900 50 watt dual reverb head & 1 4x12 marshall cab. - my settings tend to be left where dirty is WAY dirty, clean is WAY clean - no middle ground - never liked the "slightly overdriven" sound. Guitar actually breaks up into that beautiful melodic feedback at high volumes easier than my gibson ('79 LP custom silverburst) or my electra ('80 something). I'm not sure if this is from the neck thru design, or the type of woods used. In either case the instrument has a lovely voice - I like the pickups & don't care what anyone else says.

setup out of the box was only so so. I suspect 10's were on it and the action was just "ok" because some folks like med/high action & some don't (I don't).

Took about 20/30 minutes to put 9's on it & mess with the bridge pins to get the action the way I like it. No truss rod fussing necessary - At least not for me. Frets were polished wonderfully & finshed off perfectly. No funky (cheap) looking fret end filings or imperfections that I could find, either on the board or in the fretwork. I've played $2000.00 guitars with frets worse than these. Neck pickup was WAY low - So what. 10 seconds with a small phillips head fixed that.

Finish is just OK. Nothing seriously wrong, just the occasional imperfection noticable only in direct lighting. No cheesy overspray or anything like that - it just seems like an additional coat or two would not have hurt. Body seams barely visible.

Been playing 20 years. Used to gig, don't anymore. I would use this as a main axe at every gig - but always with a backup. It matters not what kind of guitar you have - you ALWAYS need a backup. Someone will always spill beer on at least one of your guitars if you play out enough. Hardware seems solid enough, good large sized strap buttons, securely screwed down. Jury is still out on the Jam-trem, I like the concept - but it seems to be a little at odds with the gotoh tuners at times. I think some lube, or additional graphite in the nut would help a bunch.

Had a concern about the tuners slipping, and wrote musicyo. They returned my e-mail within 24 hours & suggested trying once more with the tuners. They also said that they would arrange for replacement keys if I was still having trouble.

Bottom line. YOU CAN'T TOUCH THIS FOR $259!!!

This is a NECK-THRU axe folks... territory usually reserved for $1000 & up guitars. I can overlook a TON of little shit for 259 bucks!

The neck is wonderful & this is my main thing.
I can play all the fast metal stuff way up on the neck faster than any of my other guitars. This thing just feels "right". Most experienced players know right away if a neck is a "good" one or not. This one kissed my butt right away.

If you're into retro masonite god-awful boat paddle shaped fashion statement guitars with mother of something carved dove shaped escalloped inlays over carbon fiber graphite blah blah, then this is NOT the guitar you want.

Go buy one before musicyo gets get greedy - and they will...

nuff said.

1999, Korean made, 24 fret neck-thru construcion, rosewood finger board, 1 volume, one tone, three way selector for pickups, and a push/pull built into the tone to select "quad rail" vs "split rail"... it has twin "quad rail" pickups... basically a humbucker sized pick up made of two single rail sized humbuckers... esentially guitar has four humbuckers. Maple neck/alder wings on body, great metallic blue finish, only flay is small chip on bottom of guitar on back side near strap button; for a guitar of this price range not a horrible tragedy. the body style is of that pointy strat type, seems to be a jackson soloist copy. It has a steinberger "jam trem", locking trem. Gotoh locking tuners and a nice thin neck. Over all this guitar far exceded expectations... I would have given it a perfect ten if it had twin volume and tone controls.

I play everything from Bach to Napalm Death style music and it plays them all very well... I play with the split coil (push pull knob out) for that classical/blues tone and pushed in for quad rail when I feel like annoying the neighborhood. Amp-wise I play through a Marshall 75watt solid state and a Yorkville Sound Tube bass amp... sounds edgy and biting thru the Marshall and mellow and deep thru the bass amp (go figure). The most amazing thing... el-cheapo guitar... el-cheapo pickups and its dead quiet... even thru my Yorkville (needs to have the tubes replaced desperately, the hum when i plug in my JazzBass scares my ferrets). Eventially I may upgrade the pickups but for the price I cant complain... Actually I'm starting to like them and may keep the quad rail...

The action came out of the box great... the tuning was off (wah, wah, wah, yeah I know). the neck pick up was set a bit low for my tastes. Nothing a screwdriver couldn't fix in about 9 seconds. The only flaw I can see is the small ding on the backside near the strap button, its about two millimeters long and maybe half a millimeter across. It appears that the Metallic blue effect is from a silver base coat and a transparant blue over it. The frets are finished incredibly smoothly, the nut is great, the tremelo is perfect... the three way selector feels a bit cheap, but then again I've never seen one I liked.

the neck-thru construction lends it self to long life... the pickups will last the knobs will last, the tuners will last, The three way selector? I dunno they never seem to be that stable to me. the finish looks as if it should last a good while, but hey SRV's strat looked like hell and he made it sound angellic. The strap buttons kick ass... they are huge... no strap falling off, guitar hit toes and then floor for this baby.
It strikes me as quality construction and a quality instrument... I would require a backup for a gig due to the tremolo... they tend to break strings at the most in opertune momentes.
oh yeah, hit the low E string, let it ring and grab the headstock and pull back or push forward... very little tone change... rock solid.

Customer support via Email... I've had quick turn around...
They initally sent me the wrong insturment... (long story... they were out of the one I wanted.. and ther was confusion as to the replacement) then they sent me this guitar with no fight. They even shipped it to me without first reciving back the old one... kick ass. Gotta love em. But then again... if they never got the old one back they'd just put it on my mastercard along with this one...
I'd give em a higher score here if their order fulfillment department were a little more careful. Better than Mars; much less pompus... hard to be pompus and condecending via email I suspose..

I've played bass for the past 5 years or so.. I started guitar soon after and have concentrated on guitar as of late.. I own way to much gear for one mortal person... you should really see my apartment... its a wonder I have a place to sleep. If it were stolen I would track down the theif, remove his organs and sell them to finance the replacement. If that were not an option, I would take a weeks pay and order another one in a heartbeat.
I would like to compare it to a Mexi-strat, but there really is no comparison other than price its a far superior guitar. Kramer/Gibson (their parent company) have winner here. Musicyo was lucky to get exclusive distro for em.
Fer the price you can't beat it. Rock solid value... a great starter guitar or a good choice for the more advanced player (who may choose to replace the pick-ups because they can't leave well enough alone)
I feel sorry for all those elitist Gibson/Fender/PRS Rulz people... yer missing out on a great guitar for a paltry sum... I've spent more money at a bar in one night than I did on this guitar.

I would like to make some additional comments on my previous review.
First of all, after having the guitar for about two months a horribly tragidy occured, I managed to accidentally knock the Kramer off of its stand and it managed to land in such a way that the graphite nut split in half and part of it fell off. I checked out the damage and figured since the rest of the nut was securely glued in I would have to knock it out with a hammer and a screwdriver (real high-tech :-) and replace it with a new one.
Now at this time I did not have the trem arm properly adjusted (go to MusicYo.com to check out how to do this) so the tremolo was not locked when the nut fell off. The strings that were on the half of the nut that broke off had snapped and the bridge fell into the cavity as would be expected. The spring-tension knob overhangs the edge of the unit a little bit and it gouged (sp?) into the finish. This kinda sucked as it put a chip into one spectacular finish, but it showed that the finish was actually a translucent red stain over a layer of silver paint, to achieve the metallicness of it.
Anyways, I took a trip to Guitar Center to get a replacement nut and found one labeled "Graphite Nut for Les Paul" it was the right width (I had measured the neck beforehand) so I bought it and went home. I knocked the old nut off without any trouble at all and proceded to glue the new one on. After the glue dried I restrung the guitar. This turned out to be one HELL of a job! I locked the bridge and put the strings through the little holes in the bridge, no problem for the treble strings, but for the wound strings, well I think I may have scraped a layer off the windings trying to feed them through! The best way to put the strings in is to remove the back cover to feed them through. After this was all done I thought my troubles would be over. I was wrong again, my D string wouldn't stop buzzing when played open. This was the fault of the nut not being tall enough as the buzzing wouln't stop wven when I raised the bridge as much as possable, or when adjusting the truss rod to compensate. I ended up shoving a little section of paper clip right under the D string at the nut to keep it from buzzing, works great, no intonation problems. Another problem I had was since I replaced the nut, whenever I used the bridge it went way out of tune, worse than anything before. I discover that this problem was that the nut that I bought at Guitar Center was not actually graphite at all, it was matte black PLASTIC! The cheap sticky kind too. I have yet to fix this problem but it looks like I am going to order a Graph-Tech nut from Stewart-MacDonald no replace the cheapo plastic one.
Don't ever but a nut from Guitar Center is all I have to say :-) Guitar is still my "Number One" though. A floyd-rose unit would not have any of these problems to I would reccommend that over this one to any prospective buyers.

Korean made. 24-Frets. Solid Alder body wings w/ 3pc maple neck-thru. Solid Metallic Red Finish.
Master Volume & Tone, Gibson-style 3 way pickup selector, pull-up tone knob for coil split. Two Quad-rail passive pickups.
VERY similar to a Jackson Soloist but with a reverse banana headstock. Locking Gotoh 16:1 tuners w/ skull & crossbones knobs. Very thin speed style neck pretty flat fretboard. Comes with three allen wrenches for adjusting truss rod and Steinberger bridge.
The bridge is really nice. Stays in tune better than a Floyd and doesn't need the locking nut for easy tuning and string change. It takes a while to figure out though. It's a Steinberger Jam-Trem, I can dive bomb all the way to hell and come back up perfectly in tune, but because it locks when you put the bar back out of the way it sometimes doesn't unlock when you want to use it. I found out though that if I rotate it up over the strings and then back it down a little bit it works just fine.
The only reason I gave it a 9 instead of a 10 is that there is only one volume control, two would have been nice. Oh and the banana headstock that thing is rather ugly.

I'm running it through a Crybaby, a Digitech ValveFX multi effect unit into a 160 watt Tube Works MOSValve Power amp which drives two 2x12" Laney speaker cabs. The pickups are rather plain sounding. Very high output though. The neck pickup with the coil split on (knob pulled up) sounds nice and sparkley when clean. Can make 6 different sounds without touching the volume or tone knobs, which is nice and versatile. This thing is DEAD queit on all the settings, that has to be the best thing about the pickups. I played a strat before this and the main reason I gave it up was the the pickups emitted an absolute awful buzz whenever I let go of it, no fingerpicking allowed :-) Great sustain due to the neck-thru construction. I give it an 8, although it would be a 10 with more interesting pickups.

Action was a little high from the factory setup. I lowered it just a tad and adjusted the truss rod for a little less bow and it plays like a dream, no buzzing. Pickups were a tad low, but this doesn't matter too much as they are so high output it doesn't affect any thing. Finish is beautiful. One of the best solid finishes I've seen (metallic red). No chips of ripples or anything else. My only complaint is the paper stickers that Kramer stuck on the back of the headstock leave a nasty little bit of gunk that took a little elbow grease to get off. Other than that absolutely perfect.

Very solidly built. Everything is a perfect fit. The strap buttons are a bit wider and flatter and hold the strap on an infinate number of times better than my Strat. I would easily use it without a backup at a gig (as I do)

This thing is priced cheap enough to be a first or second guitar for someone, but plays well enough to be anyone's main axe. The few differences between this and a Jackson soloist (think 5 or 6 times more clostly) are that the soloist has a cooler looking headstock, a bound fretboard, and less versatile controls. If someone stole it I would definantly buy a new one. One of the best guitars I've ever played.
I don't know whether my favorite feature is the Steinberger Jam-Trem or the neck-thru construction. Fabulous upper fret playability and sustain from the neck thru.
The only modification that I am going to make is I am going to replace the pickups with EMGs. Probably a 60 and an 85.