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Made famous in 1984 by one of the world’s greatest ever guitarists Eddie van Halen, the Kramer Baretta remains a hugely influential electric guitar. And even though this Indonesian-made reissue is a far cry from the custom shop New Jersey-built model, it still offers great appeal to shredders on a budget.
The Baretta manages to combine an instantly familiar minimalist style with a little flair. It features a familiar Strat-style double-cutaway body crafted from solid mahogany, which is an excellent tonewood in this price range although is surprisingly light to hold. The shredder-friendly 25.5” scale length guitar comes in two flavors – Black or Vintage White, both in high gloss finishes, with the distinctive ‘hockey stick’ headstock that bears the Kramer logo. The sturdy, bolt-on maple neck will also appeal to speedy lead guitarists, as it features a slim profile with a 12” radius, that makes for fast playing. On this you’ll find a rosewood fretboard, 22 medium-jumbo frets, and white dot inlays. Certainly a model that’s built to perform!
Simplistic in style, and equally as minimal in features – if this wasn’t a Kramer, you may be disappointed. However if it worked for van Halen, it’ll certainly work for you! The Baretta Special does have some good hardware though – namely the vintage-style tremolo bridge with a whammy bar – an essential feature for van Halen fans. It’s a shame there’s no locking nut, as huge divebombs are notoriously bad for your tuning, but for such an affordable guitar you can’t expect too much. Still, the guitar does come stocked with premium 14:1 die-cast tuners in a six-in-line configuration, which gives the guitar decent tuning stability.
We move onto the electronics of this guitar and there’s no surprise to see just the one pickup, as is custom on a Baretta. This is a stock high-output Alnico V humbucker which is fixed at the bridge position. It’s pretty no-nonsense, looking cool in its two-tone zebra design and angled position. The humbucker is controlled by a single master volume control knob – no tone controls, coil-splitting or other gizmos. Simple.
So we know it’s simplistic in its style, features and electronics. How about the sound? For a stock pickup it’s actually pretty great. What the single humbucker may lack in versatility, it makes up for by providing pure high-output rock tones, and is perfect for ‘80s metal or classic rock. Having said that, it can still pull off a good clean tone, with some natural warmth and resonance from the mahogany. But through a good amp with the gain cranked high is where it truly shines. You can find some awesome metal sounds, with the pickup hot enough to cope with tapping, legato and anything else you can throw at it.
Simple in style and features, but with an incredibly playable neck and smoking hot sound, the Baretta Special really impresses. Whether a beginner or experienced shredder, everyone with a little van Halen in their hearts will love this affordable machine.
For more info about the Kramer Baretta Special, click here.
For more electric guitars under $500 you might like, click here.
ART111 says
This is good for Metallica and Thrash Metal covers ??
Mark says
Killer review. I remember the first Kramer I owned, it was an ’87 Aerostar ZX30 I got off a bud in ’89. In ’93 I modded it with a Schaller locking trem and a SD “Pearly Gates”. I’m happy to say I still own that guitar. “Nadine” is still rockin’. I’m picking up a Baretta Special as well. May mod it a bit too. Just one thing about the review I didn’t care about…the title…a Glam Metal machine?! Um, no. A Pure blood Tried And True Metal Machine….
Yes.
Bob says
Thanks for the review. When I received my Special, I changed the strings to Ernie Ball “Regular Slinky”, loosened the truss rod a quarter turn , lowered the action to 3/64″ at the 12th fret (capo at the 1st fret), and the pickup to 4/64″ from the strings at the last fret. All is now well in Kramerland.
I love this guitar. Playing through a 1980 Marshall 2204 half-stack or a Bugera 1960 Infinium, this axe wreaks of 80’s-90’s hard rock, but still is as gentle as a lamb when the volume is dropped back. I didn’t care for the “treble bleed” cap when playing with distortion, so I clipped off one leg of the cap. MUCH better. I may put the treble bleed cap on a push-pull pot in the future for the rare times I play clean with this beast. We’ll see.
RRRR says
The body and neck are top quality. The Pot is absolute junk, the pickup so-so, kind of muddy. The tremolo is unusable as it will go out of tune with any use, but as I don’t use a tremolo this was no issue for me. If you use on you can have a licking nut installed it’s not that expensive. So easy fix. Change the pot and pickup and you have an amazing guitar at a small fraction of what you’d pay for a guitar that sounds as good and plays as nice.
Christopher Talton says
Don’t know why people want to change the pickup it sounds fine. Great feel to the neck, plays well. It sounds great. Only mods I am doing are changing the pot . It’s really not good. Also if you barely touch the whammy bar it’s out of tune. I’m getting a floyd rose locking trem.
Fathernature says
I’ve owned a Kramer Beretta Special for about a couple years now. It’s one of the better “budget” guitars out there. The straight and solid neck alone was almost worth the $179.99 they want for this 7.0 pound rock machine. The Rosewood fretboard is finished almost as smooth as Ebony! The wonders of CNC milling… The frets came polished and dressed very nicely with no sharp edges whatsoever. Tuners are so-so, but it stays in tune very well. I’ve read the p/u is an uncovered Epiphone 498T-clone. Whatever p/u they are using, it sounds great. Not overly midrangy.
After I got it, I put Ernie Ball 0.10s on it, locked down the bridge, dropped the action quite low (without any buzz whatsoever), set the neck relief, adjusted the p/u height, unsoldered one leg of the bright-cap, intonated it with a Peterson Strobe, and it’s my #2 favorite guitar to play out of a bunch of them.
Through a Marshall DSL100HR and a 40 year old Marshall 1982a cabinet, it nails early Van Halen with ease. When I play it through the full Marshall stack, it gives me goosebumps. It sounds that good! I prefer to play my Les Pauls, but when I need to get my 80s/90s hard rock and metal on, this is my go-to rock guitar.