Framus F-66

1966 Framus "Star Bass" F-66 Double Pick-up Single cutaway archtop bass from Bavaria, Germany. I paid $275.00 for it in excellent condition with a semi-soft shell case about 15 years ago, but I was working in the music store where it came in as a trade-in at the time. (The funny part about this was that when I saw the bass I immediately recognized it as the self-same one I was thinking about buying new in 1967. The owner confimed the store he purchased it from which made me certain.) Plywood top and back, cherry red finish, mahogany neck. 30.5 inch scale. Bill Wyman from the Stones is seen with a single-pickup version of this bass in VERY EARLY Stones videos before he got the Vox Teardrop.
The bass has a tone and volume control for each pickup in a straight-line configuration, and a carling-slider switch for each pickup on a tortiose-shell plate on the upper bout. It also has a limited-travel spring-loaded long-pointer master volume knob up close by the metal thumbrest which rotates through about 75? or so and has an associated slider switch up by the pickup selector sliders to take it out of the circuit. This is presumably a fader or vibrato arrangement.
The pickups are not easily adjustable for height without shimming under them since they are mounted right down to the body (more about this later) nor do they have adjustable pole pieces.
The tailpiece is a trapeze emgraved with the legend "STAR BASS". The
bridge is floating on two rather rather weird smallish pedestals, and has a chrome cover over the saddles which rattles if it is not properly "pre-loaded" to fit under the height adjuster screws.
The neck is smallish in width (though not so thin as my Vox "toothpick neck" Constellation or the "Wyman" The frets (including zero fret) are comfortable to play. The strings pass through a bone nut and under a hold-down bar on the clunky-looking headstock which is similar to the arrangement on a Decca guitar and on toward 2 on a side tuning heads which are a bit larger than Hofner's and have pearloid grips. The action of the machine heads is smooth and accurate.
Now, to discuss those pickups. Why they chose to try to mount flat-bottom pickups to an arch-top instrument in the way they did must have been a matter of cheapness and engineering oversight. They did not cut the hole larger than the pickups and use a mounting ring. Instead, they cut the hole just big enough to feed the cable through and used some little washers under each of the four mounting holes to keep the pickup from rocking around or mashing the arch top in the center. Of course this allows for no adjustment of height unless you want to use much taller rubber washers on the bass than on the bridge pickup to try to somewhat match the heights. The pickups are much weaker than those on either my Vox or Hofner, but have an overall nice, balanced mid-bass to fairly sharp treble tone. Overall they complement the woody sound of the bass rather well.
As for fit and finish, well, because of the afore-mentioned pickup-mounting faux-pas, I had to shim the inside bolts at the heel by about 3/16" to get the neck to allow me to play at about 1/4" at the 20 fret. The truss rod set right up for me like a champ.
All in all, the bass sounds great although it has a dead spot in the upper frets of the G string. It doesn't have the thump of my Vox or Hofner, but all in all I like it. That having been said, this thing was an engineering abortion from the factory, so it took quite a bit of innovative patience and luthiery expereince for me to make it playable. (It must have sat under the previous owner's bed for decades because I can't see hoe in hell he could have ever played it the way I received it.)
The headstock is rather clunky in shape, but the bass is nicely balanced. The metal "Framus" script logo which is varnished over and under to the headstock is slightly warped and coming de-laminated from the wood at the

I use this bass in a Catholic Liturgy Band. I have previously played hard rock with it, but I'm pretty much of an old timer so I use flat-wound strings on my instrument and like a lot of thump and a woody sound. It sustains pretty well though.
I play through a bose PA with a subwoofer, but I particularly like the sound through a V4 Ampeg.

Very pretty but somewhat hurried, cheap workmanship.

The bass was unplayable as I received it, but now it's quite nice.

This thing has held up for all these years (of course as I said, I may the only one who has actually given it much playing.) I would not have it as my only gig bass only because my Vox and Hofner have more tonal versatility.

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I've been a bassist for 39 years. This Framus doesn't compare to a Fender bass, but it doesn't pretend to try to. I like it better than Gibson EB-1s I have played, and I currently have an EBO for solid-body tones as well as my archtop Vox and Beatle Hofner which are my usual instruments.
The Framus is cool, but not that cool unless you are into that very woody sound.