Guitarist Jeff Fiorentino's Famous White Kramer Sustainer custom - The legendary JFRocks.com White Kramer

Jeff Fiorentino's equipment details - page 1

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Jeff Fiorentino's infamous White Custom Kramer

All text written by: Guitarist Jeff Fiorentino

I've had the guitar since I was a teenager back in the 80's. And more than 4000+++++ hours of playing, jamming, and videoing later, it's still with me, still playing and sounding as great as it ever did. It's so funny because I have friends from high school that find me through internet searches and come to this website all the time. The first thing they ask when they email me, before they even say hello is, "Do you still have the Kramer". Well this is the Kramer they're asking about, and the answer is "yes", I still have it.... lol...

It's still to this day my main guitar and probably the one that most people recognize when I play a gig somewhere in LA or where ever. This is probably because I use it the most on video and it's the guitar I used on all of the old Van Halen stuff that we produced years and years ago... But it's also because we have a HUGE following of non-guitarists that come to this site to simply download and crank our lesson example MP3's... Those people even purchase our Vin Heuton and Beyond VH products just for the music portions.. I'm totally blown away by that, and believe me I really appreciate the following and support.. And hey I think it's pretty good music too so whatever right...lol...

"If it sounds good, it is good."

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The body of this guitar is from a Kramer Sustainer guitar. It's a thick body with a lot of open air space since most of the switches that operated the sustainer have long since been pulled out. This guitar is just one of the best sounding guitars I've ever owned. It looks great on camera but in person the White paint is yellowed slightly and there are chips and scrapes all over it, it looks like a total piece of junk. Regardless of its appearance, I can safely say that this guitar is one of the finest sounding guitars I've ever had the pleasure to play. Even unplugged this guitar sounds rich and warm. This guitar is a tone machine. Part of it is due to the pickups that I installed in it, part of it is the tuning I use on this guitar, part of it is the type of wood it's made out of, and part of it I firmly believe is the paint.

I firmly believe that the paint is part of where its warm tone comes from. Even unplugged this guitar has a brown sound. The paint is several layers thick because this guitar has been many different colors over the years. The paint on this Guitar starts with a base of Automotive primer (dark gray). I'm a firm believer in painting guitars with Automotive primer and paint. It's thick and it's invincible, but more importantly it really richens tone. Another odd thing about this guitar is even with the thick paint and floating bridge and holes in it, for some reason this guitar sustains forever. It never dies, I can't explain it other than maybe the 2.5 inch thick body has something to do with it. What the body lacks in surface area it makes up for in thickness I guess.

I keep a flat tuning on this guitar always (since the bridge floats you really only get one choice with tunings per say) and I will also tell you this guitar has had its share of necks on it over the years. For most of the 90's I played it with a Fender neck on it and it was a Cream Colored guitar. The Kramer neck and White paint color came along around 1999. I usually switch necks on it pretty often because I use this guitar as my main guitar for anything I do and I wear out the frets. I don't usually bother having necks re-fretted unless it's a really special neck such as the one that's on the Green Kramer, which is just the best neck ever produced by Kramer I think. This neck on the White one is from a lower end Kramer model called a ZX30H which was a non-locking nut guitar. I modified the neck to take a locking nut. Unless you're good with a router and can do math very well I DO NOT suggest you try this yourself. Most will tell you it's not advisable because the measurements will be off. This is true, however what they don't tell you is that one of the things that makes this particular guitar sound so friggin' good besides the paint pickups and strings is that the intonation is slightly out. I dialed it in as close as I could get it but the Sustainer body is 7/8 scale and the neck is full scale so there is no perfection really. However, that slightly out intonation (mostly on the 3rd string) is part of where the unique sound comes from with this guitar.

I have a strong suspicion that Ed's early guitars didn't have the best of intonation settings on them just by how the power chords ring out. They ring out very similar on this guitar and the reason they do that is the intonation on the 3rd string isn't exactly tight for lack of a better word. I actually have to tune the 3rd string on this guitar by doing a power chord on the 5th fret, 4th and 3rd strings, and then using the fine tuner for the 3rd string adjust until that power chord sounds good. That too is part of where this guitar's sound comes from and partly why it does V. H.. so well. When I get done tuning the 3rd string the power chords sound very similar to the ones we hear on tracks like "Runnin' with the devil". They have that certain ring out to them.

I've been offered tons of money to sell this guitar by people who have played it, and each time I refuse. I look at it as my good luck charm since really it's been with me since the very beginning of my guitar professional life. This guitar is like an old pair of sneakers to me. It doesn't even have a case that I know of. I mean it came with one, but I lost it years ago. It just gets thrown where ever, I don't really care if it gets scratched or anything...lol... It's a true one of a kind, I'm not even sure if given the parts I could reproduce it. I'm sure there are certain variables at play that are out of my control where this guitar is concerned...

Jeff Fiorentino, JFRocks.com

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