1983 Kramer Pacer Deluxe

Details

I found this on Guitar Center online, and despite the body modifications, thought it was worth the risk for the reasonable price and maple beak neck. Incredibly, UPS actually lost this guitar in transit, and it went missing for almost a month! Luckily, the store’s rep was very helpful in tracking it down and with Guitar Center’s excellent return policy, I didn’t have much to be worried about.

It is an amazing player, one of my best. The neck has a great gloss feel and a fatter C shape than later Kramers. Action is low and the strings are particularly slinky and provide great feel even with the vintage fret size. The body is a short-lived shape - similar to the stratocaster shape of earlier Pacers but with the top horn side reduced in size. Bodies of this era were hand shaped, so there are always some variances and this one is very even and comfortable to play. From the information I can gather, this body shape ran in the low C-plate range on Pacer models and only for a few thousand in range. As expected, it stays in tune great with West German made Schaller tuners and an early chrome Floyd Rose system, top mounted, and set up flush to dive only. This makes this a great guitar to use for alternate tunings, or going down to Drop-D without much hassle. From factory, this would’ve had a matte black HSS 8-hole pickguard with Schaller pickups.

A previous owner made some extreme modifications, including routing underneath the pickguard to fit a humbucker in the neck position. It is a little bizarre as Kramer was selling a 2-hum variant, the Pacer Imperial, at the same time. Both pickups are 1980s era Duncan Customs, so I would guess that these modifications took place sometime in the mid to late 80s as well. Luckily, the routing is a pro quality job, just the size of the humbucker with no excess, and the entire inside of the body route is coated in copper tape. Controls are also unique, with the 5-way blade replaced with a 3-way, a single volume control, and a very interesting tone control system. Basically, the bottom two mini-switches are toggles for tone on/off, per pickup. If it were my only guitar, I think I would miss the subtlety of a tone knob, but I do like being able to go from fully open to closed tone in one flick. It also has a third mini-switch to put the bridge humbucker into single coil wiring.

This configuration would be a great candidate to use a Jackson JE-0005 “Super” 5-way switch in place of the 3-way blade. Basically, this would make it possible to coil tap either pickup quickly, although it makes the third mini-switch useless. I may do it as a complimentary modification since I plan on swapping the pickguard out with an H-H matte black one.

Update: I’ve installed the black pickguard, new strap buttons, still need to put in a volume knob at least. Pictures of the guitar as it exists now are here: https://totallyradguitars.com/kramer-american#/1983-kramer-pacer-deluxe-c1359/

Unique Features

  • Maple “Beak” neck

    • Made by ESP

    • R2 width nut

    • Gloss lacquer with very fine flame figuring

  • Aftermarket H-H route

  • Body shape with “shallow” upper half area, used for a short time in early ‘83

  • Replaced pickguard

  • Controls

    • 3-way blade switch

    • Master volume

    • coil tap for bridge humbucker

    • 2-way tone switches, one per pickup. Works like a regular tone pot, but only has settings for “10” and “0”

  • Both pickups are 80s era Seymour Duncan SH-5 “Custom” DCL models, wound by Lidia Daniel