Kramer aluminum necks used to be all aluminum, but then they added on maple inserts to make them feel more like a traditional neck (aka, the aluminum can get really cold in certain conditions!)
Travis Bean made the all aluminum necks, Kramer added the wood inserts from the begining. Gary Kramer used to be the sales man for Travis Bean and the initial Kramer's we're a result of all the things people complained to Kramer about the Travis Beans he was selling. Or at least that's my understanding. I have a Kramer DMZ2000 and became a Jr historian as a result
@@bizzierhythm someone who knows their stuff the fretboard is also made from ebanol a material used to make bowling balls. I just sold my Kramer 250g but I still have three Kramer XKG-10's love these guitar's 🤘🏻
Never heard of Micro-Frets before but they were (are?) local to me. Founded in 1967 in Frederick, Maryland (the town half hour away from me). They shut down 1975, relaunched in the early 2000s for a limited run and shut down again, revived again in 2017 and apparently are still making guitars today. I am a big fan of supporting my local businesses which is why I have a PRS so I may look for a vintage Micro-Frets that I know was built local to me unless I determine they are still run locally (tho the new stuff is pretty expensive). Pretty cool stuff that I was unaware about.
I think the factory was on Grove Road. I saw one in one of the pawn shops in Frederick in the 80s and kick myself for not buying it. Mark Farner played one in Grand Funk for awhile.
@@paulketchupwitheverything767 I mean he his a Gibson guy. Hard to expect people to know about an on again off again on again guitar company even tho it had some big players way back in the day during it’s prime well before Trogly was born.
The thing about Micro Frets is the intonation system, which compensates at the nut as well as at the bridge. They also have sandwich bodies, on most models. Ralph Jones contracted with DeArmond then Bill Lawrence for the pickups, which, going along with Jones' ideas were based around Plexiglass bobbins. Honestly, they sound really "glassy" - I know, sounds like a bad pun, but they really do. @Dave the Hippieman, yup they were at Grove. They'll sell at around 3K all day, everyday to collectors, ( there's even a few clubs dedicated to them) I only know because I was real big into Post Punk/ New Wave in the late 1980's and there were a few of the British dudes in that scene that played them
@@kevinr.3542 Now that you replied and said that, I do remember seeing him play one. He was playing his main "Wolf"? Guitar a lot, but I have many vintage Guitar player magazines and an older edition had a pic of him playing it.
Micro Frets made a guitar with onboard wireless transmitter back in the early '70s; a local pawnshop had one for years. Grand Funk's Mark Farner and Genesis' Mike Rutherford were big Micro Frets fans.
Micro Fret guitars were made in my home town of Frederick, MD. I think during the late 60’s to early 70’s or so IIRC. I believe they were fairly popular with country players. Also well respected amping a number of players.
Indeed! My first NEW guitar was a microfret calibra, bought in Reisterstown, MD. in the 70's. I wanted it because Mark Farner was playing one for a while! Wish I'da kept it!
3:39 hahaha that penguin sticker 7:40 Wasn't Gene Simmons' early Kramer Axe basses aluminum necked? I'm pretty sure they were. I had a friend who owned a weird Kramer with aluminum neck. They had a stripe of rosewood or some other hard wood that went down the back. Really kinda cool in a weird sort of way.
Those aluminum necks are super cool and actually fairly sought after! They're basically wood inserts onto an aluminum frame. They're regaining popularity in the metal world! Also, lol, it is pronounced Bab-itch my man!
The T60 was the first guitar made CNC (Computer Numerical Control) and was groundbreaking in that every guitar manufacturer followed this process. It's the reason guitars today are consistent in quality at lower prices. The Peavey T60 is an incredible guitar although heavy and still see a few for sale that I'd like to buy.
@@gaetanoschristmaschannel I reckon I got a screamer deal considering the past four decades of inflation. That's about what a Squier Affinity sells for now.
If you freeze the video at 9:03 the close-up of the Micro-Frets headstock reveals what made them unique. The NUT was adjustable for intonation purposes, as well as the bridge. You can see the G string's "nut saddle" is extended beyond the rest of the strings, which means this guitar can play a first position C chord (with an open G string) and a first position E chord and they'll BOTH play in tune. Most electric guitars (especially ones with a shorter scale length ie. Gibsons) can be tuned up so that only one or the other of those two chords will be perfectly in tune.
The plastic neck looks a lot like the Casio, which made a midi adaptable guitar. The frets had buttons under the skin, which you had to push. Had similar control panel, and had same multiple voices, as well as rhythm.
Who is giving away these guitars? If you don't want them anymore send them my way. I'll give them a loving home,a good cleaning,a fretboard oiling and a new set of strings when needed.
Those are 22 pole Carvin pickups in that first SG and that "homemade" looking guitar toward the end. Either M22 or C22 pickups and they are great pickups although recently discontinued. They do make a new, 12-pole version called the M12 and it screams.
Guitar porn time 😂😂😂 I love it too - seeing guitars I will never touch or even share a room with lol (edit: well the Goodwill ones in this episode are more in my price range). And Trogly is 7 days a week with his videos, as regular as the news but without being depressing 😎
@ 9:03, check out the six independently adjustable "nuts" at the base of the headstock on the 70s red Micro-Frets Signature Custom guitar. That's a feature I've never seen before!
Yes, that is the plastic protective covering for the pick guard on that T-60.Because the tone knobs actually split the humbuckers, they outlined the features. These were very affordable and much better than anyone gave them credit for. I had 2 T-40 basses. Oh, it’s definitely not stock with the midi thing on it. How do you butcher such a good example of a cool guitar?
When I was 13, my dad came home with a Gibson ES 335 with a broken neck he scored for $10 at the local Goodwill, it was a 61 or 62 natural and he offered to give it to me, but I foolishly passed because I didn't like it. My Harmony guitar has the strap button in the exact same place, it's just where they put it in those guitars. You've learned what Purfling is now, yet you misidentified purfling as binding mere seconds before!
Hey, FYI: If I'm not mistaken, that digital ad-on on the Peavy T-60 is a repurposed Casio DG-1 digital guitar/synthesizer. Interesting way to mount it. 😉
I owned a similar guitar, 1967, cherry red, stiff tremelo arm. What you're missing is black P90s, just like Santana in Woodstock original. I agree those are Carvin 11 pole pickups, designed to create a more uniform magnetic field to hear the strings better. This was called SG SPECIAL
kramer worked for travis bean ,thats where the aluminium neck came from but travis did all aluminium and players complained about the necks when they were cold not being good to play fof the neck hand so kramer did the t shape cross section with the wood added to try help that, seems the biggest problem was that the aluminium stretches longitudinally as it warms up and made the tuning a bitch as you play them
:( When I was much younger and less knowledgeable, I scrapped a The Paul thinking it was a knock off Les Paul. It was beat the f*k up and played for crap so it got smashed and burned.
I love "The Paul" guitars. I especially love the bevels on the body. Built for comfort. I'm surprised they don't make them still, or at least offer a Les Paul with some contouring.
That Ibanez was a G10. I have one in a gold top finish with the black binding and a tribal inlay at the 12th fret. They are entry level $200 range guitars that play and sound like much more expensive instruments. I threw up in my mouth a little bit when I saw that Peavey T-60. The T Series (both guitars and basses) were true unsung heroes back in the day when they came out. Their tonal versatility and rugged construction made them the ultimate work horse for both studio and tour gigging. Their only downfall was their heft. They are H-E-A-V-Y. Picture Jerry Nadler and Eric Cartman's love child PLUS a bag of Quik Crete.
I believe the Strat at 9:38 is a MIJ 2019-2020 HM Strat in Frozen Yellow that someone painted silver spots on. There is over spray on the knobs and pickups.
The Micro-Frets Signature is not Japanese. They were made in Frederick, MD from the early 1960s through about 1973 or ‘74. The name Micro-Frets came from the Micro-Nut that was adjustable for each string, replacing a 50-cent piece of plastic with 50 or so small little metal parts. Quirky? Oh, yeah! They actually got some high-visibility endorsers-Johnny Cash’s bass player and guitar player, who at the time was Carl Perkins, both used them, and Mark Farner from Grand Funk Railroad had one at one time. Kramer started around 1977 making aluminum-neck guitars, but they switched to wood necks by the mid-‘80s. I had an aluminum-neck one in 1978. I’m sure you could find tons of info online about all these odd guitars, rather than speculating.
I have a Peavey T-15 that I found at a pawn shop for 80 bucks. Currently in the process of stripping the terrible red paint job off of it; it has been one of my best playing guitars by far.,
Regarding the Micro-Frets guitar, back when Genesis was touring Selling England by the Pound, Mike Rutherford picked up a Micro-Frets 6 string bass from a music shop in NYC. He used it when recording The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway. Prior to touring the Lamb, he had the 4-string bass components removed from his Rickenbacker 4-12 double-neck and the Micro-Frets neck and electronics installed. That's the guitar he used for the Lamb tour. Fast forward 30-odd years and Sébastien Lamothe, of the Montreal-based 1970s-era-Genesis re-creationist band The Musical Box, chased down a Micro-Frets 6-string bass and put his Rickenbacker 4-12 through the same modification. BTW, the shows were insanely great.
at the end of 1985 when i turned 15 i finally got my first electric guitar after learning on abclassical acoustic guitar for about 6 years it was an Arbor Les Paul copy from 84 modeled after the Firebrand ” The Paul " had a telecaster type upper bout string through - brass saddles bridge flat top LP Jr special style brass nut natural wood grain appearance Agathis body mahogany neck RW fretboard Hot 🔥 unwaxed dual Humbucker pickups two phase switches below the bridge next to the knobs and toggle switch behind the knobs - somewhat similar to the Aria Pro II knob setups
That “Truetone” thing is actually a Kay Speed Demon. Some people pay more than $500 for those sets of pickups alone. They’re called “speed bumps”. I personally have a Kay Thinline Pro that has 2 speed bumps in it and it sounds amazing. Kay made some great stuff, well worth the price of the lot.
Goodwill is just about $ now. They dontneven pretend, at least not near me. They literally sell next to nothing actually IN the shops and what is in there is bizarre. Last time I checked jeans, just regular ass blue jeans, they have tagged at like $25.....at Goodwill.
The problem with Goodwill auctions is that it’s no fun anymore, you can’t really find too many great deals because people just go and bid everything up to retail price.
The acoustic with the weird string anchors was supposed to spread the string tension out so it wasn't all pulling on one spot, deforming the top less. That was what their ads said at the time. No idea if it worked or sounded good.
Gene Simmons' original, Kramer-made 'Axe' bass had the same aluminium neck and headstock shape 🙂 And I was discussing the Peavey T-60's bass equivalent T-40 with a bunch of people only last week! 😀
Austin, you guessed that that Kramer bass had wood in the neck. This is correct. The wood was suppose to lighten the neck and warm its otherwise cold tone. I messed with one of those old Kramer aluminum-necked guitars back in the day, and those necks REALLY needed lightening! I remember nothing about how it sounded, only WEIGHT!
shop Goodwill used to be a secret for u. that secret lasted about 5 years.. it died roughly 1 year ago. you can still get cool stuff but you can't get the 85 to 95% below value deals we were getting
They are still available. Honestly I wouldn't take a $1000 for mine , they have a very unique sound. I've never seen another pick up that sounded similar. Remember FZ had them in his 60 Les Paul .
Trogly I'm pretty sure that Micro Fret Guitars were a Maryland shop they did guitars and basses. I used to manage a pawnshop and had a couple of the basses come through the shop, had to research them a little myself.
Hi, I'm a new viewer of your yt channel and this was the first episode of the vintage finds I have seen. It is fun to see all the unknown versions and mods that randomly appear, in the depths of the internet. That said, I have a friend who asked if I could help in identifying a guitar he found among his fathers stuff. I have no clue what it is, or what it may be worth. I would greatly appreciate any information you have or advise as to finding out what his strange guitar is. I can send pics and a little more info, to you, but not sure if this is the place to conduct such inquiries. Thank you for posting all the fun and interesting content, for the world to see.
It's disgusting to me that Goodwill would end up with this item. They're a huge corporation with huge profits. Gibson should have a deal going with them, though, or somebody should, whereby they would by it back from Goodwill at a fair market wholesale price. Then the Mod Shop could go to work on them. I just surprised that an employee, there, didn't make off with it.
The customized Peavey T-60 / synth guitar was based on a later model T-60 with the 'blade' type pickups. I think that there was a bit more variety in the finishes on the later ones compared to the natural-ash-only earlier models.
In 1990 I bought the last Guitar ever made by Ibanez and Casio! It's a shame about it's service backup their was none so I had to sell it by 1998. It was known as the PG-780. It was their best work. With an excellent electric Fender Strat body in all black. I changed the pickups, I think? I'm not sure, I remembered how fun it was to screw with it but it had a huge circuit board and voicing pug-in caridges size of credit cards. 1000s of sounds both in FM then real sound boards! I liked calling it stealing sounds from any system with MIDI out or in? The guitar was fun until the board's electrolytic capacitors would start to leak and then the springs for the Flyodrose started to lose up the screws to the springs to then raise the bridge up. It became problem guitar out of nowhere? I spent $800 to fixing everything warn the next buyer a dentist from Chicago, you'll need a Casio tech for this guitar and I sold it.
A couple of these guitar's were interesting. That Harmony flying v look's like it may still be a good instrument. The aluminum neck's on the Kramers remind me of the Travis Bean guitar's made in the 70's.
I've had a combination of writer's block, and losing the love for it for about 10 years. finally wanted to do it again, and broke my finger on my fretting hand. Now I'm back to square one
I'm in love with the tailpieces on those ibanez single cuts. I have a couple, and my DT200 Destroyer has the same thing. Lets you restring without having to endure the scrap of threading it all the way through the tailpiece.
That's no surprise that Goodwill got the provenance right. They have a habit of getting their more valuable items appraised so they can charge the most they can 🤷🏿♂️
T 60s were great guitars. Some folks didn't know that the tone knobs were also coil taps- if the tone was all the way up to 10, it was single coil, if you turned the tone down to around 8, it would go humbucking.
The '78 Standard would have also had neck binding. I had a '76 which was exactly the same as that '78 except it had the original pickups and original black speed knobs. No mini-toggles and a bound neck with Block inlays starting at the first fret. It was a killer guitar and I shouldn't have sold it. That finish is "Walnut"..my favorite SG color.
I always see these stories and hearing about Goodwill and when I go to my local store they have nothing but clothes with a posthumous meth stench and 1970s glassware kitsch.
That last Epi that was revealed has a Gibson on the truss rod cover. That is indicative of early 2000's Epiphones that were made in either Korea or Japan. I happen to have a 2003 Epiphone Les Paul, made in Korea, which has the exact same cover, indicating that Epiphone is Gibson owned of course.
In the 1980s, I came across a music store in Erie Pennsylvania that about 20(!) NOS Microfrets, and played a couple....they had very impressive necks and vaguely wacky electronic. Apparently designed by an engineer from Maryland named Ralph Jones. The problem, this guitar shop belonged to an old codger, who was slowly going out of business, and had an extensive selection of truly oddball stuff, which he had no apparent intention of selling. He just didn't care. And wanted higher than original list prices, and would not budge a nickel on prices...so, no business was conducted. He also had 25 of those wacky Fender Coronados that were made of wood colored by dyes injected into growing trees, than subsequently harvested....
The first guitar I ever owned was a Peavey T-15. It was a 1978 model. My next guitar was a 1980 Stratocaster…it was still in the box and in the bag and I got it in 83. But it was still new and had never been played. (Something shady is going on there with whoever I bought it from they probably worked at the music store). But I have owned that guitar for 41 years. It took me from not being able to play an e chord, to being able to play along with malmsteen. That's what I listen to in the 80s. I don't play that anymore I'm a blues player. My growth as a musician has been a bit odd. But where I ended up I'm very happy because I have a history of music that is very varied.
Steven Wilson of Porcupine Tree used to use acoustics with those fanned out strings, search for "porcupine tree trains" for a performance when he used them.
most likely what that strat was was a refinished to look like aluminum 80 fender heavy metal strat. not actually a aluminum body. as everything is correct for the model eccept for the aluminum. yellow finish mixed with Big STRAT logo with the underbrush matching the finish. the only thing i would say was probably replaced is the floyd rose special as the nut dosnt match. but then again it could just be a correct enough partscaster to convince me because that headstock does look suspiciously new
