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Vintage Kramer w/ Aluminum Neck.
- Thread starter MoeTown1986
- Start date
I never heard of the lumies having relief issues. The relief in mine is perfect.
I had one just like it many, many years ago. But mine was a fretless. Talk about serious sustain! I modified it a bit, add the jazz pickup and a Badass bridge. This photo was from the early '80s.
Fretless?? Nevermind that, it looks STRINGless to me!! Either that or you were using the lightest gauge strings known to man!
Yeah the only way to straighten the neck is to put it in a press. Google the Kramer Forum and it will give you some pretty good info. Here are some gratuitous pics of my 650B.
Been using the same gauge strings for most of my life! 100 - 045. Just a bad photo!
I actually still have live recording from the 80's playing that bass, sounded pretty darn good. One side note, my band many moons ago opened for Stone Tiger in NY, which was fretless master Percy Jones' (from Brand X) band at the time. Great guy to hang with and talk bass and slug some beers back. Well anyway, he never played these aluminum necked wonders. So he ended up playing a few songs with my bass to try it out. He loved the sustain, didn't like the neck dive!
He probably didn't get on with the lower action, too. I have played one of his basses and it was a real pain to do so as he likes his action at least 1/2" off the end of the fingerboard!
My first bass. A Kramer 250B. Great tone. Great playability. Must have weighed 15 lbs. But I was young and strong. Still...way, way too heavy. And in the background my first amp. Some sort of funky Ampeg combo. Imagine that.
View attachment 2144161
M. M.
Do you still own this bass? Did it have a Dimarzio pickup with a small switch? I’m looking for this exact one.
Thanks!
Yeah, way too much in the nineties. I almost scored an 8 string for $450 about 15 years ago, like a dummy i let it pass. Don't see them much now.
Decently priced used Kramers pop up for sale fairly often in the Aluminium Axes FB Group. Definitely give that group a look if metal necks are your thing.
No longer have that bass. Traded it in on a brand new G&L fretless sometime around 1980. I believe that was a DeMarzio pickup but there was no switch installed with it. I've never missed owning that bass. Not even a little bit. But I understand their appeal. Hope you find one. Here are some pics I found on the Internet that shows what my 250B looked like before I changed out the pickup. And my pickguard was white, not black.
M. M.
I had a fretless back in the mid 80’s. Definitely neck dive and the neck stayed cold in the winter. But serious sustain! Percy Jones used it for a few sings when my band opened for him. He found it an interesting bass!
I was thinking about selling My Kramer "The Duke" Bass so I ordered a new switch and pots for it to put it back to stock. I traded for it 4-5 years ago and the electronics needed help badly and instead of fixing it I put an EMG 35TW in it because I had a Duke back in the late 80's and didn't care for the stock pickup configuration. Now I'm wondering if I've ever heard one wired correctly or if my tastes have changed. This Bass sounds amazing now, especially with the Switch in the Middle(Split coil) position. I think I'll keep it now !
No, not that I know of. The T-shape of the aluminum is pretty thick, and hell-for-stout.. I have two of the things; a '78 450B, and an '81 headless Duke Special. Both very nice; loud - especially the 450B - and obscene amounts of sustain, too. Yeah, the 450B is a world champion neck diver; the Duke? Mine is actually a little butt heavy; I have to hold the neck down when I play it. That takes some getting used to...
