About a week ago, a few boxes showed up at the office from MusicYo!. This is nothing out of the ordinary, because they've been great at getting us review product since we first set foot on the web. Once again, the boxes that we received would prove to be another great package special from MusicYo for the beginning musician.

Aptly named the Kramer Pacer Pack, MusicYo has built an incredible bundle for those looking for an all in one solution for getting their feet wet in guitar land. The Kramer Pacer Packs offer a choice of guitars. The Pacer Pack I gives you a Pacer FT211S electric guitar which has a dual humbucker in the bridge or lead position and two single coil pickups in the middle and neck positions. The Pacer Pack II gives you a Pacer FT202S which gives you 2 dual humbuckers, one in the bridge and one in the neck position. Also included is a Kramer K15R guitar amplifier, a padded gigbag and an electronic tuner. The Pacer guitar is the star of the lot, in our opinion, but the other items in the package hold their own as well for this great beginners kit.

For this review, we received the Kramer Pacer Pack II. The first thing that stood out with this package was the quality of the guitar. The guitar we reviewed was flawless from a fit and finish standpoint and everything was bolted together in a quality manner. The body was draped in a beautiful light blue metallic finish. The Pacer would be a nice looking starter guitar for anyone. The FT202S is a slick axe with a thin neck and great action. The guitar comes equipped with two dual-humbucker pickups in the bridge and neck position. The electronics and hardware are nothing terribly fancy, but this guitar does include a volume and tone knob that controls both pickups, a pickup selector switch and a two point fulcrum tremolo. The dual-humbuckers provide enough signal that you can get a nice mean snarl out of this axe. It's perfectly suited for playing hard rock or heavy metal and that's exactly the audience that I believe MusicYo was aiming for. However, without the distortion present from a high gain setting, we found the pickups to be about average. Clean tones were a little muddy and lacked brilliance.

The Kramer K15R amplifier is another nice surprise. Normally, this little amp sells separately for around $69.99 and I think that's a fair price. Basically, what you're getting is a little 15 watt RMS monster driving an 8" full range cone with 2 channels for clean and overdrive. Also included is reverb, which is really a nice surprise for an amp in this price range. This little beast can actually crank too, and only begins to break up and get muddy when you're past 4 or 5 on the volume knob. That's no surprise, though, I've got a Marshall combo that does the same thing believe it or not. Also included are separate knobs for it's 3 band EQ and headphone and FX loop jacks. It's amazing that they include all that for the price - even if it was purchased separately it would be a great deal.

The included electric guitar gigbag is also a welcome item. This is a nice little gigbag with heavy duty webbed nylon, 5mm of padding for your new axe and dual-carry handles. Perfect for toting your guitar to the next practice session or guitar lesson. Last but not least, MusicYo even throws in a Seanet IntelliTuner GT-620. It's a very accurate unit with both auto and manual tuning modes, a built in condenser mic for tuning your acoustic instruments and also an input jack for plugging in your electrics.

Our review session included jamming to songs by bands like Creed, ACDC, Three Doors Down and more. Although we didn't particular care for the quality of the clean sound of the Pacer / K15R combo, it did just fine picking over the Bm, G and Asus2 chords on the intro to Kryptonite. We even miked the Pacer through the Kramer K15R with a Shure SM57 and recorded a few samples in Cakewalk. Combined with a beat we put together with Fruity Loops we made several cool grooves that might turn platinum some day. Well, that may be a stretch but you get the picture. The point is that the Pacer took everything we threw at it. It appears to be well built and should stand the test of time.

Bottom Line:

With the Kramer Pacer Pack II a budding guitarist is getting everything they need to get started in the fascinating world of guitar. For $204.99, you simply can't beat this deal. The guitar alone is worth this much. Considering you get a sweet looking and sounding electric guitar, a 2 channel practice amplifier that rocks – with reverb, a gigbag and an electronic tuner - I don't think you can beat this deal. Sure, there are better guitars, amps and tuners out there, but this package is all about value - and that's one thing that MusicYo! delivers on a very consistent basis. Check out MusicYo! today at http://www.musicyo.com