Instrument: The Strato was the second solid-body model Framus brought to market after the Hollywood. It was built in various versions from 1963 to 1975 and was one of Framus' most successful models. Ours is stamped 70 I and thus dates from September 1970. At that time, the Strato formally resembled the Fender Jaguar, but was an independent development.
Material: Top and back of the guitar are made of maple, in between the body was glued together from different parts of maple and alder. The neck is made of the complex to manufacture and practically indestructible multiply beechwood. It has a beautiful rosewood fingerboard with pearloid dot inlays and side markers in five frets. The massive hardware is nickel-plated, the open single tuners are chrome-plated. The pickguard is a beautiful piece of light brown marbled perloid.
Electrics: Here we have the Framus standard that has been tried and tested a thousand times: three P90 single coils are selected via a three-way toggle switch and controlled via a master volume and a master tone control. The bridge and middle pickups are connected permanently, so you can choose between neck pickup, middle pickup and bridge pickup and all three pickups together. Connection is via a standard jack socket.
Instruments history: Unknown. We were offered the guitar, it had several previous owners, the last one had it for many years, since about the year 2000. He played it regularly at home in his hobby room, it obviously had no band or stage career. He had taken the guitar as it is, from a private seller and had not changed anything on it all these years except from changing the strings regularly.
Restoration work: We cleaned and polished all the lacquer surfaces, and on the body we carefully touched up the edges, which had some scratches and traces of playing. The fingerboard and frets were sanded and oiled or polished. The tuners were disassembled, cleaned, polished and re-oiled, as well as all hardware cleaned and polished. The slightly rusty pole screws of the pickups were removed and painted black again. All other screws were also derusted or replaced with matching originals. Instead of the missing original vibrato lever, a matching Framus original from the sixties was mounted. Finally, a set of new 010 Pyramid nickel strings and a complete setup were added.
Current condition: This Strato is a solid, versatile and fully stressable player for all days. Pure vintage fun for excellent value for money. It is back in top condition, clean, smell-free and beautiful all round. Why the old tape tuners were replaced, we don't know. But the mounted single tuners are also from the seventies, were also used by Framus and are absolutely authentic. Just like the vibrato lever. Otherwise, the guitar is 100% original. Fingerboard and frets are practically as new. Everything works perfectly, the string action is very low and therefore the Strato plays very easy and on a modern level. The sound is what you would expect from a great single-coil guitar. Loud, present, quite aggressive and brachial via the bridge pickup, powerful and bassy via the neck pickup. The middle pickup gives the bridge sound a little more pressure and bandwidth - very nice! The simple control of the electrics makes the handling easy and intuitive, but more than sufficient for countless sounds. Because the guitar can do practically any style of music, it is surprisingly versatile, from soft and reverberant Cliff Richard sounds to hard rock, it can do it all. Rhythm, solo, backing, lead - you don't really need more than the Strato.
Measures: Overall length 102 cm/40.2”; body length 47 cm/18.5”; lower bout width 35 cm/13.8”; waist width 24 cm/9.4”; upper bout width 30 cm/11.8”; body depth 3 cm/1.2”; scale length 63 cm/24.8” (zero fret to saddle); fingerboard width 4,2 cm/1.6” at zero fret, 5,2 cm/2” at 12th fret; overall weight 3.650 g; string action on 12th fret 1,5 mm/0.06”.
Purchase and payment: Send us an e-mail to info@german-vintage-guitar.com and you will receive your invoice immediately. Or simply order here through the shop. We are happy about a direct bank transfer (SWIFT), because this is free of charge, in contrast to the PayPal payment with its high service fees.
