Alice | soldguitars

1988 Kramer NightSwan

"Alice"

#F7244

I'll tell you something for nothing ... I looked for one of these for a LONG time. When I was a lad (with Whitesnake's "1987" high in the album chart), the Peavey Vandenberg and THIS were the guitars that I dreamt about. Literally. This little beauty was a Kramer NightSwan, fresh from late '88 (maybe early '89). It had an 'F' serial number, which dates it relatively accurately, but I suppose it doesn't really matter WHEN it was built, it's a NightSwan, and therefore contains awesomeness.

These were the brainchild of Vivian Campbell (with Whitesnake at that time) and guitar builder Buddy Blaze. The spec is spookily similar to the Peavey Vandenberg (Viv and Vandenberg were band-mates). It would APPEAR that the Kramer came first, so maybe Adrian tried it, liked it, so had Peavey rip the NightSwan off ... who knows. They're both great guitars.

So. A streamlined mahogany body with a deep cutaway for the high frets, an ebony board, skinny maple neck with an R1 nut width (read "thin"), and a reverse pointy headstock. That description applies to both guitars! The NightSwan also has a nice 'diagonal' inlay pattern and an unusual pickup configuration ... bridge and middle humbuckers. The bridge on this one was a Seymour trembucker (it would have originally had a Seymour Full-Shred) and the middle was a JB, as it should be. It is pretty well accepted that the parts for these were made by ESP, then bolted together by Kramer in the USA. Which is fine. The Floyd on this had been swapped out for a Gotoh unit, which I was ABSOLUTELY happy with ... they are GREAT trems (which, don't forget, are standard issue on Suhr guitars) ... all quality metals and a great adjustment system to control the tightness of the trem arm. Nice.

The headstock had a couple of extra screw-holes, which were almost certainly from a string muter (as used by Jennifer Batten back in the day ... remember those?). Not a massive deal, so I simply covered up the holes with a spare pick! An interesting point is that this was serial F7244 ... a few away from one of Richie Sambora's Kramers; his is serial F7302. Stuff like that amuses me.

The bottom line is that this felt fantastic, played like the bloody WIND and sounded glorious. Another adolescent dream box ticked. However, the skinny neck and the swapped-out parts meant that this crept its way onto the 'for sale list', and was snapped up by an internet-buddy, who I'd sold to before. If I can find a mint one (with all of the original parts and no pesky extra screw-holes) then I'll probably look seriously at replacing this one.