The company was founded in the late 1970s by Dennis Berardi and Gary Kramer, a close friend and associate of Travis Bean, to manufacture aluminum-necked guitars. Gary Kramer, Dennis Berardi, Peter LaPlaca (a Vice President at Norlin, parent company of Gibson in 1974), and investor Henry Vaccaro joined forces to open a plant in Neptune, New Jersey. Soon thereafter, Gary Kramer moved to Los Angeles, and his connection with the company would become in name only, long before the wooden neck era that began in the 1980s.