Framus Nashville

This is a '74 German-built guitar w/ a two piece Bavarian Larch body (stop that laughing...) and a fitted maple neck w/ some moderate flame on the headstock. The body wood looks like a Scandinavian bunk bed and is shaped sort of like a Telecaster version of a Gretsch Super Axe (more on this later). It has two non-adjustable chrome covered pups, a master volume and master tone control, and a clunky-but-solid six position rotary switch. Positions are as follows: 1-neck pup w/ capacitor, good for "dinner guitar" sounds, 2-neck pup, 3-both pups, 4-bridge pup, 5- out of phase, 6-out of phase w/ cap-good for "dinner funk". The wide, thin neck has low jumbo frets and a zero fret along with some German made but probably not Schaller tuners. It has as many frets as a typical tele. Te bridge is unique in that it's fully adjustable as one would expect, except that one can also adjust the string laterally and customize the string spacing.

I play rockabilly and old country stuff and this guitar is excellent in that it sounds VERY Gretschy. The pups have plenty of average output and are pretty quiet. Except for the capacitor settings it's fairly bright and full. I virtually never use the out of phase sounds. The dual pup setting nails the classic Joe Maphis sound. The neck pup w/ cap is pure Chet Atkins. The pups have a very even response on most settings, almost to the point of negating ever needing a compressor (if you like those sort of things). It's twangy in all settings. I do wish it had a pole piece to raise on the B string, though. I use it through either a RI Twin, RI Vibroverb, or a '55 Flot-A-Tone Model 600. The twenty-seven year old selector switch is relatively quiet, too.

This guitar is of typically excellent German build quality and is a fully professional instrument. However, it shows that '70s era vogue of being heavy (as well as the designers' never ending quest for sustain). The neck shape isn't the most comfortable for the "thumb over the top" player. If you use "proper" fingering technique, however, it plays very comfortably. It appears to be finished in REAL lacquer. The construction on this thing seems rock-solid. While it has some dings appropriate for a used-not abused 1974-made instrument, it's in very good shape overall.

See above comments. It's 27 years old and in good shape. It appears to have had some pro-level road use as it came w/ a custom made Anvil case with stencilled staging numbers and Rock-It cargo service stickers all over it.

I believe Framus went out of business not too many years after this came out. I've heard they're coming back though.

This very guitar was reviewed as a Pawn Shop Prize in the (I believe) August '99 Guitar Player (has old jazzer guy on the cover...). I don't think the reviewer noticed the model name on the guitar or who was hired as design consultant for it. This guitar is not great for rock or blues. Framus didn't send Hans and Deiter out to make a country guitar, they hired Chet Atkins as a design consultant. The body shape is very much the precursor to those ugly Gretsch Super Axes Chet designed that came out two years after this guitar was built. This also explains the overall sound, neck shape preference and lateral string adjustment (which is an awesome thing if you do anything related to finger picking, tele grip style, etc.) This is one fairly butt-ugly instrument, but if you like it clean and twangy this is an awesome choice of intrument. This is a great Gretch-on-a budget guitar. I doubt I could locate another one if it were stolen!