1989 Kramer Sustainer

Details

I put this guitar together using a NOS Kramer Sustainer body. My first assembly used a late 80s Claw neck, but I moved that to a more appropriate non-NOS guitar to restore it. Since that build, I’ve switched this guitar to black hardware instead of the chrome I used before, and set it up with another NOS piece - a fully bound, maple fretboard Kramer neck. I’ve only seen a handful of these in existence, and this particular neck is a very wide R5 at the nut. The nut shelf is cut quite shallow however, so I actually used an R8 nut, which is the same width as an R4 but is much shallower in height. This does leave a little space on either side of the strings, but I actually prefer this as R5 is usually a bit too wide for me. The low profile nut also means I don’t need to shave or modify the neck in any way, and I can still get nice low action. I’ve also had to replace the PJ Marx pickup, sadly the wire was damaged near the epoxy base plate and it finally bit the dust after a few weeks of working intermittently. I replaced it with a Dimarzio Norton, a pickup I’d never tried before, but after installing it here I’m not sure why it isn’t more popular - great sounding pickup. The neck position is a Dimarzio Fred, which is like a slightly souped up PAF Pro, one of my other favorite neck position humbuckers, but since I used a PAF Pro in my White sustainer project, I thought the Fred would make this one a little more unique.

This guitar currently exists as pictured.