Price Paid: € 2.800
Purchased from: N/A
Kritz custom shop
Features: 10
The guitar is made of cedar, with a beautifull AAA flame ash top. Neck is birds-eyemaple, with an ebony fretboard. It has an non-floating trem – a hardtail -, to improve sustain and tone. The original pickups were EMG, but I switched them into SD’s. It has a H-S-S-pickup configuration and a 5-way swith. Neck is an SD Alnico II flat, middle is an SD vintage flat and the bridge is an SD original trembucker. A little toggle-switch adds the splitted bridge pickup to everything that’s selected with the 5-way switch. The tone-pot functions as splitter for the humbucker. Thin and low “smile”-frets. Pickups are direct mounted in/on the wood. The guitar has got all the features which makes a Kritz guitar a Kritz guitar: asymmetric neck-shape, kritzwood nut, complex-radius fingerboard, kritz-designed peghead, 4everneck … (see https://www.kritz.com). Since I wanted the guitar to have all these features – I told and showed Fritz how the guitar had to sound -, so my rating for these features is 10.
Sound: 10
The guitar sounds awesome! It has those typical “strat”-sounds, but way better than a strat. Extremely clear and warm tones, due to the light cedar-wood, with great sustain, and more natural volume than any other guitar. Low action without any buzzing makes this guitar play like butter. Though cedar is a wood that’s often used on classic guitars, it is an excellent choice for electrics too! I told Fritz that I wanted a full-wood guitar with a warm sounding single coil tone – think of the single coil sound of a strat neck pickup -, without using mahogany. In my opinion, single coils and mahogany do not match. Fritz suggested to use european cedar, because the wood is light, has a woodstructure that consists of long “air-pipes”, that makes your tone breathe. And he’s damn right! I was kind of sceptical: at that time I owned a Kritz Human guitar, made of mahogany and with two single coils, but the singles sounded way too thin.
I can get very versatile sounds out of the guitar. Whether you want a screaming lead sound with tons of sustain, or that typical warm fender neck sound, or those nice transparent in-between sounds, just switch and you got it. I had two american strats, and an american tele. Sold them, without any regrets. This guitar does it all!
I wanted the guitar to have EMG’s, since I liked the EMG’s in my strat. Not a good choice: the natural higher volume of the guitar makes EMG’s not the best choice for a Kritz like mine, and for some reason, it lacked a good attack. Switched pickups into SD’s, and that was way better!
Action, Fit, & Finish: 9
Great action, very low, and that’s what I like. Finish was absolutely flawless! One higher fret made the B-string buzz, but that was fixed in a blink of an eye.
Reliability/Durability: 9
Everything on this guitar will last. Of course this guitar will withstand live playing. Unless you start hitting your drummer, which guitar won’t? Neck will last forever and is unbreakable unless you drive a truck over it.
Only problem seems to be the fretwire: Fritz doesn’t want to use full-steel frets, because of several (tonal) reasons, He only uses more traditional fretwire with a certain degree of nickel. Since my frets are kind of thin and not that high (0,9mm – 2mm), and since I play a lot, the guitar will need a fretjob within a few years, I guess. But unless you play Parkers, every guitar needs a fretjob some time. No big deal. I would definitely use the guitar without a backup – already did that severall times. Only reason for a backup is string-breakage, but I don’t have lot of string-breaks…
Customer Support: 10
Great support. Fritz and Alex are really nice guys. Just pop in with your guitar-problems and they solve it within a minute. They are also open for suggestions and improvement: just tell them what you don’t like about the guitar, or suggest improvements, and they will investigate it and in case you’re right, really improve their guitarline. They really listen to what guitarplayers tell them about tone, the way their guitars feel, comfort… And that’s really great!
Overall Rating: 10
I play for about 10 years now. I owned several guitars – you know that typical “guitarplayerdisease”: Ibanez Gambale, Ibanez JEM, 2 american strats, an american tele, Epi sheraton, Les paul studio… Sold them all. Only three guitars that I still own, are a PRS custom 24, a Parker Nitefly and my Kritz strad. I would buy one again in a heartbeat when it was lost or stolen. With same features! Best guitar I ever had! Actually I’m thinking hard of buying a second one…
Submitted by Alain Uyttenhove at 12/04/2001 11:21
| Summary | |
| Features | 10 (1 response) |
| Sound | 10 (1 response) |
| Action, Fit, & Finish | 9 (1 response) |
| Reliability / Durability | 9 (1 response) |
| Customer Support | 10 (1 response) |
| Overall Rating | 10 (1 response) |
Bron: Harmony central, December 2001.
