Kramer Focus 6000

I got the guitar free from my cousin, he bought it used at a pawn shop for 200$CAD

I love the floyd rose, also the sound it makes is incredible, its the most solid guitar I ever owned, its almost 20 years old and still looks brand new.

Its realy heavy, the fretboard is not very large so when I play on the small cord (e) sometimes it slides off the fretboard.

For a japenese guitar its very good, even the best built japanese guitar Ive ever seen. The quality is incredible, like i said its almost 20 years old and almost like new.

If I could buy another few of these guitars I would The sound is just amazing through any amp.

This review was originally published on http://www.musicgearreview.com

Kramer was known primarily in the 80s for a sleazy style guitar instrument. These guitars are basically super stratocasters in which I mean they have the Stratocaster body that Fender makes but they added a humbucker in the bridge position as well as a Floyd Rose or another tremolo system of some sort. These are the kind guitars that you would've seen 80s metal bands use and overall pretty much any person you play hard rock metal back in the 80s. This is the Japanese version of the Pacer custom guitar from Kramer. It was made over in Japan and for the price it gave the budget musician away of getting a super Stratocaster guitar at a more affordable price. Essentially this is the same guitar as a USA made pacers but it just didn't have that USA stamp on the side. There are every bit as high quality guitars as the US standard guitars.

UTILIZATION


This is a bolt on neck guitar that features a humbug or pick up in the bridge position a Singapore pick up in the middle' pick up in the neck position. You also get a tremolo system that get you do squealing high gain 80s sounds. It comes with a volume control and a tone control as well as a pick up selector.


SOUNDS


The tone of this guitar is best when used with a high gain amplifier of some sort. So if you're using it with a high gain Marshall amplifier or a Mesa boogie or anything that puts out a lot of saturation or distortion in his guitars to be a good complement to that amplifier. This guitar is not a sound that great as a clean and guitar for country or pop music. This is a very explosive guitar when you get a lot of tubes saturation. Overall it sounds very good if you like the tone of the super Strat style bodies with these high output pick ups installed.

OVERALL OPINION


This is a cool guitar if you're into the pointy headstock 80s shred guitars. This is an not for someone who is into indie rock or pop rock or anything like that. This is a for a hard rock or metal playing guitarist. It's a cool guitar into the price if you can find one there not that bad. I recommend this to anyone is looking for a court 80s guitar with a little bit of nostalgia.

The Kramer Focus line of guitars was built in Japan in the eighties and was meant to be a cheaper, yet comparable line to the USA Pacers and Barettas of the time. Bodies and necks were built by the ESP factory in Japan, so the quality was high. This one was an '86 or '87 Focus 6000 (MIJ equivalent to the Pacer Custom I). The body was made of alder, and the neck was maple with a rosewood fretboard and 22 frets. The bridge system was the Original Floyd Rose Tremolo, and the pickups were made by ESP for Kramer.

The control layout was very simple. It had one volume knob and and three mini switches, one for each pickup to turn it on and off. This was a bit frustrating at times, but since I was primarily using it for eighties rock at the time, I was really only using the bridge pickup anyhow.

UTILIZATION

This guitar was a fairly typical feeling superstrat in how it was laid out. The design was far more ergonomic than a Strat, but it still had areas that were a bit harder to navigate. The weight of the guitar was medium, so it was easy to use for longer gigs without discomfort to my shoulders or arms/wrists. The upper fret access was much better than say, a Strat for sure. I had no issues per se, but it definitely wasn't a perfect design (due in part to the standard 4 bolt neck joint, which was not contoured for access).

Getting good tones from this guitar was not difficult whatsoever. What it lacked in versatility, it made up for with that biting LA rock tone ala George Lynch in spades. It definitely sounded very eighties, but since that was the vibe I was going for, that was perfect! Clean tones were average at best, and I didn't care for the guitar's tone for bluesier or mid gain applications, so I would say versatility is low on the list.

SOUNDS

When I owned this guitar, I was using a Mesa Boogie Mark III head and Basson Sound 2x12 cabinet. I was playing mostly in an eighties spinoff band. Our material was very similar to Dokken, Whitesnake, or early Skid Row, so the tones I was getting with this rig were excellent for that genre of music.

As I said above, clean tones were average at their best. The single coils were very low output and weak so they didn't have the power to cut through a lot of the time and I didn't like the sound of the humbucker for clean tones because the nature of the pickup was too biting. As a result, I rarely used this guitar for cleans, preferring to stick to my '89 Yamaha RGX612a which had active electronics whenever the band had a power ballad to do.

The distorted tones were great as I said above, but only if you wanted that eighties snarl. It was very LA rock and not much else. I've had many superstrats over the years and this one was one of the better sounding ones. They have a tendency to sound thin, but this one had a nice full sound with that biting top end as I said before. It certainly wasn't as thick as a Les Paul, but for a Floyd Rose equipped superstrat, it was fairly good.

OVERALL OPINION

All in all I was very impressed with this guitar for what it was. It did what I wanted and expected it to do, so I was happy enough there. It was definitely a one trick pony, but it did that one trick very well, so I kept it around for a few months until the band I was in dissolved, and thus I sold it to make room for other purchases. I wouldn't mind buying another one down the line (perhaps a Focus 1000 where I only need/use that single humbucker). It was a very well crafted instrument and I was impressed enough to try and purchase a USA Kramer Pacer Custom I to match it (that didn't end up happening).

Definitely a cool buy if you want that classic eighties bite. They can still be picked up fairly cheap on the used market, so if you can grab one, go for it!