I have an huge soft spot for early 80s Kramers, and especially for those early graphic designs - geometric shapes, stripes, and patterns - as opposed to later graphics which are a little less abstract (waterfalls, planets, statue of liberty etc).
This particular guitar is one I put out a feeler for when I saw a very old picture of it - it was in the possession of a UK Kramer collector who I’d previously bought a snakeskin Baretta I from via eBay. Eventually it found its way to another UK collector who quite frankly, I hounded for a while hoping to buy it. He eventually listed it for sale but the price was a bit too high for me, and money was a little tight and I just never quite could pull the trigger on it. That sounds funny looking back through my previous gear acquisition posts but you have to understand - nearly everything I have bought on this site I bought because it was severely underpriced or I got a huge deal on it. I can count the number of things I paid full market price for on one hand… it’s just a lot easier for me to justify spending if I feel like I can flip something and at the very least break even (even if I don’t do much flipping!).
Anyway, I remember talking to my girlfriend around my birthday in April 2023 about this guitar, then again in Christmas 2023, and then lots of hemming and hawing before I finally was able to secure a reasonable deal, and better yet, one that she was going to buy for me as a birthday gift (now in April 2024). Yep - she’s a keeper, and same for the guitar!
I really love this graphic look, and the edges of the body also have an outline that follows the color gradient all the way around.
Since it’s a Pacer Special (single pickup), it also gets the show off the finish a bit since there’s more surface area on the face of the body. It has all of the other features I like about a Pacer Special from this era too - Schaller 2-in-1 pickup with coil tap, volume, and tone controls, plus a Floyd Rose bridge (although I’d kind of preferred to have a brass fulcrum trem, but that’s got to be hard to find). The neck is a very nice glossy C shape, with more traditional sized frets and is just a joy to play.
I’ve seen a few interesting variations of this graphic as well. Mine is the more common arrangement, with a red-yellow top half and blue-green bottom. However it also came in different orders - see the below picture of one that is yellow-green on top and red-blue on the bottom. I’ve also seen a Voyager with much, much wider striping and a very bold bordering line that ran around the entire body on the outside edge - I’ll see if I can find a picture of that an update this post when I do.
Update 6/15/24 - Found it. See gallery below:
