Framus Camarillo Custom

The guitar was built in 2006. it has 22 Frets, H/H Seymour Duncan SSH1N & SSH4 Jeff Beck Pickup`s (you can use the potis to split them to single coils), Toggle switch, volume and contour potis (push/pull potis), framus security locks.

The body consists of extra light swamp ash with a 20mm bookmatched flamed maple-top. the neck consists of ovankol from africa. the fretboard consists of east-indian ebony with original nacre inlays - it's hand-polished. it looks a strat but it's built like a les paul.

it came with a with premium line rockbag by warwick (worth:69?).

i play guitar in a punk-rock band but the sound may be a bit too hard for me. I like les paul-like sounds but the framus' sound differs from that, it sounds more clear. when i first played it through my Marshall stack (MG100HDFX, 4x12 cabinet) with overdrive i wasn't that impressed. later i tried different settings and it sounds much better now :D.

The Clean sound:
When i first played it clean it was such a incredible and powerful sound - i never heard such a voluminous guitar sound. With the bridge PU (single coil) you can also get a screaming and transparent strat sound.

OD Mode:
It's a very hard sound and it isn't that variable. nearly no noise. in my opinion it's a bit too raspy. you can vary the sound through switching PU's but it's not really changing anything concerning the raspy sound.

Framus - The Untold Story:

Once upon a time there was Crank Jankovich coming home from school where he found a "Framus Camarillo Custom".

When he opened the gigbag it was like a with god's blessing attached treasure chest which enriched all human beings living on earth. As he was looking at the guitar he imagined the possibilities the guitar was offering with its sound to enlight all people on earth.

THE END_______________________________________________________________

Mine is a burgundy sunburst and it looks so beautiful and amazing - i couldn't believe it...it came with the highest manufacturing quality ever and it's able to keep up with PRS guitars easily. it's hard to play because the frets are very wide.

i didn't gig with it yet but it seems to be able to handle with all that stuff. it's build to last at least a century...

Because of me being left-handed i had to wait 3 months for the guitar to arrive, the guitar came two weeks earlier though. i've never dealt with the customer support though...

I think it's a very good guitar but you have to like the way the it should be played. if you like to fight with your guitar then this one's the right one for you ;) .

First at all I hope you all know where Framus comes from: they are made by the fine bass manufacturers Warwick in germany. Mine was made in 2001 or 2002, I bought it new in august 2002, so I already got it for one year now. It has ingredients from different countries: the body is made of 2 parts of US swamp ash, with a 20 mm thick bookmatched flamed maple top, mine is in a nice honey sunburst. The neck is made of ovangkol and has a beautiful black ebony fretboard with 22 frets. The swinging string lengh (the place between nut and bridge) is Fender lengh so you can tune it easily lower than with a Gibson because the string tension is higher. The neck just feels right to me. It's really not thin but also not too fat, but much fatter than the typical Ibanez speed neck...you just have something nice rounded and oiled (its not painted but oiled and feels really woody, I just love that neck!) It is "bolt-in" like Framus writes, which means that you can see two bolts from the back and two bolts are below the neck pickup and hold the neck from down there. They made a fine rounded neck/body...I don't know the word for it...transition? You know what I mean: no problems to reach the 22nd fret on every string. The guitar looks like a mixture of les paul and strat, which it is, in fact and it does its work well. Imagine a strat with a flamed maple top and 2 humbuckers with chrome covers: seymour duncan '59 neck pickup and duncan jeff beck on the bridge, nothing new, just a tough combination to beat. It has got a tune-o-matic bridge and stop tailpiece. It has a 3-way strat like pickup selector but you can split both humbuckers by pulling the volume pot so you get six different pickup combinations. It has only one volume pot and one for tone. The tuners are non-locking framus made, some months ago they started putting locking tuners on the custom models. I wish I had them on mine but the standards work very smooth and keep the tuning very well. It came with a very good Warwick gigbag but I bought "her" a case anyway...

The sound is just perfect for me, I wanted a good distortion sound on the bridge and a fat clean sound on the neck, thats what I need. Also the JB in the bridge is clean very nice and the '59 can also be played distorted as we sometimes play "Santana"-solos into our songs...for fun and because it feels like you have a big black moustache. I play in a band consisting of three people (2 guitars/singers and a drummer, no bass! maybe one day but it works well as it is right now!). We're all into heavy, death and power metal and also a little black metal though we also listen to a lot of old and new punk rock like nofx and hardcore like snapcase and heavenshallburn. We just try to make our own blend of music...call it heavy pop or something, or punk metal or whatever...so the guitar is perfect because it can do the things you can do, the limit is me, the player. I play it together with a Marshall 100 watt JCM 900 dual reverb head going into a 1960 TV 4x12 cabinet using a Marshall Jackhammer distortion pedal (I love it! Its so fat you need no bassist!) and Danelectro Milkshake chorus & Danelectro PB & J delay. The JB can pump deep and ballsy with the Jackhammer and also scream and cut if needed as everyone knows, its just the perfect allround humbucker if you play mostly distorted. The only thing I'll maybe change one day is the bridge pickup into a JB in zebra without chrome cover, maybe I'll have less feedback then...it comes from the jackhammer, if I used the distortion of the head there's no noise at all. Maybe I'll even get a duncan dimebucker for it but that wouldn't look good because that one's only available in black...but I'm sure it would kick ass! Oh yeah, the split sounds are ok, I think but I never use them, they're just there but I cannot say if it's well done or not. Sorry for that.

It was just set up perfectly when I got it. I bought it at a big music store so I think they checked it before it got sold but when it came out of the gig bag I just had to tune it and thats it!

I played one private "living room gig" with this guitar in may 2003 on an old farm and it didn't let me down. The whole guitar seems to be very reliably, the only thing that would make me bring a backup is the possibility to break a string though this happened only once on this guitar though I play my strings until they're nearly rusty. The finish is gorgeous! You can fall into the maple top, it just looks like you can touch the flames...very deep color, very good paint job. Two things had to be fixed: I wanted Schaller strap locks and the stock pin holes were too wide, so I filled them with wood and glue for wood, let it dry and then put in the Schaller pins. No problem. The second was that a wire that connected one pot with the bridge pickup was broken, but got fastly fixed on guarantee within half an hour in the store I bought it. I think that does not say anything about the quality, it can happen everywhere. I give this an 9 because it feels so much more reliable than my other guitars from Ibanez and Yamaha.

When I had the pickup problem I was really upset and sent a bunch of e-mails to the store I bought it and also to Framus. Both answered very quick and said, go to the store and they'll fix it. It was even the Warwick/Framus boss who answered very quick and nice, he also gave me the hint with the wood glue when I had sent an e-mail to Framus and asked what I can do to get the strap locks fixed. So:
very nice and quick reply!

I'm 25 now and play guitar since I was 20 or 21 so I started really late but it's getting better every day and every rehearsal is getting better and better. The guitar is really inspiring and feels just professional. Nothing can harm it like it seems, the paint job is fine and the guitar is really lightweight, perfectly balanced and just pure fun and inspiration to play...leads, fat fast palm muted rhythms, it all sounds just like...the authority. I'd buy it again if it was lost, stolen or broken no question! Maybe in another color but Framus has so many cool options that it would become difficult to Deicide (haha! I meant "decide") I also have a Ibanez GAX 70 (same shape like Scott Ian's signature Jackson) loaded with a duncan invader in the bridge and an old 88 or 89 Yamaha power strat, they're both well playable and reliable but do not feel as sexy as my Framus. After one year I can say that she has already got a soul and one day she will get a name. Have a nice day and feel free to ask me questions if you want to buy a Framus Camarillo.