EKO Tramp II

This guitar was made in Recanti, Italy in the late 60's early 70's exact dating impossible due to lack of serial number.

It features a single-cutaway thinline, archtop, hollowbody with two square single-coil pickups(probably Vox pickups) each with separate volume/tone knobs(who are like none ive seen before, chromed brass knobs with rubber o-rings for better grip) and a three-way switch by the cutaway.
It has a jazz-styled tailpiece with a wood bridge that is not attached to the body but is held in place by the strings. The neck is a bolt-on maple with a rosewood, 21fret, board with white plastic dot inalys. The original Eko/Vox tuners have been replaced. This guitar has a non-painted natural laquered headstock unlike all other Tramp models Ive seen and like some Vox guitars have(this means that the guitar was probably made in the late 60's but could also be late 1970's sidenote: Eko stopped production in 1980)
Its deep see-thru cherry red, with creme bindings on body and neck. I do not know which kind of wood it is made of but it looks very nice with some flaming on the back. oh, and its got that crazy fret by the nut so the nuts only function is to keep the strings in place.

I bought this guitar with something jazz-like in my mind so I put flatwound strings on it and it sounded great, warm and acoustic but clear not too bassy. A definently high-class sound.
I play whatever amps are available but at home I have a Zoom505II connected to my computer and even though that is a really cheap mfx box, it works great for clean sounds, I just add a litle compression and some reverb and it makes the guitar sounds beautiful.
Distorted it makes a very 60's sound, beatles and the like. The pickups sound old and genuine and they dont hum very much at all. Naturally you cant get it to work with playing metal or even 70's rock, the pickups are old low output single coils that were never meant for that but I dont think anyone would expect that from a guitar like this.
Overall it sounds better than i had expected it to and definently better than you'd expect for the price(a not so slight understatement)

This guitar is about 30 years old and it has held up, the only flaws are that the finish is cracked in a few places and some mistreatment has led to a small piece of the pickguard breaking off and theres a small scratch on the side. The frets are (excuse my english) really grinded low to the point of it being almost fretless(its allright when playing melodies but chords buzz simetimes when you cant press hard enough) so yo can tell its been played and judging from that it has stood its ground well.
The loose bridge makes intonation a bit tricky, you have to nudge it around a little to get it right and you cant intonate each string separatly youll have to do the high- and low E and hope the others keep well too.

If it hasnt broken down in 30 years it probably wont break tomorrow either.

Ive never dealt with the since the original company doesnt exist anymore, someone has taken upp the name and logo and is producing guitars and other things but from what Ive seen these are completely new models of a more modern style.

Ever since I got to try a friends Epiphone Casino 5 years ago, Ive wanted a semi-acoustic but Ive has other things to spend money on and I already owned a Gibson les Paul and a Charvel so I didnt really need another guitar. But recently another friend bought a 1960's Eko(which later turned out to be a Crucianelli Elite) and the old yearning for semi-acouistics awoke again. The great thing about Eko is that they are great guitar but have no collectors value so you can find one dirt-cheap. My friend with the Crucianelly found this one on the internet for me so I bought it unplayed because it was so cheap. And its great, very much a $1000+ for the same price as a crappy newbie guitar.