Striker ID

[cullenszoo]

First time Kramer owner here. I am trying to find a year and country of manufacture for the Kramer I just bought. It was Identified by the seller as a FR-422SM. He's a better man than me cause I can find nothing with my serial number on the web. It dosn't appear to be a Musicyo era model. The serial is 0901234651. Any Kramer gurus out there that may know or can point me in the right direction?

[stickman]

First time Kramer owner here. I am trying to find a year and country of manufacture for the Kramer I just bought. It was Identified by the seller as a FR-422SM. He's a better man than me cause I can find nothing with my serial number on the web. It dosn't appear to be a Musicyo era model. The serial is 0901234651. Any Kramer gurus out there that may know or can point me in the right direction?

 

 

 

Sounds like one of the model numbers musicyo would use but I cant be sure. Have pics?

I did a little looking around and here is what i found....

http://www.fretbase.com/guitars/1090-kramer-striker-fr-422sm

[cullenszoo]

Sounds like one of the model numbers musicyo would use but I cant be sure. Have pics?

I did a little looking around and here is what i found....

http://www.fretbase.com/guitars/1090-kramer-striker-fr-422sm

That appears to be the correct model, but what year and where?

[cullenszoo]

Let me be more specific. Where were the Strikers made for Musicyo? I have been all over the net and found soooo much informantion that conflicts with each other it's not funny. If Gibson was making them, surely they have a database of serial numbers or some form of decoder available.

[RobinTheHood]

Yes, Kramer USA made the Striker model, but it was very different. The designation 422-SM is a Gibson/Epiphone model number used to identify basically the pickups. A designation of 211 would mean "Humbucker (2 coils) & two single coil pickups (11). The number 442 is basically the same thing, except that the pickups are double-stacked quad rails - so the number is doubled from 211 to 422.

Kramer USA and the Korean models prior to being acquired by Gibson, to the best of my knowledge, did not use the quad-rail pickups in their guitars.

 

My Striker has a serial prefix of "S", denoting that it was made at the Samick plant in Korea by Epiphone. After the move to China, Epiphone changed the prefix on their lineup to "EE", then last year, they removed the letter prefix altogether. I'm not sure where the new Strikers are manufactured these days, but your serial seems to indicate the newer batch of post-Music-Yo Kramers, possibly now produced in China.