UNDER THE HOOD
What can we see inside this Krautster?
Nik Huber clearly doesn’t waste machining time with oversized control cavities; there’s just enough space for the simple circuit. The cavity is coated with conductive screening paint and the perfectly fitting and recessed cover is copper-foil backed. All good.
We can just about see the volume control is a 500k audio taper CTS pot with that large TAD treble bleed, a 250pF silver mica capacitor. It’s wired modern style and the tone cap is sizable, too: a 660V .022μF Tube Amp Doctor (TAD) ‘Orange Drop’. The tone control is the modern CTS PCB style, which simply splits the bridge humbucker, voicing the screw coil, when the switch is pulled up.
Have the Krautster’s pickups changed over the past years? “We did change the bridge pickup, slightly,” says Nik.“The earlier ones were slightly hotter – that was the model from Harry Häussel called ‘Hot’. We changed it into the Krautster bridge pickup, which has a little less output. We’re looking at 14/15kohms, still a hot pickup, but we’ve stayed with basically the same pickups because they’re so popular.”
As Häussel explains, its P90 1956 at the neck is a “replica of an old -P90 from the 50s – easy response, bluesy, nice highs, good mids and a suitable bass foundation. The Alnico V magnets are degaussed; the neck version of the P90 1956 has slightly fewer windings than a ‘normal’ P-90; the magnets are specially charged to create the typical 50s sound.”
Measured at output, the bridge reading is 15.26k and 7.73k when split. The neck P-90 measures 7.07k.
Removing the neck pickup, you can clearly see the neck itself is full width and sits someway into the body under that pickup. Pulling out the bridge pickup you’ll also see the hand-written model ID: just another small, carefully considered detail.
Based around a PRS-like scale length of 635mm (25‑inch), the Krautster, as always intended, is a bare-bones simplistic guitar. If you want bells and whistles and a slathering of opulence, Nik will happily satisfy your dreams, but it won’t be called a Krautster. The body is slab-style two-piece centre-joined mahogany, 43mm in depth, with a slight, smoothly carved ribcage contour on the back. Its top edge is cleanly cream bound, the back edges with quite a large radius.
But it’s the neck that you’ll notice before anything else. It’s slightly diagonally grained so the heavy flame is enhanced on the bass side – the bit you look at – and typically it has a lightly grey/blue wash that goes back to the first of the breed. It also has plenty of heft, super satin-smooth to the touch and a subtly V’d yet full-feeling profile. If you bought this guitar just for this exceptional neck, we wouldn’t blame you.
Unlike the bound body edge, the deeply coloured rosewood fingerboard is unbound, with simple bone dot inlays, and has Huber’s standard 254mm to 356mm (10- to 14-inch) compound radius. The fret tangs are notched and sit in milled slots that stop before the edges, so you can’t see any fret slots from the sides. The wire is pretty classic medium jumbo, certainly not overbig, superbly installed and polished, while the fingerboard edges are lightly rolled like they should be.
If features like the neck and fretwork create a far-from-new feel, not to mention the ‘worn’ brushed top finish, that is enhanced by the lightly-aged Huber wrapover bridge with its PRS-style intonated ridge and the bridge pickup’s cover. The open-back Huber (by Gotoh) tuners don’t look aged, just very classy in a nickel plating with the brass cog-wheel proudly on show. Even the simple three-ply scratchplate has the ‘new’ gloss burnished back to a light satin, as do the cover of the direct-mounted P-90 and even the control knobs. This class continues to the black ebony-faced headstock with what looks like
It’s the neck that you’ll notice before anything else with its subtly V’d yet full‑feeling profile
a lightly aged thin silver logo applied over the light satin finish. Aside from the handwritten model name and serial number on the headstock back, outwardly that’s all the identification you get.
Everything works so well: no surprises, no disappointments and nothing gets in the way of the playing
Feel & Sounds
At 3.02kg (6.64lb) this Krautster is slightly lighter than our 50s Junior reference, and strapped on it pretty much disappears. It could easily be your sofa noodler, and a few strums reveal more than enough unplugged volume for that purpose and just how vibrant and ‘alive’ it is. And although it is a big neck (by the way, Nik does offer a slimmer ’60s-style option), it is just so well shaped, it’s virtually addictive.
For those who care about such things, the neck’s depth measures 23mm at the 1st fret and 25.2mm by the 12th with a not over‑wide nut width of 42.7mm, and 51.8mm at the 12th, just slightly deeper and slightly thinner than our 50s Junior. Strung with 10s and with the 635mm scale and a pretty mainstream action height of 1.5mm on the treble side and 1.8mm on the bass side, it plays effortlessly with nice height
to the perfectly polished frets (which aren’t over-wide, either).
The exceptional feel and playability of the Krautster is matched by its sounds. Anyone having to cross genres and styles within a single gig will appreciate the subtlety here, and the key to that lies in a very wellconsidered control circuit (see Under The Hood on page 98). With both controls full up, there’s beefy clout at the bridge for all your classic rock needs, while the neck P-90 sits just right with a very musical balance of PAF-y plum with a subtle bite. The mix hollows the voice, not least with a little volume reduction, as we edge into a more Fender-y territory.
Pull up the tone pot switch on the bridge to engage the coil-split, which cleans up a little more, enhancing the bite: there’s Telelike character without any excessive edge. The volume control alone has a near-perfect taper and doesn’t pull down the highs as you roll it back; that tone pulls the highs back but even full-off is usable for a flutey ‘woman’ tone voice with a little outboard gain boost. It’s not bringing anything new to the table, but everything works so well: no surprises, no disappointments and nothing gets in the way of the playing.
Verdict
As Nik Huber is a well-known fan of 50s Juniors and Specials, you could suggest the Krautster is pretty much his signature guitar. It’s not just the immaculate craft on show; it’s a real-world player’s guitar and would be a crime to keep cosseted in a case or gigbag. This craft and experience doesn’t come cheap, and we’re not short of high-level boutique options, either – many, of course, inspired by Nik’s style. But don’t blame us if, after getting your hands on one of these, you’re considering what you can sell or trade to make it your own…
There’s a beautiful worn-in feel and appearance here, too, and, be warned, the very thin finish wears and marks easily, although like all Huber models there’s plenty of scope for customisation, too, in terms of neck shape and custom colours, and we’re sure Nik would spray you a fullgloss version. For us, though, the finishing is so much part of the appeal: classy, nonprecious and impossible to fault.