Kramer Duo Pro Classic

Neck: 1-piece, Canadian Hard Maple, 22 fret.
Body: Swamp Ash - Solid.
Neck Pickup: Seymour Duncan Nashville Studio STR52-1.
Bridge Pickup: Seymour Duncan Nashville Studio STL52-1.
saddle pickup: Shadow? SH-975C Bridge System.
Electronics: Shadow? ?Hybrid Guitar TurboCharger? System with brilliance, bass and treble controls.
Machine Heads: grover USA locking.
Control pots for master volume, magnetic/piezo mix, magnetic tone with push/pull pot for magnetic/magnetic&piezo.
Stereo jack output (more on this latter!).

I mostly play rock/blues. I was looking for a tele for the more bluesy stuff; The price of a USA tele or the Kramer was roughly the same, so I decided to take a chance. The versatility of tone you can get out of this thing is quite amazing. With just the duncan's through my Blues Driver amp, the sound is not only fantasic, but highly versatile. Mixing in the active pickup slightly gives a real dinamic twang, but the real fun comes when you use the stereo jack to send the magnetic signal to your valve amp, and the piezo to a PA/acoustic Amp. I put loads of drive on the valver; reverb and a little chourus on the PA. It was like two guitarists playing in uniform, one on an electric, one on an accoustic!

This is what the great sounds are balanced out against. nothing can be 100% fantastic it seems! Plain and simple it doesn't look as nice as a fender USA tele. The headstock logo is nothing short of terrible! When they spend all this time and money designing a great sounding guitar, why do they have a monotone, cheesy looking logo?
The finish is very pleasant; a butterscotch blonde with a nice underlying green woody tone. The pickguard is single-ply black. again why scrimp on the cosmetics?
The fit and action however are very good. The grover's keep the strings bang in tune, even with the most ferocious of bends. The sustain is fantastic, which is not surprising considering this beast weighs a ton!

Solid as a rock. I have not owned it long enough to comment as to whether the finish will stay true, but it's the kind of guitar that's going to look great with a few nocks down the line anyway! Overall I get the feeling it's going to be very dependable.

bought direct from the company (music-yo.com). All I can say is it got here prompt and well packaged. they have a website to deal with any problems, and I've heard they are quite dependable. This is one of the reasons I decided to buy it online. Had any bad word been said about them, I would not have taken the risk.

Over all the cosmetic flaws do not outweigh the fact that this is a great playing, fantastic sounding guitar. At $650, I would have liked a better finish, but I have never owned (let alone heard) a guitar that sounds this sweet. If it where lost or stolen I would not hesitate to buy another. I'm glad I didn't plump for the USA tele anyway! I think I will just buy a tortoise shell pickguard and settle down with this beauty for a long while!

Two Seymour Duncan pickups, Shadow? Active Piezo Bridge, STEREO output, Antique Natural Swamp Ash body, Maple Neck, Gotoh Magnum-Lock machine heads. What else is there to say? This is why I bought it.

MusicYo shipped out two dysfunctional Duo Pro?s before getting it right the third time. Check the next category for details. My Sound rating is based on Duo Pro number three which sounds absolutely awesome. I can get smooth Tele sounds from the Duncan Magnetic Pickups (keep in mind the Duncans are what people put in their stock Telecasters to improve the sound) and impressive acoustic like tones from the Active Piezo Bridge. I can even blend the two sounds together or, with the stereo jack, split them to different channels or amps. To test this I sent the Piezo Signal to my Fender Stage amp for a clean sound and the Duncan signal to a distorted Peavy amp on the other side of the room. Cool. Can?t wait to record with this tone machine.

Perhaps TMI however considering I have now had three Duo Pros I felt it only fair to describe all three and average out the rating.

Duo Numero Uno came with a dead battery and faulty Piezo System. All I could get out of it was sweet sounding Duncans and nasty scratch from the Shadow. The neck was nice, probably the best of all three, solid maple and smooth as butter. The Butterscotch Finish was rich however I noticed on the back that some green stain showed through from under the finish. Had the guitar worked, it would not have taken much to set the action up to my liking. Rating - 3

Duo Numero Dos came with a functional Piezo (after I replaced the dead battery) however two control knobs were bent and the guitar went almost dead on the middle pickup setting. Also the finish was bad, the edges of the neck had been worn down when the frets were polished and a spot of the Butterscotch finish was worn through on the back edge with a clear coat over it. The action was way off; bridge saddles were not even - mucho fret buzz. How this one got out of the factory I do not know. Quality Control was sleeping this day. Rating - 2

Duo Numero Tres is Magnifico! Tuned it up and it was ready to play. Even the battery was good! This time I got the Antique Natural Finish ? everything is nice. There were different tech and inspector signatures on the assembly slip, perhaps the Antique Natural finished Duo?s are made in a different factory? Did I say this one is nice? Oh yea ? this is what I wanted. Rating - 10

Some more interesting facts ? Duo 3 does not have a one-piece neck like the Butterscotch models had ? it has a maple fret board on a satin finished maple neck. By the way - the frets are perfect. Also, the bridge pickup is different; this one has a small hole in the top and thick tape covering the wire. It sounds the same though, I know because prior to returning number two I compared them in my basement studio.

OK ? I feel good about the Duo I am keeping. It is solid and ?Pro? fits for this one. Again ? I based my rating on the average of all three guitars.

I?m not going to put a number here because I do not want it to be misleading. While at times my purchase experience was quite frustrating, MusicYo support staff always responded quickly, professionally and resolved all product issues.

I have been playing casually for about 16 years now. I have owned many guitars and have settled down to a Ric 620 and a customized Yamaha SG. The Duo Pro fills in the gap well. If I were only rating the Duo Pro that I kept I would put a 10 here. I am very pleased with ?Number Three? and this is why I bumped up the average. However the first two make me wonder how many imperfect guitars get out of the plant, after all, this is supposed to be a ?Pro? model.

I have enjoyed playing this guitar for over a month now and have not had any problems. The features make this a tremendous value over a stock Fender Telecaster. If needed, I would buy another Duo Pro.

This is one of the new Korean Kramers made in 2001. It has the classic telecaster ash body which I like. It has a piezo pick up system which would seem great to use in a live situation to help cut through the wall of sound created by a bass player and drummer. The Seymor Duncan pick-ups are of very high quality. This has the butterscotch finish which is nicely done. It has the traditional string through body tele design with no tremelo arm such as that found on a strat style guitar. The maple neck has a satin finish which feels more comfortable to me than those sticky Gibson necks.

The guitar seems more versatle sound wise than a standard telecaster. If I was a professional I would choose this axe over an American standard telecaster because of the great variety of tones you can coax out of this baby. There are three tone dials in back of the guitar that work when the piezo system is on and the three tone dials encourage experimentation with tones while playing. It's amazingly quiet for a single coil guitar. This would be a good axe to record with.

I have heard complaints about the Kramer Korean guitars quality level. It looks like they are now selling a stripped down version of this guitar for 230 dollars now. So you are probably getting the same guitar without the fancy pick ups and electronics. After a close inspection of the guitar I conclude that the quality level is below that of a made in Mexico Fender guitar and it's not close at all to an American standard in quality. I counted 3 small cosmetic flaws and another flaw at the end of the fretboard near the last fret where the wood is chipped. I would not purchase a guitar with a chipped fretboard if it was being sold in a music store....no way, but it's not serious enough to warrant sending the guitar back to Kramer. The finish is attractive though nicely done. The bolts that secure two of the three chrome knobs in front were lose, very annoying to say the least. The neck is too buzzy for the low action that the guitar came set up as. The frets need to be dressed by a pro guitar luthier. The neck looks straight as an arrow sighting down the neck which is good.

The guitar looks solid, a bit heavy but much more comfortable than a Les Paul. It seems it would be well suited for playing live.

Music Yo has a cool website probably the best I have seen for guitars. The 360 degree guitar rotation feature at the site is neat. For more info on the warranty go to the web site.

I have been playing guitar since 1986. It seems this guitar style would appeal more to people over 40. I'm 44 years old. I bought this guitar for 550 dollars it was on sale. This does not look like a 650 dollar guitar. For that kind of money Kramer needs to give a higher quality of finish than that found on their low end models. This looks to be a hot-rodded version of their 230 dollar Kramer classic guitar. Because I live in California I have to pay sales tax so that would be 700 dollars plus shipping if I bought it at the regular price which is to much money for this particular guitar. The value of this guitar looks closer to 500 dollars but I would not hesitate to buy it again at my 550 dollar sale price that I got. I would pass on the guitar if it was not on sale just too much money even though it sounds great.

I'm not certain where this guitar was made, but papers that came with the guitar indicate that it was a proto-type for the current model made in Korea. Specs include: 22 nickel medium frets; hard maple bolt-on neck, string-thru body; solid Swamp Ash body; Seymour Duncan Nashville Studio STR52-1 neck pickup; Seymour Duncan Nashville Studio STL52-1 bridge pickup; Shadow SH-975C active bridge Piezo system with EQ controls on back of guitar; Master Volume; Piezo/Magnetic Balance with Detent; Piezo Tone with Push/Pull (in: active electronics are on; out: bypass the active electronics so only the magnetic pickups are on); three position switch; stereo output jack that uses either a ?? tip-sleeve for mono or a tip-ring-sleeve ?Y? cable for splitting the piezo and magnetic signals; Gotoh Magnum-Lock machine heads; graphite nut; plus a TKL padded gig bag. This model has a Tele-shaped swamp ash body with a gorgeous opaque butterscotch finish that surprised me.

I was looking for an electric guitar that would produce a cleaner, brighter sound when I played in church. I was in transition between playing my Takamine acoustic/electric and my Heritage 157 which I just love playing, but was not satisfied with the electric guitar sounds in this particular environment which is a small church. The piezo bridge on this Kramer solved that problem. This guitar has quite a variety of sounds and the ability to EQ the piezo gives it a great range. It's acoustic sounds will never match my Takamine, but it does produce a reasonably good imitation. People have remarked how good the guitar sounds with a blend of both the Seymour Duncans and the piezo. I can't say enough about the Duncans and the neck is a great sounding pickup. You can read more about these Nashville Studio pickups here on Harmony Central. If you like the Tele sound, these are great pickups. I can get that Tele twang by simply pulling up on the tone switch to bypass the piezo. I am still experimenting with splitting the pickups through the PA and my Marshall AS80R.

Since I bought it used, I don't know how it was set up at the factory. I don't think the seller did much either, but it felt fairly well set up when it arrived. I did adjust the bridge pickup height a little to my tastes. I also did some minor truss rod adjustments to correct some buzzing and therefore, had to make some minor intonation adjustments but those were done quickly and without effort. The action is perfect for me and it plays so easily that I'm amazed this guitar sells for the low price it sells on musicyo.com. As I mentioned, I was looking for a good sounding guitar with a fair body, but the color and finish had me drooling when I first saw it. Oh yeah - the neck. The satin finish on the neck feels so good and plays effortlessly. I have very small hands, but everything feels right with this neck. I've played Andersons that give that "play like butter" feel and this is quite close (in my opinion) but at much less the cost. My Heritage has a great neck also, but I actually like the feel of the wood on the Kramer rather than the lacquer on the Heritage. One thing that I would have Kramer do is to enhance their logo and make it more "expensive" looking. The one minor flaw is that one side of the wood strip running through the back of the neck has a spot that is very slightly raised from the rest of the neck, but it does not bother me.

I have had this guitar for only about 3 months now, but it appears durable. Reliable and durable? I'm hopeful. The hardware seems solid and the finish does not appear to be thin. Because it has active electronics and is battery driven, it is wise to always have an extra battery if you need to rely on the piezo. A battery indicator like what is on my Takamine would be a nice touch though. Otherwise, you could still play it like any Tele. i'll follow up in a few months on this category.

Not applicable for this guitar and there is no warranty. I bought my son a Striker FR424 about a year ago and they were great to deal with when we had a setup problem. They are very responsive with emails and even replied even I did not buy the Duo Pro from them.

I've been playing fro about 35 years with a stretch of about 5 to 6 years of not playing. In addition to the Heritage 157, Takamine and Marshall amp mentioned above, I own an Ovation Legend and a cheapie that my mother bought for me and I will never get rid of. I have a DOD Accoustec processor and a Boss Blues Driver that I plunk around with. I am constantly looking to refine my sound. This guitar has been one great surprise and I would definitely consider getting another one if it were lost or stolen. I have grown to appreciate Tele types, which are the workhorse of the music industry and their ability to produce all kinds of sounds (including the Duo Pro) has made me a fan and believer. Granted I got a great deal by buying it used and saved a ton of money, the current price of $650 on musicyo.com is still worth it. A similar Fender will cost more, but you won't get the Seymour Duncans. All I can say is God knew what I needed and He saw to it that I got it.