Kramer Nightswan Electric Guitar - Ebony with Blue Dots Reviews

i love this guitar buy it on november, great servicce got it at Puerto Rico in two days ill get more guitars in the future here...

Nice Guitar for the money.

Got my Kramer, quick shipping item was received as it was advertised.Great looking guitar and the sound was just as good. Sweetwater just added another customer to their ranks.

The Nightswan plays and sounds fantastic! Growing up and playing guitar in the 80's as a teen I was never able to afford a Kramer like I wanted. I guess I had not been paying attention and didn't know that they were still making guitars. What a great surprise, I had been looking to add another Ibanez to my collection to compliment my 89' RG 550. I am really happy that I found the Nightswan, I love my RG but, it doesn't hold a candle to the shred I get on the Kramer.
Sweetwater did an excellent job in their inspection, the guitar was in tune when it arrived, action was perfect. I will be enjoying this player for a long time!

I have several guitars that I have built from Warmoth parts and I have always felt like I had great guitars. As I get older though, I found that I really wish I had some of those classically awesome axes from the 80's that I loved so much. After a lot of hemming and hawing, I decided to buy this from Sweetwater.

I have always loved the nightswan since Viviane Campbell played them and this polka dot pattern was my favorite. Just screams 80's shred. I am usually a maple fretboard player cause I like the wya they look better, but this guitar is so nice. The ebony fretboard is so nice. The 16" radius is amazing ( I normally play compound 10 - 16 ), and the frets feel really nice. Tremelo is solid and totally stays in tune.

I have found that I love these JB's. I've had to adjust a little in how I my sound setup because they are very much different from the EMG 89's I have but they sound so good.

For anyone who is on the fence about these re-issue type things, the quality of this instrument is really high. I am sure that some players would change certain things to be more in line with their preferences, but for an off the rack guitar at this price point, it is really, really nice.

super fun to play and it looks fantastic lined up with my other guitars.

I wanted this guitar when I was a kid. Although it is not the original this guitar is great looking, great sounding and the neck is unbelievable. I had it plekd and it was worth every penny.

The set up on this guitar is right on. The floyd is excellent also. Really smooth. So it goes without saying that the neck is just S good.

It is scaled just like a les paul neck. Takes a little to get used to but once you do....

The finish on mine is also unblemished. Shipping and delivery were fast as usual. Sweetwater is the only place I will buy my guitars from for now on.

Great guitar! Played smooth right out of the box, sounds nice too. Brian at SweetWater lowered the action a little bit for me and it was a winner, the guitar looks great as well. Kramer's done a nice job with these reissue's, I always wanted an original Swan but can't afford one so picking up a new one is the next best thing, glad I did! I love it and SweetWater gave me great customer service as well, picking up my Aztec as soon as it comes in!

I just got this and have played it for a few hours. First off it sounds great distorted and the neck is great to shred on. The body is comfortable against my side and it has a really nice feel to it. The locking system is great dive bombing and stays in tune. Clean it sounds ok but add a bit of reverb and delay and you get the old 80's metal ballad sound. This is a very solidly made guitar and has tons of playability for something made in Indonesia. I mostly play high end strats and Les Pauls do this was a nice surprise for the money. It reminds me of my old Jackson from the early 80's. Sweetwater did a fine job and gave as always a great price. So for the Money if you want a shred guitar it is a five!

These are awesome guitars as long as you know how to do set-ups. There will be a descent amount of tweaking to do but once you do and you are familiar with Floyd Rose's these are sweet. One of the best bargains out there right now. I love mine.

Bought this "reissue" Nightswan to quell my regrets over selling my original years ago. At $899, and being Indonesian built, I expected some QC issues, and wasn't let down. The finish has many small imperfections, with the majority of the worst being on the headstock. Several edge dings, and even a small "void" at the very edge where the black paint, or possibly an overlay meets the wood. The clear is cracked around both string tree screws also. As for the body, signs of debris in the clear (or under it) are numerous. Neck was improperly shimmed and aligned. Now for the good: it looks and sounds AWESOME, and most of the flaws mentioned above could be (and have been) fixed. The fretwork was surprisingly good, needing only a good polish to be perfect. Overall, it's a good guitar, and I would recommend it, but be aware that it may have some faults. If you're looking for perfection, this may not be the one for you. If you're comfortable with correcting minor issues, it can be a worthwhile instrument.

In this day and age, we are very far removed from the relevance of this guitar as originally marketed. The original guitarist who endorsed this instrument has long moved on. This is for all practical purposes NOT the same guitar from 30+ years ago that shares the same name. Why should you buy this guitar, then? Simply put, this guitar is one of the few if not the only bolt-on, Floyd Rose-equipped "super strat" guitars that shares the same scale length as your typical Gibson guitar (Les Paul, SG, Explorer, etc.). If you are most comfortable playing Les Pauls but want to add a lighter, smaller guitar with a locking tremolo to your stable, look no further. I personally feel that 24.75 inch scale guitars equipped with .10s just feel and sound "right" as opposed to the twangier less forgiving Fender scale instruments. I've always wanted a "shredder" with that scale, however that previously meant buying a very old and very expensive original Nightswan or one of two other instruments contemporary to it that are rare and never seem to be in all that great condition. My experience with used original 80s shredder guitars based on the ones I've owned and played has always been 'meh' in terms of build quality and playability versus price. It was an easy choice for me to purchase this guitar new, even if it's made in Indonesia.

PROS: This guitar sounds great with it's bridge Duncan JB. I don't care if it's not the same pickup as the original, it works VERY well in this instrument. The guitar is very light, basically 7/8th normal size, and very comfortable to have strapped to you for hours. Once set up properly, it plays fantastic. The guitar is also rear-routed with pickup rings Gibson-style for easy electronics work if needed. The Floyd Rose 1000 series is better-than-expected choice for a guitar in this price range. The guitar has a multi-piece maple neck which should give it good stability over the years since the neck is fairly thin -- but not too thin! It's wide and flat and the finish is nice and smooth. Overall quality isn't perfect but the guitar is well-made.

CONS: You will need a setup. The guitar's action is a mile-high out of the box. I found I was able to just slacken the strings, remove the tremolo springs, get the tremolo off the posts, and eyeball lowering the posts to get the action sufficiently low. Once I did that it played beautifully. The volume pot is a linear taper pot and therefore is practically useless for anything other than being an on/off switch. This is a shame because even a $150 Ibanez Mikro has an audio taper pot. It must have been considered the target audience for this wouldn't be rolling down the volume to clean things up. The middle pickup gets in the way unless you lower it and it's also no replacement for a dedicated neck pickup. However I'm playing 99% on the bridge pickup with this so this is just an FYI more than a con.

Overall, this guitar is a solid buy at a fair price. If you want a Les Paul-scale shredder, it's a no-brainer. If you want a unique-looking guitar, this fills that niche. I'd also say if you want or need a smaller guitar that runs lighter weight (mine is 7 lbs 3 oz), this guitar might be a good option.

I will likely be buying a second one, the Aztec finish, as this is fast becoming my go-to workhorse for anything that calls for tremolo as well as being a nice guitar to play for many hours since it's compact and light.

2 big issues for me
1) The floyd Rose is terrible, the fine tuners are so hard to move! making "fine Tuning" quite difficult.
I am glad this tremolo doesn't float or it would be impossible( having to push so hard would make the tremolo go out of tuner just tuning)
2) The Pickups are not the original spec and that is for a reason, these JB's sound terrible in this guitar. too muddy. I am disappointed Kramer didn't spec a specific pickup for the Mahogany body, these pickups don't work well with the mahogany. The mahogany gives too much mid boost and the pick ups do not have enough tonal range to scoop the mids out.Kramer didn't even try they just through a JB1 in each position. COPOUT!!! these pickups do not have very much range in the mids and highs. throw in a volume pot that has no roll on or roll off and you have a guitar that is pretty much a one trick pony shred machine not capable of producing much else.
the guitar is pretty much either off or on 11, not much range in between. 1,3,11

The things I do like, its very cool looking, the ebony fretboard is nice, the upsidedown headstock, scale length, it plays beautiful

Gibson made their usual mistakes on this one, over charging for less quality

$ is too much, give me a real floyd rose and good pickups
but $ for an Indonesian build using knock off licensed parts, NO WAY!!

I have been playing guitar for well over 30 years, and have been a big fan of Kramer's for a lot of years. I have also purchased a Kramer Jersey Star which has given me no issues at all. As for this Night Swan, for lack of a better way to put it, this guitar is junk! Maybe I got a lemon? I have had it for maybe 5 month's. Even paid for a factory setup before they shipped it out. Problem one - After having it for a short period of time, the volume knob would make noise when turning it, and wouldn't fully turn the volume off. Sweetwater sent me some contact spray, and that worked for a few weeks. At that point, the volume know completely stopped working, and I had to replace it. Problem # 2 - The Duncan JB in the neck stopped working. I had to go in, cut and strip away some of the wire, re solder it, and then it worked again. Now I am dealing with problem # 3. The jack wouldn't stay tight. The nut holding the jack to the pate was stripped and would wobble around when playing so the guitar would cut out intermitantly. Now they are sending me a new jack and wiring. Wonder what will go on this thing next. It's a shame, because it looks great, and the neck feels good. Could have been a really nice guitar. I am also a big fan of the JB pickups. Use them in most of my guitars, but for some reason (probably the wood), the sustain on this guitar is pretty poor. I know this isn't a top of the line guitar, but it also shouldn't be on par with a low end beginners guitar, which is what it seems like. Very disappointed. Would not recommend this guitar to anybody.