Hello friends Johnny here from AXN Guitars. The Kramer 1983 Baretta will be the highlight of my next two blog posts. Specifically today I will highlight this Kramer Holy Grail Baretta 1983 neck. In a later post we will dissect the body from this authentic 1983 Kramer Baretta specimen i have here.

Hello friends this is Johnny form AXN Guitars. Today I discuss one of the most difficult guitars to acquire the 1983 Kramer Baretta. The guitar in the photos will more than likely be the last Kramer Baretta holy grail 1983 guitar that i will have in my possession and soon its off to its proud owner. This guitar is quite used and its been modified by a previous owner. It has quite an impressive history and as pictured you can see its years.

I’ve slowed my vintage guitar buying habit. I’ve invested all my time, thoughts and passion into making AXN Guitars. We are manufacturing guitars that exactly replicate, celebrate and re-incarnate the quintessential electric guitars of 1980s. As The Sensei of Vintage 1980s Guitars i’ve put together this 1983 Kramer Baretta information and photos for you.

As I’ve mentioned in other blog posts I’ve always been very interested in the technical specifications of vintage artist model guitars; these hold the answers to the magic unique to each guitar. Because of this obsession I have recorded thousands of pages of technical entries with data about guitars.

Older information i wrote down in ink and paper way back in the 1980s before any of us used computers. Having aged sometimes 30+ years each technical entry accurately breaks down every minute detail of these guitars in a scientific manner. I even photographed some guitars back in the day with black and white film and a Nikon camera.

In the below photos we can see that we have a 1983 kramer Baretta non-tilt “hockey stick” neck as it was called in the 1980s. In recent years the shape of the headstock has been called the “banana” headstock by fanciers. Also referred to as a “non-tilt” or “non-angled” banana headstock.

Its 25.5” scale, it has jumbo frets and the back of the neck has an 1980s style oil finish. Its truss rod adjust is at the heel and the truss rod as you can see is the ESP type. Electric Sound products in Japan manufactured every Kramer 1983 Baretta Holy Grail neck while a subcontractor to Kramer Neptune NJ.

I’ve said before the specifications of the 1983 Kramer Baretta neck is like no other. With its R5 wide nut size, its super flat radius, and unique neck shape its nothing like any other neck you will play. Funny enough, no other luthiers have ever gotten the specifications right on any of the copies or recreations. Neither Fender or Gibson has gotten anywhere close to the real neck specifications in their “Baretta clones”. Our AXN ‘83 is the only guitar available with the exact neck specifications.

Its my belief that no guitar maker has ever cared about those specifications because the true specifications are too hard to accurately acquire and re-create. Even more importantly for most guitar makers its to costly to manufacture an exact clone neck due to various factors which include, the length of the maple wood required from banana headstock tip-end to heel/butt. Also the type of fretboard, the flatness of the fretboard ( the radius ), the uniqueness of fretboard width at certain frets and the subtle contours of the back of the 1983 non-tilt neck are exclusive to this Holy Grail Kramer.

In addition the size of the neck pocket on the body and the heel/butt size of the neck at the 22nd fret are a unique size that we create virtually exactly. All this causes the 1983 Kramer Baretta a challenge for any other luthier to accurately form. The original 1983 holy grail neck was a true hand made boutique guitar neck. ESP japan had the skills and they were asked to manufacture these awesome necks for Kramer. We are the only luthiers that do it 100% accurately!

I’m considered the foremost collector of vintage ESP and i can verify this 1983 era of ESP manufacturing. ESP retained an extremely talented group of luthiers who where unmatched in their time. I am familiar with the work from the different ESP craftsman at the various Japan ESP shops from the 1980s. I can accurately identify virtually every time exactly where in Japan and when ESP products were manufactured.

Within these 1983 Kramer Baretta blog posts will be a complete visual break down of the 1983 Kramer Baretta Signature guitar i have here… Enjoy!

Johnny - Sensei of vintage 1980s guitars.

Photo Note : i shot the neck and the body separately and in separate photo shoots. I placed some of our AXN guitar raw bodies and necks as decoration in the background such as the AXN ‘83 maple body that is an exact duplicate of a Kramer 1983 Baretta body. If you look close you can see the visual age of this Kramer Holy Grail 1983 Baretta guitar neck in all its splendor. I may add more to this post as time allows.