I admit that I have a problem... I'm a sucker for 80s guitars. What about you? What are the MUST HAVE brands and models for an 80s collection? My current list of Brands, their quintessential models for my taste and their ¨most relevant¨superstrat . BC Rich - Warlock, Gunslinger/Assassin Carvin - V220/Ultra V, DCs Charvel - Star, Style 1 Fender - HM ESP - MX220/MX250, M2 Hamer - Standard/Vector but in my heart Glenn Tipton GT in black and white, Californian Jackson - King V and Kelly, Soloist Ibanez - Destroyer, RG/Roadstars Kramer - Vanguard/Voyager, Pacer Robin - Medley What else? I need some ideas to guide my G.A.S in 2021 and my brain is not working properly LOL.
Oh never mind you did list RG's How about the most quintessentially 80's guitar ever made, despite ACTUALLY being from '91 due to conservative tardiness? The Gibson M3 (only the original, complete with MILF-panty-print pickguard version counts... reissues without it are a joke)
Oh yeah, I love me some 80's guitars. Mine are mostly BC Riches but I've recently discovered Kramers. Posts without pics suck so give me a minute or two and I'll see what I can get.
My 80s guitars are not much different from any of the other decades ...sorry, no pointy sh*t 83 LP Custom 83 SG Special 82 Epiphone Spirit ,probably one of my favorite 80s guitars Weird 25.5 scale SG I bought in 89 ....SG 90 Double Late 80s Les Paul Junior w/ Grovers n tunematic Speakin of Robin though, I have always wanted this generation of Ranger , but as I got older , I was afraid the neck wouldn't be compatible with my hand ,so I never got one . I could just as easily slap somethin together from a Squier 51 Washburn Wing Series were a good 80s collection
YES!!! TOTALLY FORGOT ABOUT WASHBURNS!!! BC Rich - Warlock, Gunslinger/Assassin Carvin - V220/Ultra V, DCs Charvel - Star, Style 1 Fender - HM ESP - MX220/MX250, M2 Gibson - Flying V, Explorer, U2 Hamer - Standard/Vector but in my heart Glenn Tipton GT in black and white, Californian Jackson - King V and Kelly, Soloist Ibanez - Destroyer, RG/Roadstars Kramer - Vanguard/Voyager, Pacer Robin - Medley Washburn - RR-V, A10/A20, G-20V
totally!!! So my latest version of my 80s wall of shame Valley Arts, Kramer, BC Rich, Hamer, Carvin and ESP. There are other 80s guitars in my stash, but these are on the wall for now
BC Rich - Warlock, Gunslinger/Assassin Carvin - V220/Ultra V, DCs Charvel - Star, Style 1 Fender - HM ESP - MX220/MX250, M2 Gibson - Flying V, Explorer, U2 Hamer - Standard/Vector but in my heart Glenn Tipton GT in black and white, Californian Jackson - Rhoads, Soloist Ibanez - Destroyer, RG/Roadstars Kramer - Vanguard/Voyager, Pacer Peavey - Nitro, Vandenberg Robin - Medley Washburn - RR-V, A10/A20, G-20V
How 'bout a Hondo II Pro DC? I have this one that I really don't know the full history on. I got it used from a little guitar shop when I was in college in the late 80's. It has a "Made in Japan" sticker on the neck plate, so Wikipedia puts that as circa '80-'83. Action is better than my Gibsons, still my go to ax.
God I don't even know where to start. I pretty much exclusively collect 80s guitars. I have over 30 Kramers at this point, plus others as mentioned here. Kramers are by far my favorite though - something alluring about them. I think it's part of the fun because each one is slightly different, even if they were built on the same production line at nearly the same time. Of course, that same inconsistency is also why you see people say they tried one Kramer in a store and thought it sucked. Forgive this super long response.... BC Rich - I've had a couple of ST-III's from 1987. They have top mounted Ibanez Edge trems and OEM Dimarzio pickups. I think the stock pickups sound a little weak but they could be worse. The necks are bare and for that type of thing they are great, probably on par with USA Jackson bolt ons at the time. The Edge trem is better than any Jackson JT-6 from the same year too. For some reason, the BC Rich stuff hasn't quite gotten blown up in price yet - there are still good deals to be had so get one before they go into the stratosphere like Kramers did. Carvin - I only have one, an 89 DC125 like Vicki from the Bangles played. It has a gold OFR and the jackson shaped headstock, which honestly is not a jackson copy, it's much skinnier. This is a beautiful guitar with pretty incredible hardware and worksmanship. Looking at the price they sold for back then I really can't believe these weren't flying off the shelves. I guess the mail order was the issue there. If I could find another one I'd get it, but being the 80s guy I am I won't settle for anything recent, and the pointy headstock 80s ones I like so much aren't all that common (or they've all been hoarded). Charvel - Super consistent quality on the MIJ model series. The necks are thin but laquered which I really like, I'm not a bare/oil neck guy and thus I don't like the modern charvel stuff. I've never had a real 80s USA San Dimas though, I assume they are fantastic but since they were custom, finding one that has the features and options I would want might be a tall order. Maybe someday. If I were gigging and needed a couple of consistent reliable guitars, these Charvels would be top of the list. ESP - Big fan of these, obviously, since a lot of my beloved Kramers have necks/bodies made by ESP anyway. They are pretty expensive nowadays and I understand why, very high quality instruments. The stock pickups are really unique and sound great too. I'd really like to get my hands on an Eclipse (tele shape) or an early 84-85 Mirage (where both the body and neck are dyed - including the fretboard, red or blue). Fender - The HM strat is real cool. I sold the one I had for a tidy profit when the reissues came out. I've played the reissue, I don't really get how it's a reissue. It has a very light satin neck and a floyd, and standard controls. The originals had glossy lacquer necks, Kahler's, and TBX pots with the center detent at 5 - really awesome pots and I was surprised how much I liked using them to get a little extra oomph on a lead tone for example. Now that I've sold my original I'm hunting for another one though. Wish I'd just kept the first one. The Performer is also really cool, unique shape, I'd like to get one of those too. Certainly a good conversation starter. Around the same time, the contemporary series strats/teles were pretty sweet. You could get more classic styled ones, or some really cool stuff like, single humbuckers, or a two hum tele with the System One trem, etc. sometimes with a painted neck, lots of weird cool ones. Earlier in the 80s, the Strat Elite was pretty fancy. I also have a weird soft spot for the "Smith" strats, which had the input jack right on the pickguard instead of the 3rd tone pot. Not all that practical but it's a nice snapshot of a really interesting era in both Fender and Guitar history. Hamer - some of the nicest quality instruments I've ever played. Top tier quality and also expensive. I have a pair of Californians and a Chaparral, all bolt ons, more the shredder type stuff. They also made great explorers and double cut les paul type guitars but I haven't owned those. The necks are to die for. Wish I could go back in time and order one with a maple fretboard, neck binding, and a flamed maple two piece body. That's the dream.
PART 2 Ibanez - For some reason I always skipped over Ibanez and wish I'd gotten into them sooner. The Wizard necks on the Saber series and the Ultra necks on the Radius are just fantastic. Earlier models like the Pro Line stuff are also excellent. I also have an XV500, definitely one of the most striking guitar designs and colors, out of all the guitars I've had that one gets the most compliments and comments from people, especially people who don't play guitar. The body shapes are also really unique, strat inspired but finally a refreshing take on it. The Saber is really skinny and fun to play, the Radius has great contours and looks really cool, RG's are sharp angles and sharp edge radiused, and there's also the 540P which had two different shapes - and that's not including some of the weirder ones like the Maxxis bodies and so on. Jackson - great guitars in the 80s. Lots of cool options and neck through guitars, bare neck bolt ons, great sounding factory pickups (Except the J50BC, no one can ever convince me that's a good sounding pup). Kind of picked up where USA Charvel left off. They are fairly expensive but generally worth it. They also had a few really sweet guitars into the early 90s built in the same quality/manner as the 80s stuff, so I wouldn't be deterred just because it was made in 92 instead of 89 for example. Kramer - Hard to talk about without going into a 20 page essay. There's something about this brand that seems to attract the biggest bser's on the internet and there's just a ton of misinformation all around about them. As for the guitars themselves really they changed rapidly during just the 10 years of the 80s so there's something for everyone really. The early strat heads and beaks have lovely gloss lacquer necks and heavy, hand shaped bodies. Definitely some of the nicest stuff I've ever played and I understand why with Fender suffering QC issues and moves etc. at the time why these got so popular. The novel idea of stuffing two humbuckers onto a strat body really came into its own here - we can debate all day about who came up with that idea first but Kramer was the one that brought it into the forefront of the market, helped a lot by EVH, stuck those locking Floyd Rose trems on them, and started a whole era of modern guitar playing we still experience the effects of today. Every modern Jackson, Ibanez, Caparison, Suhr etc etc can thank those early Kramers for popularizing the whole humbucker + locking trem thing all the way back in 1983. The banana head era from 84-85 you had a lot of weird stuff, some glossy necks, some oiled necks, some R2 width, some R5 width, lots of inconsistencies. Factory changes to the way guitars were built etc were common and unannounced. You might get two guitars 100 apart in S/N and they'd be totally different. It also doesn't help that they just grabbed serial plates out of a box whatever they felt like and in no particular order, so guitar D 1234 and D 1235 may have been built weeks or months apart for example. Pointy era gets a little more consistent but people seemed to like these a little less at the time. Kramer went from #1 in guitar sales starting here, in 1986, to out of business by April 1990. Some of the earlier pointies are great and some not so much. At the same time, Kramer was mass marketing overseas models of varying quality (Focus pretty good, others not so much etc) and competition from Charvel and Ibanez really picking up in 86-87 put Kramer behind there. At the end, some of the 89-90 Kramer stuff is some of the nicest guitars ever built in my opinion, but too little too late. Company went under, tons of parts sold off at a warehouse sale, lots of discrepancies between the stories told by people who worked there and the current Kramer climate is a tough one to navigate. Lots of fakes, guitars get parted out all the time to squeeze a few extra bucks out of them (I really hate that), tons of both liars and know-it-alls so it's really hard to know what's legit and what isn't. Probably deters a lot of folks. My advice though, is to use the sources you have available online and hunt down a real one and give it a try, they can be pretty impressive guitars. Robin - I've always wanted an RH or RV, made by Tokai, from about 82 on. Look great to me but I haven't had one so I can't comment. In the latter half, ESP made most of the parts and likely are about on par with Kramers of the same era, and the Medley at the time was pretty close to that style of shred guitar. The Wedge is a standout from this era, they came either bolt on neck or neck through body and are both great players and amazingly interesting to look at. Later Robins were USA made, kind of the reverse of most makers who start USA and go overseas, Robin did the opposite and brought production to the US. These are also some of the nicest guitars and I'd say similar to the Hamers at the same time as far as top tier bolt on quality. The Medley is great, still have one of those from '94, but it's the same shape/neck/etc as those made in 89 or 90 so close enough for me. The Machete is pretty unique and the Ranger is cool too. There's also the Tedley, like the Medley but single cutaway body shape. The frets, at least on mine, are HUGE and the fretboard is very curved, not flat. This is pretty different from Hamer, ESP, or Ibanez which were really blowing up with the 15" or 17" neck radius thing at the time. So if you're not a flat radius neck kind of guy, Robin is probably the nicest you can get as far as 80s super strat shredders (besides Kramers, some of which I have with 10" radius, although other Kramers I have measured at 16" so who the hell knows what they were doing there, as I said before).
I'm selling my 1989 Fender HM Strat , white with Rosewood, (it's a 9.5 outta 10) 100% original with absolutely NO MODIFICATIONS ever done, I'm the original owner & it comes with its original hardcase.. just saying
cool thread and pics. I just picked up a Kramer Pacer Custom II from 87', it is badass. Could be my imagination but seems slightly above all the 80s charvels and Ibanez I have owned over the years.
