Kramer Focus VT-211S Electric Guitar - Teal Reviews

Good starter gutair.

I hope this helps the people on the fence about purchasing. Before ordering this I went mad reading and watching as many reviews on this guitar as possible. In the end it didn't do much because in the end all I came away with is that half the people said it's a great guitar for the price and the other half said it was junk and not worth buying. If I did learn something though it was that if you have the skills and know-how to setup/upgrade guitars (which I do) then this guitar can easily become a great instrument. So the guitar arrived yesterday. First off thank you Sweetwater for packing the guitar so well. I opened the guitar box and unwrapped it from the foam dressing and it was in great shape. Everything was in tact and the neck was actually perfectly straight and there was no fret sprout.

One major upgrade I made right away was to take the Humbucker out of the bridge and connect a new Seymour Duncan JB that I had recently purchased and put in my Gibson LP Tribute then took back out for personal preferences. I also removed both cheap butterfly string trees and installed a Graph Tech string tree for the B and E strings. I also put shielding tape under the pickguard, swapped the bridge for one with a thicker block that I had, removed one of the springs in the back and polished the frets and cleaned the fingerboard with f-one oil. This thing seriously now plays and sounds even better than my Gibson! No joke, it is kind of depressing actually because this guitar is about 1/10th the price of the Les Paul. The action is nice and low, the single coil pickups sound really nice and I love the way that the neck feels. It is satin on back and flat and just easy to move around on. Feels very comfortable.

The only 2 negative aspects about this guitar that need upgrading if you were to only change 2 things it is 100% the cheap tuners on the headstock and the plastic nut. The tuners are so bad that even after you stretch out the strings several times it still goes out of tune quite frequently. The nut is plastic so yeah it sucks but mine was cut just fine and all I did was lightly sand each nut slot to smooth them out and then used a pencil to add graphite to each one. So considering all the alterations I made I am quite confident that once I find better tuners to properly fit the headstock that this guitar will be outstanding. I'll eventually upgrade to a Graph Tech nut as well. Oh if I am really nitpicking there is one more thing I should mention that I found to be a problem. The volume knob is way too close to the strings. When I need to pick the top strings my fingers/hand bump into the volume knob making it difficult for picking notes. I need to find a way to remedy this but I wanted to mention it. All told I do not regret this purchase and it's a beautiful looking Teal guitar that is super fun to play because it is light, fast and looks sweet!

This isn't an expensive guitar but boy does it sound good. I don't know about the rest of this model but this thing really sings! It's light, the set-up, Intonation, action, balance, fretts, and overall quality are spectacular. Even unplugged you cand hear how the body is acousticly resonate. Bending from f to g, or g to a, it is vary noticeable and easy to fall in love with. It's my new favorite out of the many I have.
Sweetwater of course was great,fast, and always gives a phone call to make sure I'm happy. They've never let me down on any order big or small, no matter what the total cost in value . Thanks SWEETWATER

This guitar is awesome, feels fantastic, color is amazing, this is my 3rd guitar an I been playing the kramer all the time now. Well worth the money, a lot of guitar for the price.

How can you go wrong? This is a nice guitar and the price is mind blowing. I love the neck and the thing is gutsy as can be. Sweetwater delivered unrivaled customer service. It's always a total pleasure doing business with this company.

I've never owned a Kramer until now. That's sorta odd, considering that I came up as a player in the 80s, the era during which Kramer dominated the guitar market for a couple years. It's also funny that I've recently been looking at Kramers at Sweetwater's website, mostly at the Baretta Specials. There's just something about them, a large part of it being the 80s nostalgia thing. They're very inexpensive yet have quite good reviews.

Today, as chance would have it, I saw this mint condition Kramer Focus VT-211S. The teal color was very attractive in person. Picking it up revealed that it was both very light and well built. The neck was especially nice. I didn't plug it in, didn't play it, just studied it. I walked away, then possessively observed from a distance as a group of young people likewise admired it, then too walked way. I hastily walked back and seized it, having decided that after all these years it was finally time to own a Kramer.


GENERAL OBSERVATIONs AND SET UP
The finish of the Focus is perfect. The body is about the thickness of my Squier Classic Vibe. Amazingly, there were no dents or scratches on the thing, which is kind of incredible considering it was probably used mostly by a kid for air guitar. The serial number indicated it was of 2021 manufacture, suggesting it may have been a "Covid guitar."

The action was too high, a result of the trem leaning forward slightly and too much bow in the neck. Tuning the guitar to E flat and two full right turns of the truss rod brought the action down exactly where it needed to be. I didn't need even to adjust the saddles at all, it just landed perfectly on the bullseye.


NECK
One of the major highlights on this instrument is the spectacular flat sawn neck. The closest thing I can compare it to is a 1999 made in Taiwan Squier Affinity I own with a rounded profile at the nut which then flattens and thins towards the heel. The Focus neck is sorta like that, but even better. The frets are level, and despite some of the reviews referring to them as "cheese graters," they are smooth on this example. The nut is perfectly cut, which is a big thing for me. When the strings are coming out of the nut slots too high, you are never going to get a good set up. Many cheap imports have this crippling handicap exiting the factory. It's not difficult to fix if you know what you're doing, but it's refreshing to not have to. It also says something about attention to detail and quality control.


PICKUPS
The other standout feature of this guitar are the HSS ALNiCo pickups. They're really exceptional. When you can buy a $ guitar, and you don't have to even consider upgrading the pickups, that's a huge bonus. Hands down, these are the best sounding pups I've ever encountered on a guitar in this price range. Any negative reviews of these pickups invariably say the same thing: "Not enough output." Ahem, that's the part they got right. It's called vintage tone, and it's rare to find in a sea of dirt cheap imports geared towards younger ears that are biased towards the idea that louder is always better.

The bridge humbucker measures 9.21 K. It has just enough extra output to easily produce the crunch and harmonics required for anything from blues to hard rock music, while still retaining excellent dynamics and clarity. Combined with the mahogany body and maple neck, the bridge humbucker sounds warm, woody, biting, and musical when played through an amp set at breakup.

The single coils are likewise excellent and very complementary to the bridge, sounding very glassy and vintage. The middle single coil measures 7.65 K, and the neck single coil 7.09 K. Their construction is unique in that while I was expecting to see six ALNiCo rods when I viewed the bottom plate, their underside is sealed. Out of curiosity I was temped to take one apart, but I decided I dare not for fear of ruining them. Some research revealed one reviewer who asserted that there's an ALNiCo bar magnet underneath steel slugs. I've never seen single coils like this, being technically ALNiCo, but constructed similar to the typical import ceramics found on cheap Squiers.

The clean tones are wonderful in all five positions.

HARDWARE
The tuners are without a doubt the weakest point on this guitar, though I honestly had no trouble whatsoever keeping the guitar in pitch once tuned up and settled in. Granted, I wasn't using the bar. The trem block is made from pot metal.


ELECTRONICS
The other notable "cheap" components on this guitar are the mini pots. They do work fine and have a perfectly usable sweep. For context, I recently bought a Jackson Pro Series Soloist, and it too has mini pots which function the exact same as those on this Kramer.


FINAL ANALYSIS
To say that I am super impressed with this budget Kramer is an understatement. I doubt that at this price there's a better sounding and playing HSS Strat than the Kramer Focus VT-211S. It's like the present day version of what the Peavey Predator was in the late 80s, except with better stock pickups. The only mod I intend to do is enabling the tone control on the bridge pup. The only actual part I'm thinking about swapping out is the pickguard, as I'm thinking brown tort would really contrast well with the teal and make it uniquely my own.

This guitar has mojo baby! Want proof? Watch as I gig this Kramer Focus this weekend and make it pay for itself.

Solid made guitar. Love the feel and playability. Remarkably set directly out the box. My only drawback to this beautiful instrument, is the generic electronics. Similair to the chinese made counter parts. In the future i plan to upgrade all electronics and hardware. When i am finished, this guitar will rival even that of my US Fender Strat. However, this is a perfect begginer guitar.

Does not stay in tune! Will have to change the tuning machine's out. Other wise it is a first guitar for me as I am a newb to guitar playing so it will do until I learn and will buy a Fender Stratocaster professional

If I had it to do over again I would have spent the extra and got the Squier Strat, the machine heads are really bad. It does not stay in tune at all. the pickups are also really bad even for a cheap guitar. The body is really thin and the guitar feels hollow and stiff. Its a toy. I have bought alot of cheap guitars in my life and alot of them were Squiers. The wood isn't bad on the neck they just cut to many corners to have the cheapest guitar on the market. I would have expected more with a name brand like Kramer. the cheap Jacksons are way better....Sorry Kramer.