Hello!

[Leigh3594]

Hi all,

My name's Leigh and I'm a newbie on here. I've been playing guitar for about 12 years now but only probably the last 3/4 years of that have included acoustic playing. I'm loving people like Andy McKee and Don Ross at the moment, very inspiring and definitely something I want to work towards.

I currently have a Yamaha FG830 and more recently have been given a very interesting Framus Missouri. A friend of mine found it and handed it into the police, after a few months nobody had claimed it and so they got to keep it. They aren't guitar players so said I could have it. I know nothing about this guitar, I've had a look on Framus vintage and the most I can gather is it's a 1965 Framus Missouri 5/60. Check out the pictures:

















As you can see, it's a bit rough around the edges and at some point has had the neck broken and repaired. It's also had new tuning pegs and I'm not sure about the bridge either. For a start, it moves which I've never encountered before - although I'm told they are common on violins? Either way, the bridge is way to high and it's near impossible to play anything further than the 8th fret.

I can't work out whether this is a completely one-off guitar or if it has been repaired by someone using random bits and pieces. Does anyone have any ideas? Ive been looking for a few weeks and I haven't seen one that looks like it? I'd quite like to restore it to its former glory so I can actually have a go at playing the thing properly, to see what it is like. I'd also like to know if it's worth anything in case I don't like the way it plays.

Any help would be appreciated guys and gals as I have run out of ideas/avenues to explore.

Cheers

Leigh

[stillchillin]

Hi Leigh and welcome to the forum .They do say anything is repairable if you throw enough money at it but personally I'd use it to light my logburner . I'm sure someone will be along with more constructive ideas soon so please take my suggestion with the humour it was intended . All the best with your new move into acoustic playing .

[cotten]

Welcome to the AGF, Leigh, glad to have you with us!

I think that's an interesting guitar, well worth the restoration effort it's going to take to bring it back into playing shape, especially if you're a bit handy with tools and don't mind giving it some time. Here is a video of a similar guitar, with many of the same issues as yours, being brought back to life. Interesting project! Of course, if you don't want to do it yourself, or don't have the time, space, or tools, you can pay an expert. I can't begin to guess what it might cost, but if it were mine, I'd want to find out. https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q...32D7&FORM=VIRE

Regardless of what you decide, keep us posted on it, will you?

cotten

[Leigh3594]

Hi Cotten,

Thanks for the reply. It's really interesting. I'd like to know if it has the right parts on it too and if not, what are the right parts and where can I get them from.

I'm pretty handy with tools as I'm an engineer so I'm more than happy to have a go and restore it. It might turn into a nice project after all.

I'll definitely keep everyone posted on it though.

Leigh


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Song]

Welcome to the party!

[Borderdon]

Welcome !
Let us know how you get on with the Framus.
- I had one of their 12 stringers back in the day.
Don

[guitar george]

Welcome to the Acoustic Guitar Forum. Very interesting looking guitar.

Is it playable the way it is? If so, it probably would not be worth paying a lot for repairs that would include a neck reset. The action appears high. This can be lowered somewhat by lowering the strings at the bridge which would make it easier to play. The cigarette burns/gouges in the top would be near impossible to invisibly repair.

[Kerbie]

Welcome, Leigh... glad to have you here! Hope you'll enjoy it. Let us know what happens with this guitar.

[Leigh3594]

Originally Posted by guitar george

Welcome to the Acoustic Guitar Forum. Very interesting looking guitar.



Is it playable the way it is? If so, it probably would not be worth paying a lot for repairs that would include a neck reset. The action appears high. This can be lowered somewhat by lowering the strings at the bridge which would make it easier to play. The cigarette burns/gouges in the top would be near impossible to invisibly repair.

No it's not playable, the bridge physically moves along the body of the guitar, making little difference to the action. It feels like it is the wrong bridge for the guitar but I don't know which one is the correct one to buy? I need to know whether the body, neck and head all go together or whether it has been repaired with non standard bits.

[cotten]

Leigh, other than restringing and a little adjusting, I don't work on guitars, so you'll need to talk with someone more knowledgeable. That said, there are degrees of repair and restoration. On one end of the scale is simply making the instrument playable - putting bandaids on what ails it. On the other end is a full restoration/rebuild to put it into as-new shape as possible. My biggest concern with your guitar is not so much whether the parts are original, but can it be played and enjoyed.

Because of this, the separation of the heel of the neck, and its crack, shown in your 5th picture, and the apparent crack of its neck in the 6th should be addressed first. Only after the neck is stabilized does anything else matter. The tuners have obviously been replaced, leaving screw holes where the originals were, but to me this is merely cosmetic. The tuners on it now should be sufficient, I think. The bridge looks like a replacement, compared to the one in the video, but should be serviceable once everything else is secured.

The AGF has a Sub-Forum called Build and Repair. People who hang out there are likely to be able to give you far better advice than I. Why not repost this thread there, or ask our moderators to move it there for you? It's not as busy a part of the AGF, so it's a bit more focused on questions like yours. Good luck!

cotten

[Leigh3594]

Originally Posted by cotten

Leigh, other than restringing and a little adjusting, I don't work on guitars, so you'll need to talk with someone more knowledgeable. That said, there are degrees of repair and restoration. On one end of the scale is simply making the instrument playable - putting bandaids on what ails it. On the other end is a full restoration/rebuild to put it into as-new shape as possible. My biggest concern with your guitar is not so much whether the parts are original, but can it be played and enjoyed.

Because of this, the separation of the heel of the neck, and its crack, shown in your 5th picture, and the apparent crack of its neck in the 6th should be addressed first. Only after the neck is stabilized does anything else matter. The tuners have obviously been replaced, leaving screw holes where the originals were, but to me this is merely cosmetic. The tuners on it now should be sufficient, I think. The bridge looks like a replacement, compared to the one in the video, but should be serviceable once everything else is secured.

The AGF has a Sub-Forum called Build and Repair. People who hang out there are likely to be able to give you far better advice than I. Why not repost this thread there, or ask our moderators to move it there for you? It's not as busy a part of the AGF, so it's a bit more focused on questions like yours. Good luck!

cotten

Thanks Cotten, that helps a lot! I'll keep you posted on my progress.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Jambi]

Howdy Leigh, welcome to the guitar OCD circus! This place is a great resource for learning how to best get what you want out of acoustic guitar. I personally found it because all my Google searches eventually led back here
Good luck to you, that relic looks like it might have interesting tone.

[Hot Vibrato]

Welcome to the AGF!

I have the same model of guitar, which I have restored to playable condition, and it is now an absolutely fantastic guitar. In addition to any other work, yours will need an expert refret if you want it to play good. I've yet to see a vintage Framus with a decent fret job.

The one I have was purchased from an antique mall by my mother in law for $15. It was rough. The neck had been broken and badly repaired. I spent quite a bit of time getting it playable. Once I got it playing. I was shocked at how nice it sounded acoustically. It's a plywood top, but it barks out swing chords like nobody's business.

The first thing you need to look at on your guitar is the neck angle. The bridge on that guitar is not original, but would be an appropriate replacement if you can manage to fit the base to conform to the shape of the top. Judging from the pictures, the action is too high - not because the bridge is too tall, but because the neck angle is wrong. If the action is too high with the bridge adjusted all the way down, then whoever repaired the neck failed at their mission, and your best option may just be to shave the bridge down in order to get the action lower. The ideal solution would be to steam out your neck and reset the angle, but on mine there was absolutely no gaps around the dovetail to allow for steam to penetrate, so steaming the neck out could prove difficult.

My guitar came with the neck barely in tact, which was actually a blessing, because it enabled me to set the neck at the proper angle. The neck came apart easily, leaving the dovetailed section still attached to the body. I carefully worked the flat mating surfaces of the joint until the neck angle was correct (which took some time and patience), then I glued it up and added screws through the fingerboard, and I made and installed rosewood plugs to hide the screws. The guitar with the repair is more solid than it was when the guitar was new. I'm confident that my repair will never come loose unless something terrible happens.

As with every other vintage Framus that I've seen, the fretwork was atrocious, so I removed the frets, leveled the board, and installed new frets. I made a new bone spacer nut, and I fitted an aftermarket two piece rosewood bridge like yours to match the base to the curve of the top. I replaced the original tuners (which suck) with Gotoh Waverly copies with butterbean knobs (best tuners ever). I then made a Benedetto style pickguard with a floating Johnny Smith style humbucker, a volume knob and a tone wheel. I played it with that pickguard assembly for a couple of years.

For the first year or so after stringing it up, I would occasionally have to lower the bridge as the guitar settled, but it has since stabilized, and there is still plenty of room to adjust the bridge down in the future, so I'm very happy with the neck angle.

Something interesting happened a couple months ago - I mentioned my guitar to a friend who works at a music store. The owner overheard me and said, "what kind of Framus have you got?". I said "Missouri", and he pulled out an original Missouri pickguard, loaded with the original single coil pickups. He sold it to me for $100 (which my mother in law gave me for my birthday), and a couple weeks later, he contacted me and told me he'd found the original case from the same guitar (which was long gone), and he sold me the case for $40.

The pickups sound really nice. I prefer their single coil tone over the humbucker that I was using, and the option of a bridge pickup really comes in handy for the honkytonk country I've been playing lately, but I'm still getting used to the control layout. The downside is that the pickguard assembly couples with the bridge, which dampens the acoustic sound of the guitar somewhat, but it actually raises the feedback threshold considerably when playing through an amp, so that aspect could be considered a plus.

I love my Framus Missouri archtop. It was well worth the time and effort that I put into it. It plays and sounds exactly the way a good archtop should. It's my favorite guitar. Check out these Boot Heelers tracks to hear the beautiful vintage tone of my Missouri played through my '65 Princeton (no reverb) Amp. It's got all the vintage honkytonk vibe I could ever ask for: https://www.reverbnation.com/bootheelers

And to hear it in a slightly more modern context, I also played it in this video a couple years back: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ljEPQLFbpXc


[/IMG]

[mirwa]

Good looking guitar, love some of the older shaped guitars that step out of the norm.

Steve

[LSemmens]

Hi, Leigh, Welcome to the forum, from another Leigh! That Framus looks like a lovely piece. Whether it's worth restoring, I'll leave that to the experts. To me, I'd probably just use it as a piece of artwork.