NGD - '73 Framus 10230 aka Strato 6

[raphaël]

I'm the proud owner of Pat's (Pacafeliz) former "Jazzblaster".
I've got this guitar 10 days ago...one more step into my Framus GAS, which is gigantic since the last 9 months.

First of all, Pat is THE GENT !!!!!
Great deal, very patient about everything and he trully is a great guy...I'm happy he's living in Deutschland now

Ok then, pics and review:

The guitar is beautiful.
I'm not into red guitars at all (that said, 4 of my guitars are red...didn't meant to) but that one is stunning.
The red is kind of orange, the red has faded a lot.

Can't really see this shade of red with my pics...


Nice checking all over the body...nice!!!

Nicer!!!
And we can see some orange shade on that one.

And here we can see the sandwich construction of the body:


Speaking of sandwich construction, the neck is laminated, like Framus loved to build them.
I can't say enough how great those necks are. They feel strong and there is something with the touch I can't really explain...this is soft, this is different, intimacy (if this makes sense)...arf...I really can't explain the feeling !!!

Anyway,
Laminated!!!

(I have a spare Framus bushing somewhere...)
The nut is weird...plus the zero fret is useless on the 3 high strings.
On the paper it should be awful and useless because "the system" seems broken (and it certainly is!!), but it's working very well somehow!!!!
The nut will stay here for now.
This neck is very different from my Strato Deluxe's neck. The heel is different, the logo is different (ths one is a decal, the other one is engraved) and this headstock is straight.
The tuners are originals...don't really know what to think about them. They look cheap, but they stay in tune quite well.
I will keep them then!!!

The only common thing with my other Framus necks is this tiny tiny "Made In West Germany" neck plate:


This is the only guitar I have in the group with HBs. I'm all single coils.
Don't know how WRHB should sound, but those one are freakin awesome!!!!
Pat was right .

I suck at describing pickups with technical terms, sorry...
They are just great and different, which is perfect to me.
Three knobs controls:

1 volume, 1 tone and "1 tone":

Meaning:
The volume knob is the master, the tone knob in the middle is the master tone (from what I understand here) and the bottom one is something else.
It is some kind of boost knob!!!
Fully closed you have a pure and very clear and clean sound, but fully opened it's different.
It's like the pure and clear and clean is very much still here but with other frequencies (more bassy perhaps) and with grit!!!!
It turns the amps to OD!!!

This might be the feature I like the best on that guitar.
This is pure awesomness.

Another feature I like is the Bigbsy.
It feels very smooth.
The arm is very long, perfect for grabbing it effortless while playing , without to much thinking.
Plus it's beautiful:

Strings through!!!

I said Beautiful

And the beautiful and radiused bridge (even if the fretboard is flatter):


Ok...
The overall feeling is that this guitar is (was !!!!) very well made (some might consider the sandwich construction of the body as a flaw, it isn't to me).
The pickups are awesome, very new to me, they really are something.
The controls are perfect and very useful and give even more personnality to the guitar.
The Bigsby is great...I had a '65 "real" Bigsby on one of my projects 5 years ago, I much more prefer that Framus one. The spring is not very stroung but it fits my play and I have other guitars with strong trems.
The guitar is not that heavy, the body feels nice while playing.

But what makes that guitar an instant keeper to me is the neck!!
OMG OMG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Pat said it is a weird neck, almost square...
My main acoustic guitar is a '73 Framus Texan with a square neck...I loooooooove that neck, but I have to admit it's a very weird feeling indeed...I'm used to thin and quite slim necks, like my absolute #1, the '77 MM neck on my Partsuar.
The Texan neck come just after that one though.

The Strato 6 has the same neck, but slimmer!!!!thinner!!!!!!
This is my #2 neck now

Might the Strato 6 be my #2 guitar??
In 10 days??
It might...
But I'm still honey mooning, very very hard...I will wait before being definitive with that new guitar.
But the guitar and me already have a strong relationship

Thank you Paaaaaaaat !!!!!

Rock on!!
raph

[Pacafeliz]

Hey hey, cool that you like it so much. I lived everything too, except that awful neck shape - it just felt wrong to me. Weird, cuz I love the necks on all my other Framus (Frami?).
Btw I think the tone controls are actually one treble and one bass - pretty cool.

So, keep on having fun with it! Rock on!

Pat.

[raphaël]

It's incredible how an awful neck for someone can be a marvelous neck for someone else, this is amazing (particularly when I understand we both have quite small hands )
Anyway, I will now reconsider my own ads and listings when I say "the neck is incredible", or "this is one of the best"...I will stay concrete about shapes and how they feels now .

As for the controls, I really don't know how to describe the "boost knob" I've talked about.
What I feel is that the bottom knob doesn't work as a regular tone knob, it doesn't make the sound like the other tone knobs when it's fully closed...because, to my ears, it doesn't remove frequencies (compared to the other one)...but some are added...and some kind of volume, the grit I've mentioned.

But you are right, it's pretty cool, either way.

I have a friend who is sound engineer, he told me to come with the guitar to check the frequencies...I don't really know how he will do this, but this is exciting !!!

Ok then!!!
I really like that guitar very very very very much.
I can't put her down since I have it...

[antisymmetric]

Congrats, that's really cool- I remember liking it when Pat first got it.
*sigh* Must be nice to be in Europe and have access to the lovely vintage stuff made there. Not a huge amount/ variety of it in my part of the world.

[Kent]

Are these proven to be laminates? They look like it but they also could be solid woods of type uncommon to other builders.I have 2 Framusses (Frami? Framocerouses? ) and a Hopf (pictured elsewhere on this forum) and they use the same material. Something about the wood makes me think that they are solids.

If they are laminates, they must be strong as hell.

[Cyclonick]

Congrats! Looks awesome!

What is the scale length of the Strato 6?

[crianlarich]

So great that there's a place for slow responders here
Scale length is 63 cm, like on any Framus electric. The wood in use with this nice example should be solid pitch pine (Pechkiefer). It was common though that they used some sort of top layer. Which shows in the cracks of the finish (yours surprisingly is very similar to the red on the '62 I had - from the first year of Stratos).

Necks from '73 I know of have a round profile, narrow but a bit thick (for my taste). The "square" thing happens on an archtop from 1974 a friend of mine owns.

[Cyclonick]

Thanks for shedding some light on this. Could not find that info in the web.

So a JM style vintage guitar with a Gibson scale for a reasonable price. Interesting ... *fights inner GAS*

[raphaël]

Actually, the Strato 6 is 63cm and both my Strato Super and Strato Deluxe are 62,5cm