Kramer neck construction as shown in the 1979 Kramer catalog.
Since Steve Carr hadn't managed to build the Axe that Gene envisioned, Gene took a "next man up" mentality and next in line turned out to be Kramer. The Kramer story begins in the early 70's when Gary Kramer and Travis Bean had a partnership—Kramer was basically the financier and handled administrative duties, simply because he saw potential in aluminum neck guitars, while Travis handled the guitar side. (www.garykramerguitar.com) Kramer soured on the relationship because Travis secured the patent for his aluminum neck under his own name and not registered to the company. Kramer is refreshingly upfront about the fact that he just took what Travis had created and tweaked it: instead of a solid aluminum neck he chose a T-profile with inlayed wood sections which also served to combat what Kramer felt was a relatively heavy neck on the Travis Bean. According to the 1979 Kramer catalog the design idea was to "combine the strength of forged aluminum with the warmth of wood for playing ease and comfort". Lest anyone confuse the two aluminum beasts Kramer also opted for a forked (or split) headstock.
By 1980 Kramer had slowly moved from more or less traditional dual-cutaway shapes into more bold designs, the XL and XK series had some angular and "modern" body shapes so the Axe shape was probably not perceived as particularly odd. Of course, that doesn't begin to explain why Gene should choose to work with Kramer and decide to try the aluminum neck concept—as far as I can tell Gene himself has never mentioned it and there are actually relatively few facts available about the Kramer Axe. The only possible connection I've been able to find is a mention by Paul in an interview: "Then Kramer just made me a guitar I haven't had the chance to use yet, which looks like a stick." (Sounds 1980) Kramer had just one "stick" guitar, the Duke, which happens to be the last of Kramer's aluminum neck guitars. It wasn't revealed to the public until 1981 but prototypes were surely available for the right person to try. It is a weak and incidental connection but it is the only one I've found.
Considering the history of Gene's basses up to this point—the myriad of modifications of the LoBue and the many, albeit minor, tweaks to the Grabber and Spector—one could be forgiven for thinking that something similar happened with the Kramer Axe: Gene got a bass and then tried a few different things out until he was (more or less) satisfied. I for one was sure that's how the story played out but alas, the truth is more complex than that. I won't go into how the Axes Gene played differed from the production model in any real detail, suffice to say that there are elements to both that were hand-carved which means that each individual bass can usually be identified and, as photos from the production facility attest, there were more Axes made specifically for Gene than he has been pictured with.
Gene shows up with his first Kramer Axe on May 22, 1980 for a Waring Abbott photo shoot (as seen below). This particular Axe has 20 frets, a nut with a zero fret, a black P-bass style pickup, and Gene's favored Leo Quan Badass bridge. Note the circled "cracks" in the blade which is a detail that was carved by hand on each individual instrument and allows us to identify them. As we'll see the number of these cracks differed as did their shape. A different photo from this particular shoot was used in the advertisement for the Axe in 1980 where it is described as "Designed by Gene Simmons, hand-crafted exclusively by Kramer." Photos from this session were also used in Bravo magazine which had a giveaway of one Axe guitar and one Axe bass.
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