Kramer Bass Guitars

Musicyo sells new Kramers.

http://www.musicyo.com/brandpos.asp?dept_id=1

 

Kramers had a good rep in the 80s as I recall... Mostly for guitars ala Edward Van Halen.

 

Isn't Kramer a "knockoff" company. Squier is to Fender as Epiphone is to Gibson as Kramer is to Jackson?

 

Kramer was started in 1975 by Gary Kramer, and was one of the first to use aluminum necks. I never knew they made Jackson copies.

 

I do not believe that they were a knock off of Jackson. The way I remember it was that they were every bit as respected as Jackson. Back in my school days (85 to 88) I lusted after the Kramer Barretta. That was a nice guitar.

Jackson and Charvel ended up having some kind of relationship... But They used to be sepperate, well respected companies on their own too. I think Jackson bought Charvel... and eventually Charvell disapeared from the market completely.

 

Kramer went out of business about ten years ago, the name was bought by Gibson who were going to start making Kramers again but they then apparently licensed our buddies at musicyo to do so instead.

The Forum is from the 80s, during the period where Kramer was riding high on endorsements from Eddie Van Halen. It's an import (Japan I think, some Kramers also came from Korea).

$150 is a decent price, those Kramers have low resale value here in the US. It's an OK bass, nothing special but certainly playable.

 

From what I understand, Jackson started as a offshoot line of guitars. When Grover Jackson built Randy Rhoads' V-copy as a neck-through, they (he and Wayne Charvel) weren't sure how it would do on the market. They chose to name Randy's guitar a "Jackson" to set it apart from the bolt-on Charvels in case it was a failure. It wasn't, and Jackson became the standard neck-through name, while Charvel's were bolt-ons. Neck construction was the only difference in the names - they were both high quality lines.

I believe this ended in the late 80's when, to compete with Ibanez, ESP and the other Japanese companies in the marketplace, Charvel/Jackson chose to split the naming with Jackson representing US-made products, and Charvel denoting the imports.

This again changed in the mid-late 90's, as japanese-made "Jacksons" were produced, and USA-made "Charvels" were again constructed. As of now, I don't believe there is any logic to the naming structure.

...or I could be completely wrong.

 

Kramer, used to make some cool bass's in the 70-80's. now they have been bought out by
Gibson, and have been turned into MusicYo fodder.

How disgraceful, having the good name of Kramer now laced onto $79.00 P bass copies.
oh well.
BTW, did you notice that the Musicyo insignia looks something akin to the Blair Witch Project?

Tim

 

i do know jacksons are obviously still made, as are charvels, i dunno what name what, but my one friend has an electric jackson guitar(decent, at least japanese made i'm sure) and my other friend has an acoustic charvel(decent, but definately foriegn made, probably korea) anyway just my information on it