Show me pics of your aluminum guitars

reprovisional

reprovisional

Member
I'll start: EGC TT2 baritone from profile pic.

Piano-like in tone... and weight.

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JackBootedThug said:
Bet that cost a pretty penny. I have always been curious about aluminum since I first checked out a Kramer bass years ago. It had an aluminum neck.
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Paid list for used mint, although it's tough to destroy these. The neck is extremely flat and shreddy, which surprised me more than I thought and took a lot of getting used to.
 
reprovisional said:
Super cool, never seen one of these. What's the general tone like and what kind of music are you playing with it?
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the tone is very neutral and clear; each string has its own pickup, and there's an internal 13-pin connector. The controls are volume, treble and bass so you can get wide variety of tones.

I usually use it with my Boss SY-1000 - which powers the led fret markers using the 13-pin connector - for more prog-ish rock / metal / fusion. The SY-1000 has a sequencer and I can make synth pads, leads, bass sounds, and blend guitar and synth sounds.
 
reprovisional said:
Gorgeous! Which do you play more?
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I play the top one more. It sounds more aggressive, zingy, tighter and harpsichord like, while the other sounds rounder, wetter, more sustain maybe and more piano like in sound, but both are awesome! The bottom one is also heavier. I also upgraded pickups in both. The top one now has a ‘50’s Guild Franz P90 that sounds incredible and the other has a set of Tone Specific Virtuosos. Great improvement over the stock pickups
 
reprovisional said:
Absolutely! All original? Tell me more about this beauty.
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It's not completely original, a previous owner installed those chrome covered pickups, a factory one would've had double creme Dimarzio Dual Sounds with creme pickup rings too. The dark "burst" is the only one I've ever seen like this, but I'm pretty confident that part is original because there are no other signs of a refinish, and the controls have these tiny solder balls directly on the body.... not something you could take off to refinish and put back on. The other thing missing, but apparently most of them didn't even ship with this, but there is a factory catalog page says this model has active electronics with a tiny preamp built in. I'm pretty active in Kramer collector circles and I've yet to see one with this preamp and quite frankly the way Kramer was run it's very possible they made a few prototypes and wrote up an ad for it and then never actually shipped them (or worse, later Kramers have a lot of factory changes as time went on that was never reflected in catalogs or documents).

Anyway this is a Kramer, many know of their wood necked guitars from EVH, 80s pointy headstock shredders and the like. However the company was actually started in 1976 and their early claim to fame was this aluminum neck thing, supposed to be extremely resonant, with ebonal fretboards. They used wood inlays along the back of the neck to keep your hand from getting too cold on the bare aluminum, and the bodies are usually walnut but some have maple or maple wings/stripes etc. This particular guitar is from 1979-1980, the DMZ 6000 G, top of the line for the time, and right around the same time more standard bolt-on wood necked guitars were being made. Those early wood neck Kramers are actually my favorites and I have quite a few of them, they are not really "shred" guitars in the modern sense, but they are the very earliest iteration of "super strats," with humbuckers, akin to Charvel San Dimas and similar stuff at the time. Anyway those are another whole topic on their own.

In practice it sounds and plays great, it's heavy as hell both body and neck, but it's also a very different balance than other guitars... very neck heavy so it really pulls on your shoulder on that side. The fretboard is actually pretty flat so despite the appearance it makes for a pretty killer lead guitar. There's a handful of clips of early Kajagoogoo where they are playing these Aluminum neck guitars and basses if you dig deep into youtube.

Cheers
 
TotallyRadGuitars said:
It's not completely original, a previous owner installed those chrome covered pickups, a factory one would've had double creme Dimarzio Dual Sounds with creme pickup rings too. The dark "burst" is the only one I've ever seen like this, but I'm pretty confident that part is original because there are no other signs of a refinish, and the controls have these tiny solder balls directly on the body.... not something you could take off to refinish and put back on. The other thing missing, but apparently most of them didn't even ship with this, but there is a factory catalog page says this model has active electronics with a tiny preamp built in. I'm pretty active in Kramer collector circles and I've yet to see one with this preamp and quite frankly the way Kramer was run it's very possible they made a few prototypes and wrote up an ad for it and then never actually shipped them (or worse, later Kramers have a lot of factory changes as time went on that was never reflected in catalogs or documents).

Anyway this is a Kramer, many know of their wood necked guitars from EVH, 80s pointy headstock shredders and the like. However the company was actually started in 1976 and their early claim to fame was this aluminum neck thing, supposed to be extremely resonant, with ebonal fretboards. They used wood inlays along the back of the neck to keep your hand from getting too cold on the bare aluminum, and the bodies are usually walnut but some have maple or maple wings/stripes etc. This particular guitar is from 1979-1980, the DMZ 6000 G, top of the line for the time, and right around the same time more standard bolt-on wood necked guitars were being made. Those early wood neck Kramers are actually my favorites and I have quite a few of them, they are not really "shred" guitars in the modern sense, but they are the very earliest iteration of "super strats," with humbuckers, akin to Charvel San Dimas and similar stuff at the time. Anyway those are another whole topic on their own.

In practice it sounds and plays great, it's heavy as hell both body and neck, but it's also a very different balance than other guitars... very neck heavy so it really pulls on your shoulder on that side. The fretboard is actually pretty flat so despite the appearance it makes for a pretty killer lead guitar. There's a handful of clips of early Kajagoogoo where they are playing these Aluminum neck guitars and basses if you dig deep into youtube.

Cheers
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Thank you for the fantastic history! Definitely need to host a #ShredTalk on YouTube ;)
 
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