JediG60racer
Sr Member
This is a little project that I've been intending to work on for as long as I've had this guitar, which has been oh -- 17 years. So lately, having gotten my teaching job cut with the budget stuff, I've had some extra time on my hands and finally started it.
Began with a 1987 Kramer Baretta, which has the wrong shaped headstock (mini banana, transition from banana to the shark fin that came out the next year) and wrong color neck (rosewood instead of maple). To fix the neck problem I started with a neck blank and have been shaping it in the wood shop to match the assymetrical profile of my Musicman EVH guitar (which has simply the best neck I've ever played). Will post pix of that later. Neck will have a tung oil rubbed bare wood finish.
The Baretta body has the slanted pickup which is not completely correct for the 5150 model, but is correct for the 1984 model - another Kramer made for Eddie, and also played by Sammy Hagar as his main guitar for a few years. Despite that, I decided to make this replica as close to the original 5150 as I could manage. The 1984 has slightly different paint patterns that I'm not a huge fan of. BTW there were about a dozen nearly identical Kramer guitars made for EVH that he played. The 5150 was his main axe, the 1984 was his main backup, and there were a number of other replicas with other letter codes on them, all with very similar paint schemes but slight variations of headstocks, pickup configurations, etc.
I was fortunate enough that my Baretta has the correct Floyd Rose tremelo with the correct Floyd R2 nut. I tracked down a P-bass volume knob (MXR style), and I already had replaced the pickup and potentiometer with the ones EVH used.
The body was a bright royal blue, so to get the proper EVH paint scheme, I had to start with a white base coat, then mask stripes and paint it red, then mask again and paint the black stripes.
While in process, I was inspired to give my Makita power drill the same treatment, and then be able to play "Poundcake" with a proper EVH style drill. Will post pix of that too.
So here's the work in progress of the guitar body:
Body being painted white first
Body masked then painted red
Body masked again and black stripes painted
Progress so far
And here is the drill:
For reference, this is the guitar I'm shooting to emulate:
Began with a 1987 Kramer Baretta, which has the wrong shaped headstock (mini banana, transition from banana to the shark fin that came out the next year) and wrong color neck (rosewood instead of maple). To fix the neck problem I started with a neck blank and have been shaping it in the wood shop to match the assymetrical profile of my Musicman EVH guitar (which has simply the best neck I've ever played). Will post pix of that later. Neck will have a tung oil rubbed bare wood finish.
The Baretta body has the slanted pickup which is not completely correct for the 5150 model, but is correct for the 1984 model - another Kramer made for Eddie, and also played by Sammy Hagar as his main guitar for a few years. Despite that, I decided to make this replica as close to the original 5150 as I could manage. The 1984 has slightly different paint patterns that I'm not a huge fan of. BTW there were about a dozen nearly identical Kramer guitars made for EVH that he played. The 5150 was his main axe, the 1984 was his main backup, and there were a number of other replicas with other letter codes on them, all with very similar paint schemes but slight variations of headstocks, pickup configurations, etc.
I was fortunate enough that my Baretta has the correct Floyd Rose tremelo with the correct Floyd R2 nut. I tracked down a P-bass volume knob (MXR style), and I already had replaced the pickup and potentiometer with the ones EVH used.
The body was a bright royal blue, so to get the proper EVH paint scheme, I had to start with a white base coat, then mask stripes and paint it red, then mask again and paint the black stripes.
While in process, I was inspired to give my Makita power drill the same treatment, and then be able to play "Poundcake" with a proper EVH style drill. Will post pix of that too.
So here's the work in progress of the guitar body:
Body being painted white first
Body masked then painted red
Body masked again and black stripes painted
Progress so far
And here is the drill:
For reference, this is the guitar I'm shooting to emulate:
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