The Floyd Rose Signature Guitar

The Floyd Rose signature guitar was Kramer's salute to the tremolo inventor himself, Floyd Rose. The guitar debuted in 1983. It was a double cutaway smallish body with a half circle "scoop" out of the butt end and pointy inward-turned horns reminicent of the B. C. Rich designs of the time. The body shape remained the same throughout the run and the shape was not changed, however, different body woods were used and like all Kramer guitars, the weight differed from guitar to guitar. Supposodly, the scoop on the back-end behind the tremolo was added to make string changes and fine tuning easier than with traditional guitar bodies. There are two types of bodies on the Floyd Rose Signature; type I and type II. The more uncommon type I body sported the roundish type control cavity and as a result, was slightly asymmetrical to accommadate the larger hole. This gave the body more mass on the right ride. The type II body came in when the rear cavity was changed to the skinnier, longer type hole; the same featured on almost all the other Kramers at the time. The body at this point was trimmed down to be more symmetrical and remained this way for the rest of the run. Numbers tell us there isn't a whole lot of type I body FRs out there. The change seemed to occur in the late "B" serial-ed numbers. Special thanks to Terry Boling for the Floyd Portrait to the left.

In 83-84, It sported 2 humbuckinger Schallers, 1 vol, 2 tones and a three way switch, Floyd Rose(of course), and the Classic headstock with Rose's signature after the logo. Maple or rosewood fretboards were available throughout run.

Floyd Rose Signature from 1983 Catalog

In 84-85, pickups were changed to Seymour Duncans and it acquired the new Banana headstock and then the Pointy variety in 1986-87 and both these eras had Floyd's signature on the truss rod rather than the headstock itself. The FR sig was a great guitar and rather than be awkward to play as it looks to be, it was actually quite comfortable. The FR sig's last year was 1987. It is fairly uncommon.

Translucent Floyd Rose Signature from Early 1987 Catalog