Welcome to Kramermaniaxe.

I started this website back in the 1995 as a means to meet other Kramer guitar collectors and to share my enthusiasm for Kramer guitars.  All I can say is that the concept worked!!!  I was not only able to meet other collectors but, I was also able to find and purchase a lot of Kramers as a result of the connections I was able to make with other collectors.   The other really cool thing about having the website is that I got to connect and meet several of the original key Kramer employees.  For some reason, none of them could believe that I was actually collecting Kramers and most were suspicious of my intentions.  It took a while before they realized that I was not trying to write a book and that I wasn't trying to make money off of their knowledge.  For the most part, the ex-Kramer employees were very cool and helpful. 

I remember the most common response I would get from people when I would tell them that I collect Kramers is "WHY?".  Back in the 90's people really did not care about Kramers and they could be purchased fairly inexpensively.  The only issue was, unlike today, ebay and other buyer tools were not out there so, I had to be more creative.  I would actually go to the public library and search the nationwide phonebooks for music stores and literally call them one by one asking them if they had any used Kramer guitars in stock.  I was able to find several of my guitars this way.  When I look back at it, it truly was the guitar collecting dark ages back then, but it was a lot of fun hunting down those Kramers!!!

I was able to connect with Terry Boling (Kramer Krazy) and we soon learned that we had a lot of the same interests in Kramers.  Terry was much more strategic in his Kramer purchases and knew exactly what he wanted and why.  I, unfortunately, was purchasing any Kramer I could get my hands on.  Terry and I would chat daily either on the phone or instant messaging about our guitars.  If one of us was going to a guitar show or new music store, we were sure to contact the other if there was a Kramer we ran across.  What's funny is that I have now known Terry for over 12 years and we have still never met in person.  Other than Terry, I had developed regular guitar instant messaging routines with some other really great guys like Scott S., Gerry G., and Rob L. 

I'm sure many of you know Scott and his awesome EVH replica guitars.  Scott has always been a super nice guy and a wealth of knowledge about Eddie's guitars.  I've listed Scott's website on my links page.  Gerry is currently George Lynch's guitar tech but back 10-12 years ago, we would chat almost daily about Kramers, Van Halen, Dokken, and just overall 80's music and guitars.  Rob L. had the most advanced and awesome Jackson/Charvel website back in the mid to late 90's.  His site had the most amount of information and just the coolest graphics and effects.  Rob had probably the most impressive collection of Jackson/Charvel guitars I have ever seen.

I purchased my first Kramer guitar back in 1982 and the collecting went to insanity stage from there!!! At the height of my collecting, I owned 148 Kramer guitars (yeah, I know, why???).  In the mid 90's I expanded my collection to include Charvel and Jackson guitars also as well as many other brands.  The Strat headstock Charvel bug bit me and I went on a crazy buying spree of those guitars for a while and finally sold most of them off by 2001.  So over the years, I have really become a guitar collector much moreso than just a Kramer collector.  I have literally probably had over 300 guitars pass through my hands over the past 15 year.  I still love the old Kramer guitars and some of the new Kramers that are being produced by Gibson are quickly becoming my favorites also. 

Recently I have become friends with Mike Wolverton at Vintage Kramer and am really glad that he has developed such a fantastic website and has kept the Kramer name alive.  He's an extremely nice guy and I really respect what he's done with his website. 

I want to thank all of the people who over the years have visited my website and have shared my enthusiasm not only for Kramer guitars but all the other crazy metal guitars of the 80's!!!!

Thanks,

Mike

I recently did a review of the new Kramer Jersey Star model as well as a comparison of the new Kramer 1984 model vs the new Charvel EVH Art Series guitars.  Both of these reviews can be found on VintageKramer.com