The story of Kramer guitar company

Compared with the history of world music development, the history of Kramer guitar brand is short, but full of fun and turmoil. Looking back on the history of Kramer guitar brand, we have to trace it back to 1970. When Dennis Berry, a young instrument dealer and drummer, became interested in the new "aluminum neck electric guitar technology", Dennis subsequently established Travis Bean Guitar Company.

At that time, Gary Krema, as the representative of the sales company of Travis Bean Guitar Company, understood and accepted Dennis Berry's suggestion, and constantly improved and developed the new aluminum electric guitar neck technology. Dennis Berry has always wanted to integrate his craft ideas into the production process of electric guitar, but because of his lack of craft knowledge, he can only provide developers with ideas that stay on the desktop and the production process of traditional electric guitar. 1975 10, Crema resigned from Travis Bean company, and he and Dennis Berry began to cooperate to build their own guitar brand entrepreneurial dream.

At the beginning of 1976, Peter Rafka joined the R&D team of Dennis and Crema. Rafka's parents worked in Gibson guitar production company in their early years. Since then, Kramer Guitar Company officially entered the world guitar manufacturing industry on June 1976 with the support of the best and most perfect R&D group composed of three people and many friends. In the same year, Kramer guitar established a perfect and smooth production line.

However, the successful cooperation between Dennis, Krema and Rafka only lasted for a short time. Crema left the company again because the founders could not reach an agreement on management. Dennis and Rafka finally decided to stick to their original entrepreneurial ideal. Although Crema left the company, Dennis and Rafka didn't change the name of the company, and Kremagi's company name has been preserved to this day.

Early Kramer stood out from many brands of guitars, and more benefited from the advanced production technology of Kramer guitar. These unique quality Kramer guitars combine traditional and modern guitar making techniques, and the body itself uses many unique wood materials, such as walnut, maple and acacia, which is in sharp contrast with the typical maple raw material processing technology at that time. In addition, tropical wood, such as African red bean tree, has become the raw material for guitar making. Different from Travis Bean guitar, Kramer guitar adopts the production technology of wood embedded in the back of the neck, which meets the requirements of guitarists at that time to the maximum extent, regardless of the weight of the body or the feel of playing.

In the years after Dennis and Rafka began to cooperate, the development of Kramer guitar was very slow. However, in the late 1970s, Kramer Company improved the pickup technology of guitar, replacing three single-coil pickups with double-coil pickups. The timbre of these improved Kramer guitars met the timbre requirements of rock and heavy metal guitarists at that time. This brand-new metallic guitar tone attracted the ears of Eddie Fan Hailun, a world-famous rock musician. From 198 1 ~ 1982, Dennis and Lavka cooperated with Fan Hailun to develop innovative guitar production technology, aiming at developing master brand Kramer guitar for Fan Hailun. In their cooperation, Fan Hailun played a positive role in the improvement and development of Kramer's guitar technology. At that time, the guitars used by Fan Hailun were selected from major guitar brands and then reassembled. However, Fan Hailun bid farewell to the original assembled piano after the Kramer Memorial Piano left the factory, because the brand-new Kramer Piano was completely developed according to the standards put forward by Fan Hailun. This incident directly led to the emergence of Fan Hailun's Kramer guitar signature series. Kramer, a famous and convincing "Voice of Fan Hailun", became popular in 1980s.

In the late 1980s, Kramer gradually abandoned its original electric guitar with aluminum neck structure and began to produce pure wooden guitar production line with neck. This anti-traditional approach has made some guitars with low craftsmanship flow to overseas markets. In the early 1990s, the company's development fell into a trough. A guitar musician must have Kramer brand, but there is a problem of detention in the hands of instrument sellers.

However, in the spring of 1995, Kramer Guitar Company regained its youthful vitality, and they invited the high-level traditional production technology back to the company again. 1996, Kramer Guitar Company was successfully acquired by Gibson Company with a history of 100 years. Although Krame was passed on to Gibson, the company has always maintained independent production and management rights, and the name of Kramer brand has also been preserved.