Framus FDG 20 S Dreadnought Guitar

I recently got hold of this guitar. I thought for the record I'd try to gather together some of the things I found out about it.  In the interests of accuracy, I've not been able to verify much of the history of this guitar because there is so little information out there and some of the information is contradictory.  I'm very open to any corrections because of this, and will amend the review in the light of any new evidence.

Framus

The early history of this company is well attested and I won't add too much here as the internet has lots of information about the company formed in Germany after the Second World War to make instruments.  The popularity of the guitar post war, made this instrument the prominent production of the company rather than classical instruments. There's loads more information here https://www.framus-vintage.de/en/About-Framus/History/   The original company went into administration in the late 1970s.  What's interesting in the story of the FDG 20 S is that Hans-Peter Wilfer, son of the founder of Framus, revived the marque in 1995 as part of the Warwick company.  I have an early 2000s Warwick bass which is superbly crafted and one of my favourite instruments. Certainly to begin with the Warwick influence rubbed off on Framus and led to some very, very good Framus instruments being produced.

Warwick/Framus have no online information about the acoustic guitars they produced in the mid 1990s.  However, as I have trawled through the sparse  internet references to this guitar, it would appear that the FDG 20 S is one of the first guitars the company released following the relaunch of the Framus brand.  While Framus is most known for more midrange and quirky instruments in the 1950-70 period, in the 1990s they went relatively high end.  If the conflicting reports on the internet are to be believed then the FDG 20 S production was probably outsourced to Japan, and overseen by a master luthier named Hansu Piita Uiruha.  I can find precisely nothing about this luthier on the web, and nothing to confirm that these guitars were in fact made in Japan.  The guitar itself has no indication of the country of manufacture. It would appear that they were only made for a very short run between 1995-7 and are therefore fairly rare.  

The Guitar

This is a bit of an easier task to describe as I have the guitar in front of me so I can verify most of the details of construction!

The guitar is a matt finished, slope shouldered dreadnought.  One internet seller claims that the top is AAA grade spruce.  It is certainly solid spruce with very good and pleasing, close, straight grain.  Over 25 years or so this has aged to a rich brown colour, much darker than my early 1980s Takamine which has travelled across the globe with me. The back and sides are of solid rosewood, very nicely grained, finished and bookended, with a marquetry divider between the back pieces, which looks extremely classy.  The neck is mahogany with a bound rosewood fingerboard and bridge. The bridge and nut are of bone and well finished. The frets on mine are slightly worn but still very playable. The action is superbly low, with no bottoming out of the strings.  It’s wonderful to have a guitar this old that is so playable. My 1980s Takamine is the same and a testimony to Japanese craftsmanship. The Framus is beautifully inlaid with abalone blinding and rosette.  The headstock is black with well executed mother of pearl inlays. The inlays on the fretboard are pearloid snowflakes.  Here is the first small gripe as they are set into filler in a drilled circular hole rather than routed to shape, which is a bit disappointing, although only noticeable on close inspection.  The second gripe is that inside the guitar there is some glue overspill showing on the joints, which mars an otherwise very well executed guitar.  The machine heads are gold grovers and of extremely good quality.  Generally despite the couple of gripes the guitar is very well finished indeed, and not showing many signs of wear or any signs of structural issues after 25+ years of service.

Because the action on this guitar is very low it is extremely easy to play, with no choking of the strings anywhere on the neck.  The tone is superb, less bassy than my Eastman, but very good for fingerstyle as the note separation is impressive.  It is loud like a dreadnought should be, but strong on dynamics, sounding lovely both played gently, and with more vigour.  I'm grateful that, unusually for a guitar of this vintage, no-one has tried to butcher it with any pickups, so there are no unsightly holes or dated preamps on the highly resonant  body.  Playing unamplified with other musicians the instrument holds its own very well.

The good news is that these guitars can be bought quite cheaply if you can find one.   You would have to spend well in excess of £1000/£1500 these days to get anything close in quality, more if you wanted that quality made in Japan. But of course Framus is not so well known, and Warwick sadly have cheapened the Framus brand acoustic guitars with some very uninspiringly average current production models. I hate it when companies do this but we are in harsh times. This gem of a guitar is old and a relatively unknown quantity, so you may find one for a very reasonable price indeed, as I did.  If you find a good one, as I was fortunate enough to do, you won't be disappointed with the richness of the sound, the quality of the finish and materials.

Heritage Eagle Archtop Guitar from 1997 Review

I’ve always wanted a Heritage archtop guitar ever since I read their story, but the local guitar shop just down the coast that specialises in such things charges a huge premium for Heritages and I just couldn’t justify the outlay.

Then came one of those odd epiphany moments that very occasionally happen to me. Although I love our closest local music shop, I hadn’t had any need to go in for well over a year. However one day someone or something seemed to be telling me to just go into the shop and have a look around. After telling myself not to be stupid, I did just that and for quite a while I saw nothing of great interest amongst the racks of guitars. Then suddenly a brown sunburst guitar caught my eye, hanging sideways half out of sight, right next to the old Hofners. I checked it over and it looked in reasonable condition and I then saw that it was a Heritage, but it didn’t have a price on it, and all the staff were busy with customers and someone was playing a distorted electric guitar badly and loudly in one of the side rooms.

I walked out and did the shopping I’d come into town to do, but the thought of the guitar wouldn’t leave me. I did some reading up to find out exactly what the model, age and construction was. Then I rang the shop to find out what the price was. It was half the price I was expecting!  I still didn’t do anything more at that stage and went home to think it all over and research some more as it was going to be a significant unexpected outlay. 

Having slept on it all, the next morning saw me at the shop first thing asking to try the guitar out. The shop was selling the guitar as part of a private sale of someone’s estate and it had literally just come in. They didn’t quite know how to price it because there are very few of these out there to give an idea of the value. Thanks to Heritage’s serial numbers it was easy to date the guitar to 1997, and to see that it was the first guitar manufactured that day in April! This one has certainly been well loved and well used, nothing to put me off: one of the tuning pegs is slightly bent, the nickel all has a well worn “patina”, there are quite a few dings on the front (but hey you pay a specialist hundreds to make a new guitar into a holey [sic] relic!), and there was a bit of fret wear.  I do like a guitar that wears its history and hasn’t just sat in a case remaining pristine for a collector to sit and admire it. The acoustic tone on this model is really lovely, even with the dead and sticky flat wound strings on it at the time. It chimed beautifully through the fender amp they gave me to test it out.

The shop I bought it from is one of those gems of a place that defies the odds and keeps going as a bricks and mortar store though with an increasing presence on the internet.  I’ve bought a lot of things there over the years. Before I pulled the trigger on buying the guitar we put it down on the guitar rest and the tech tweaked the truss rod to take some of the bow out of the neck for me, all smooth and good. Apple Pay and I was away!  

It’s so difficult to know what these guitars are really worth as there’s not a whole lot on the web to give a sense of value.  I think I got it for an extremely good price, but of course it is not in pristine condition.  Brand new Eagles go for eye watering sums these days. I think this has pushed up secondhand values in its wake, and meant I had to insure the new purchase for a huge new for old value…

It’s only as you delve fairly deep that you come across the truly excellent Heritage owners’ club forum: http://www.heritageownersclub.com. One reason why I’m writing this as there is very little out there on these lovely archtop guitars with floating pickups. 

I really recommend that you do a search on the history of Heritage guitars: https://heritageguitars.com/pages/about-us. It’s an inspiring story of entrepreneurship. In my mind, as a lover of good old fashioned archtop guitars, Heritage is a really important “Reformation” moment in the apostolic succession of Orville Gibson and Lloyd Loar’s genius. These guitars are still made in Kalamazoo in the old Gibson factory and, certainly in 1997 were being made by builders tracing their skills and experience way back into Gibson history.  We could debate for ages who are the true successors to the archtop faith!  I’m just grateful that both companies are still around (just) keeping the faith alive.

My guitar is a 1997 Eagle Almond Sun Burst with a Heritage floating pickup. It shares its dna with the Gibson L5, a slightly shallower body at 3” deep but sharing the same lovely acoustic tones and craftsmanship.  A lot of these Eagle guitars came with mahogany tops, but mine is an X braced spruce topped guitar with solid carved mahogany back, pickguard and sides and neck. The fretboard and bridge are rosewood, hardware is nickel plated. All is beautifully carved, and with a sunburst finish which makes any of my other guitars I stand it next to look rather one dimensional. Heritage clearly had some superb workers at this stage of their history. This is where Heritage guitars are a bit intriguing: they seem to have often built to different specifications according to the dealer or customer requirements. Mine comes from Wolfe originally, as I discovered when I took off the pick guard and found their sticker.  

There’s no bling on this guitar, and strangely that really adds to the look, no neck binding and only a single binding to the body. The wood is fairly plain. But what stands out is the tone. The 17” body gives it a lovely depth, with all the bark and projection you expect from an archtop.  I like the pickup too, but I haven’t played this away from home yet so there is a bit more to add into this account as time goes on.  I’ve made some adjustments to the action to get it where I want it, not too low to give the acoustic voice some authority. I’ve put DR Zebra 13 strings on it at the moment so I can enjoy the acoustic voice, and I do recommend these as one of the best compromises for an electric/acoustic like this. The action is so lovely I can’t believe these strings are 13s, they feel much lighter even with the relatively long scale of this guitar!  Once things open up again in the world and I can play out I will probably try micing and amping this to get the best of both worlds, the acoustic voice is too good to ignore.

These are lovely guitars.