Fabulous Fakes Rockstar Replications Page 1

The Nightswan was a signature model for Vivian Campbell, the current guitarist in Def Leppard,  Vivian also played for Dio, Whitesnake, and several other bands in the 80's. Vivian was and still is a great guitarist and a fine person !!  I want everyone to know I'm not picking on him, I could have very easily written this story about one of ESP's endorsers !!!!

The Real Nightswan was not actually a Kramer !!!  Just like The Real Frankenstrat was never really a Kramer either.
Famous Guitarists, Golfers & Football Players or their management, often engage large corporate companies to build their client's signature model. Even though the original had absolutely nothing to do with that company. This type of activity is done to get huge royalties from mass production sales thru normal sales channels like Guitar Center.   (See Ghostbuilders)
 (The uneducated little kids all love Guitar Center)

The JEM was not an Ibanez,
The Tony Iommi Guitar was not a Gibson,
The Original George Lynch Guitars were never ESP's,
The Slash Les Paul was not a Gibson.
This list is endless.

Most people in this business don't like me exposing these facts to the general public. Simply because little Johnny Q. Customer wants to buy Eddie's Fender Charvel Frankenstrat that used to be a Kramer that was originally built by Eddie & Lynn Ellsworth. Back when Kramer introduced the Van Halen Guitar as being a Kramer the original advertisement had the name "Kramer" superimposed on an old picture of Eddie holding the guitar. I remember that early 80's ad like it was yesterday, I also remember that upon close inspection part of the Kramer logo hung off the edge of the headstock in thin air !!!

Little Johnny's parents will shell out the bucks, so little Johnny can play what he thinks is the same guitar that his guitar hero plays. I call it fraud and it just might be illegal.  It amazes me how people fall for the hype that the big companies shove down their throat.

Just because some famous artist or their management decides to prostitute out their designs, or name, by saying they play a certain guitar, does not mean it's true. That looks like fraud to me !!!!!  It confuses the buying public and therefore it is rightfully illegal.  A lie is always still just a lie. When you lie to make money you are committing fraud and that is a crime punishable by time in jail. I'm not a lawyer, but I will be discussing this with my attorney at my next meeting with him.

The Kramer Nightswan  was actually a "Shredder" model from Buddy Blaze Guitars in Fort Worth Texas !!

  "What, you never heard of Buddy Blaze?"
Buddy was a small boutique builder like myself. Being a small builder it made sense for Vivian to go to a big company like Kramer and have the Nightswan mass produced. I have no idea how the deal was conjured up,  I was not there. 

I was personally at the release party of the original Nightswan back in the late 80's where I first met Vivian & Buddy. It was a great party with a lot of great refreshments served, in fact we smashed up the company Limo that night on the way home. Several of my younger employees puked in the car that night as I remember we got rid of that Limo pretty quick after that. 
Kramer threw some awesome parties in the 80's,  some of the best ones I ever went to. I made a lot of my first major artist contacts at those Kramer parties, Anyone who was anybody was there.
I first met Eddie at one of their first big parties & Sam Kinnison, Billy Idol, Jeff Beck, Yngvie, Richie Sambora, Brad Gillis, Ted Nugent etc etc I actually got to sit down with Eddie and talk about guitars. God Bless Dennis Berardi & Andy Papicio, I can remember meeting Paul Shaffer (Artie Fufkin of Polymer Records) that night also.

Kramer never actually really manufactured their guitars. They outsourced the wooden bodies, necks & components and assembled them in Neptune New Jersey. This made them technically USA made guitars but in reality most of the so called USA guitars were built by Godin in Canada. The Cheapy imported models were made by ESP in Korea & Japan.  ESP also owns a number of real cheaply made mass produced in Chinese made brands.  These are popular in the big chain stores because they cost less than $200.00 to make but they sell in the $800.00 to $1,000.00 range.  Lots of profit for stores like Guitar Center that sell these types of brands.

You may wonder why you never hear about this in any of the guitar magazines !!!!  Simple Answer !!!  The magazines wouldn't dare piss off all their advertisers and print anything that they are trying to keep from the public. Printing these stories like I have been doing for 15 years now makes me a very unpopular person with my competitors and gets me bashed on a lot of the forums by paid company shills who will start a thread with some nonsensical lie to try and discredit me.  (Ralph Nader was a pretty unpopular guy too)

They wish they could sue me but they can't because the truth is and always has been my defense!!

Originally Vivian was playing Rand Guitars  who were a really small high quality company that built guitars for "The Misfits" and a host of other 80's bands. When Vivian saw another instrument Buddy had built he contacted Blaze to co-design the Nightswan.
I'm not sure how Kramer got involved but Buddy told me that Kramer ripped him off for many thousands of dollars in royalty money. Buddy told me he fell on some really hard times because he trusted Kramer to pay him his design royalties and they never gave him a cent.

I bought many thousands of dollars worth of Kramer original parts. I made it my business over the past 10 years to amass a huge amount of Original Kramer guitars and parts. I have bought many necks & bodies from others who attended the Kramer bankruptcy auction. I can easily reproduce the original Vivian Campbell paint jobs. So we are pleased to add the Vivian Campbell guitars to our line of fabulous fakes for 2009.
Ed Roman 2009

Dennis Berardi Pres Kramer Gtrs, Floyd Rose Ed Roman, Hyman Peller Sales Mgr Kramer  Photo Taken 1986 Ed Roman Guitars Rand Guitar Left Side 1995

There were 2 like it; both of them bore the White Lion Logo and a graphic lion on the face of the guitar. We have done about 5 of these and several of Vito's headstock model Steinberger also.

We are pleased to add it to our list of fabulous fakes. We simply take an original Pre Gibson Steinberger and refinish it with Vito's graphic on the guitar.

These guitars play and sound awesome, they are by far better sounding than the graphite small oar shaped body that Steinberger is known for.

We do take this guitar one extra step, we hardmount the pickups and of course the customer isn't stuck with the mandatory EMG pickups that the oar shaped model dictates.
We are proud & happy to offer this economically priced, Pre-Gibson, real Newburgh, Steinberger guitar in our line of fabulous fakes.        702-597-0147

At Ed Roman guitars we specialize in making your dream come true, For example, At any given time we are going to have in stock many guitars that were stage played or pre owned by such celebrities as Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, John Entwistle, Roger McGuinn, Eddie Van Halen, Leslie West & many others.

Affordable Replica

George Harrison's "Rocky Guitar"

As with all Ed Roman Fabulous Fakes this guitar comes in an exhibition model or a players model. You can select whatever guitar you like as a platform. Or you can send us your guitar and we will paint it for you.