Norma Frankenstein

This was put together from two sepperate Norma guitars, built in the late '60's or early '70's. The neck is birch plywood (about 40 layers) with an Indian rosewood fingerboard, perloid block inlays and wood binding with a slice of rosewood on the peghead over a slice of white plastic. The body is a thin resonant piece of Philipine mahogany. All Asian companies use Philipine mahogany for packing crates and hardwood stores that carry it put it next to the bin marked "Genuine Mahogany". It is considered low grade stuff. Today's sensibilities run toward light-weight guitars (When I was a kid a "good" guitar had to be HEAVY) and this wood ought to be in demand. People still want Honduras mahogany, though. The neck on this one is very straight, which is a good thing since the truss rod doesn't do anything but rattle and spin. Heavy strings will bend the neck into the right shape and put enough pressure on the truss rod to shut it up. It is a loud guitar. I play it unplugged and the people upstairs wonder if I sold my electrics for a cheep accoustic. I put a seymore duncan p-90 in it and it sounds like a loud cheep accoustic, only amplified. Someone put shaller tuners on the neck and I bought a bigsby flat-top tailpiece for it. The bridge that came with the Bigsby had a flat edge across the top and when you used the vibrato it had a wah-wah effect. This is known as Sitar Sindrome and you only get it with Bigsbys. Normally the strings sit on the little flat spot and have a trebly sound but when you press down on the whammy bar the bridge rocks forward so the strings are riding on a sharp corner. They go from a trebly sound to a bassy sound. The first time I restrung this axe, the Sitar Syndrome was ruined because the extra heavy strings had dug little grooves into the aluminum bridge. If someone can make me a copy out of steel I'll be their best friend.
The original finish has been covered with duct-tape. Call it a duct-tape sunburst. I'm giving this a 5 because the good and bad features just about cancel.

As I said it is loud, even when unplugged. I've recorded demo's with it when I needed an accoustic sound. The philipine mahogany is THAT resonant. I plug it into tube amps and it sounds warm enough. It sucks with solid state amps, though. Too edgy, and every fault comes shining through.

The necks on these old Norma's are hit-or-miss. The original neck for this guitar wasn't salvageable so I didn't have much choice but to replace it. There were lots of flaws in the finish (by that I mean dents from use and abuse) and I have added some myself. The frets were low and wide but needed dressing and regluing the loose ones. Cant fault the original makers, cause its so old. Action is adjustable and with dressed frets, it can be adjusted for fast playing, not that I use it for that.

With the good hardware I've got on this one, it is a very reliable and playable beater. I keep it accessible while the rest of my guitars are cased, locked and hidden away. I would definitely use it for gigs or studio work because it doesn't sound like anything else. Playing this guitar is a statement in non-conformity.

There probably aren't many Norma guitar executives, middle-managers, distributers, salespeople or factory workers still alive and there's no way any of them would consent to working on this guitar for me.

This has been an excellent beater for 15 years. I wouldn't give it up for hundreds of dollars. You dont get unique sounding guitars like this every day, but you need a collection with different sounding instruments. Every collection should include SEVERAL pawn-shop specials and frankenstein guitars like this