1989 Kramer XL1

Details

While in college, a friend of mine who was into cycling told me that he spotted a Kramer guitar in the pawn shop attached to the bike repair shop. I dropped by a few days later and saw this XL1 - I didn’t know much about these, but after playing it a little, I made a deal, got a case thrown in, and took it home. This was my second Kramer, and obviously a big step down in quality compared to my Pacer. However, I still find myself missing this one a bit - the neck has a great gloss and a thick C shape, and the bridge being a standard strat style fulcrum trem meant I could more easily try out different pickups or string gauges. Since I was still new to learning guitar at this time, it was a great guitar for experimenting.

This guitar was made in Korea, likely in 1989 towards the end of Kramer. Most XL1’s have a pointy headstock, but this one has a beak shape, still painted black. I’m not sure where this neck came from, but it is only barely different from USA Kramer beaks (made by ESP), and the bridge was good quality too. For the price point (100 bucks) this does the job of much more expensive guitars pretty well, although the factory pickups were downright awful. I swapped the pickups in this guitar several times while experimenting. The body was extremely lightweight by definitely plywood - very visible layers in the cavities. Eventually, I traded this guitar for the black Charvel Spectrum at my local Sam Ash, and while I don’t regret that trade for a second, I do wish I’d been able to keep both.

I actually spotted this guitar on ebay years after I sold it and would’ve loved to have it back, but the seller wanted nearly 300 bucks for it without the case. I have a lot of nostalgia attached to this guitar but not that much! I just hope someone is still enjoying it, for a “cheap” guitar it really deserves it.

I no longer own this instrument