Kramer’s American Sustainer of 1989 featured a Floyd Rose vibrato (as did most Kramers) along with a Floyd Rose-designed, distortion-generating humbucker in the bridge position.

The Floyd Rose connection had been the foundation of Kramer’s prosperity through the 1980s, but ironically, it was also the ultimate reason for Kramer’s demise at end of the decade. Kramer simply became a victim of its own success. As Kramer sold thousands of guitars with Floyd Rose’s patented vibrato system, unpaid royalties piled up. Floyd Rose sued in 1990 to collect those royalties, and that was effectively the killing blow for Kramer.

The company’s original financial backer, Henry Vaccarro, tried to revive Kramer in 1995, but after a handul of guitars were produced, the company was sold out of bankruptcy to Gibson in 1997. For the better part of a decade Gibson barely kept the brand alive as a cheap import line managed by it’s Epiphone division.

In 2006, Epiphone pumped up the Kramer line with a new wave of imported reissues as well as several US-made models.