1988 Kramer Sustainer (Mutt)

Details

This is the first “project” Kramer I ever put together from the ground up. I acquired the white Sustainer body on Reverb, the maple fretboard American neck from someone on craigslist, Gibson Dirty Fingers pickup from musicgoround, bridge and tuners from Stratosphere, and a Wah/Midboost circuit from GFS. Other parts came from various sources as well.

Since this was my first project, and I wasn’t comfortable with filling/painting holes, I wanted to come up with something to fill the empty holes left by the missing Sustainer system. After some research online, I settled on the GFS Wah/Midboost circuit. I had to make some minor modifications, as that system is intended to work with a push-pull volume pot to turn it on and off, but I modified it to turn on/off with a simple 2-way mini switch. The controls work like this - gold knobs are volume, tone, and then wah frequency/boost amount. Then the 4 switches do other functions - starting with a 3-way pickup selector switch, then a coil tap switch for both humbuckers, then on/off for the active electronics, and the last switch changes the mode of the active electronics to either “Wah” or “Mid Boost” mode. It sounds great to have all of those options, loosely inspired by the JE-1500 boost in my Charvel Spectrum.

The neck pickup is a Dimarzio PAF Pro, while the bridge has a Gibson Dirty Fingers.

This guitar currently exists as pictured.