Refurbished old Framus guitar

[DMgolf66]

Thank you for such an amazing write up and wealth of info. Very helpful.

Fortunately or unfortunately, I didn't win the guitar. It ended up jumping up to $2,200 + 25% buyers, so that was too much for me.

[Little Jay]

Yes they go for a lot of money! I have seen them go for up to $4000

There is a Framus Vintage Guitars-group on Facebook that has some discussion dealing with the AZ-10 and AZ-9 (Venetian vs Florentine cutaway).

Framus (Warwick-group) re-introduced the AZ-10 some years ago, those are even more expensive. Those are solid (pressed I assume) tops for sure, and set necks. The original series had bolt-on necks (maybe early 60ies had set necks as well, but those have more differences and are simple called Attila Zoller models)

[Tom Karol]

Hofner made an Attila Zoller model for a while in the 80's, but when I was with him he played the Framus. He had it had it strung with La Bella .013-.056 flatwounds (which he designed). He made the pickup himself - possibly a prototype of the one Shadow now markets. He had no issues with me playing it when it was out of his hands (which wasn't very often). It played like butter and sounded incredible through his Benson or Standel (can't remember which) amp with one 15" JBL D-130.

[Hammertone]

One version of the Hofner AZ:

[KirkP]

I have some thoughts to add to this old thread. I dusted off my BL-15 last week and realized a couple of things:

1) The bass control circuit (see sketch) would only be fully effective when the volume control is full up. The earlier complaint that it does nothing might be due to rolling the volume knob back. The bass control on my BL-15 behaves this way.

2) The treble control circuit is unusual. The sketch compares The BL-15 to typical Gibson 50’s wiring. Note that Framus grounds one end of the treble pot. Must guitars leave that end disconnected. Grounding it loads the pickup down with an additional 250 ohms, at all treble settings. I think that will tend to darken the tone, even when the treble is full up. That’s not necessarily a problem, but if anyone finds the pickups to be too dark and the bass control doesn’t help, consider unsoldering that ground. I haven’t tried it though!



Another discovery: My guitar had an annoying buzz when played unplugged. I initially thought this was due to the roller bridge, but after some trial and error I realized it was from the strings contacting the slotted tailpiece. A thin strip of felt between strings and tailpiece eliminated it. Now it sounds pretty good unplugged. If I get around to cleaning the pots & switch and wax potting the microphonic pickups I think it will be a good instrument.