This was my very first electric guitar whose purchase in late 1974 pretty exactly dates my entry into guitar-player-hood (or hell/heaven). At that time in history Framus guitars were everywhere in Germany – right after the sought after but expensive US brands. Countless times did I look through the Framus catalog. I didn’t really know what I wanted, needed or liked – just a guitar you could plug into an amp. Then I saw this beauty in the used rack of our local music store, Musikecke (later to turn into Musicland), which back then was a hole in the wall filled with guitars.
Since this was my only electric guitar for many years it saw a lot of use and abuse. Luckily the neck on this thing is laminated and could probably be used as a baseball bat without taking damage. After about a year I exchanged the stock Framus neck pickup by a DiMarzio. Of course the DiMarzio pickup was narrower than the Framus cavity so I had to build my own pickup mount from molten plastic – all on mother’s living room table.
This guitar has experienced a lot. When I was about 16 I traveled to the US visiting my dad. I took the guitar in a very cheap bag – the only bag I owned. The trip to Louisville, KY went fine. But on the return trip, after I was done with the passport controls in Frankfurt, all my luggage had come out on the belt, except for the guitar. I spent a long time looking all over the place and was close to tears when I saw a guitar leaning on a wall on the other side of the huge hall. It was my Framus SG copy – without a bag but in one piece and in tune. I never found out what happened (and maybe I don’t want to).
After I got my George Benson GB10 the Framus SG copy became my experimental guitar. It was four-stringed, with a minor seventh tuning, for a few years. After I bought my Chapman Stick in the early 21st century I used the Framus to fool around in 5th tuning – half of the strings were bass strings. The neck is still as straight as ever.
In the Summer of 2014 I restored this guitar. Details and photos are here.