Kramer is celebrating its 50th anniversary with a golden new line of S-types, treating its most popular models to a glow-up.
The guitar brand was at the height of its powers during the 1980s shred scene, with Eddie Van Halen, Mick Mars, and Richie Sambora among the advocates of the shred-friendly axes. Its fortunes nosedived the following decade, with Gibson buying it out of bankruptcy in 1997 as it bid to restore the Kramer brand.
Half a century, then, is a major milestone, and all the big hitters are here to celebrate, and caked in a 2026 exclusive Anniversary Gold finish for good measure. Each model – taking in the 84, SM-1 HH, NightSwan, Baretta, Pacer Carrera, and Volante – features a Floyd Rose 1000 Series vibrato and black hardware.
The 84 is an alder body, bestowed with forearm and belly contours and deep double cutaways for oodles of upper-fret access. It's paired with a satin-finished bolt-on K-Speed SlimTaper maple neck with a walnut skunk stripe. That, in turn, is capped with a maple fretboard and 22 jumbo frets.
A single Kramer Eruption PRO humbucker benefits from a push/pull series/parallel switch via the Volume knob. It is priced at $999.
The SM-1HH, meanwhile, doubles its money with two Eruption PRO Humbuckers wired in with premium CTS pots and boasting Volume and Tone controls. In contrast, the series/parallel control is moved to a dedicated mini toggle.
Also featuring a full-length mahogany neck with mahogany body wings, the gilded shredder has the same fast-playing profile as the 84, but swaps in a 12” radius ebony fretboard. It’s well-specced, but also refreshingly no-nonsense for $1,199.
As for the NightSwan, the revival of a late-’80s gem packs its two Eruption Pro humbuckers closely together and benefits from a lightweight alder body with comfy contours. Its Slim-Taper maple neck, complete with a black Kramer four-bolt plate, features a 22-fret ebony fingerboard and the model’s iconic offset “Ping-Pong” inlays.
See, too, its reverse Explorer headstock and a retro-styled Volume knob that, again, has a push/pull series/parallel control, all for $999.
The headline with Baretta, which was EVH’s Kramer of choice, is its offset and uncovered single Eruption Pro humbucker, which nods to its lineage with zebra bobbins and more streamlined controls.
It sports a double-cutaway maple body, satin-finished, three-piece maple neck with ebony fretboard, and a Kramer Thin profile. There’s absolutely no fat on this 25.5” scale six-string, and it sits at the lower end of the price scale at $999.
The Pacer Carrera, meanwhile, is a more traditional Super Strat, with twin Eruption PRO buckers, expanded Master and Volume controls, and a sleek, inlay-free ebony fingerboard. Its contour-strewn body is made of maple and has a bolt-on Kramer Slim-profile maple neck, all for $1,199.
It’s no surprise that the Volante HHFR, which roughly translates to “flying” in Italian, features a lightweight alder body and is designed for lightning-fast play.
It’s a three-piece, thermally aged maple neck with a satin finish that bolts on using five ferrules for enhanced stability and should help nicely with arpeggio practice. And, more still, its KeyLock system, engineered by Senior Product Development Engineer Richard Akers, is said to eliminate neck-pocket movement and improve tone transfer.
Its ebony fingerboard is built with a 10-14” compound radius and has 24 frets and small diamond inlays. It also steps away from the rest, bucker-wise, with a Kramer USA Neptune humbucker for a wide palette, especially when paired with its five-way switch. Each position is said to be hum-canceling and uniquely voiced, hence the slightly larger $1,299 pirce tag.
“Performance has always been at the core of what Kramer stands for, and that spirit is deeply personal to me,” says Aljon Go, Product Manager at Kramer. “Every detail of this series reflects the uncompromising quality, precision craftsmanship, and player-first design that define Kramer at its best.”
Gibson has taken the Kramer essence and dialed it up to 11 here.
See Kramer for more.
And in more recent news, Gibson President and CEO Cesar Gueikian has announced that he intends to step down from those executive roles.
