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Framus Extreme Make Over
You might know I'm quite a Framus fan. I've
played one forever and despite the fact that some
of my other banjos are dream boats for sure, the
Framus is still the one I reach for most often.
I've been meaning to treat it on a new rim for
the longest time and not too long ago I got the
ultimate excuse and/or kick in in the butt to get
cracking.
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I bought it around 1977~78 and after
putting on a new neck to replace the too-skinny-for-me
original one and a lot of tweaking this is a real nice
sounding banjo. The volume though, predictably, is not
quite in the league of a Stelling, Nechville, Ode or the
likes. I do have a lathe, I do have piles of wood and I
do have a better have who'd love to see the latter, well,
go away.
I thought I knew a lot about this Framus. Figured
wrong as along the way I learned/discovered things I
never knew. Click the pics to enlarge.
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Here it is, the modest Nashville
model, replacement neck and all. I'd been playing
it for well over twenty five years with the
Fyberskin head as shown. Never quite cared for
the sound of that head but it was the only thing
I could find at the time to replace the busted
original on short notice. Features: top
tension, arch top, cool tail piece.
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One fine day in early 2008 the
ultimate excuse happened and waddaya know, time
to shop around for a new head once again. Or..?
Hmmm, this could be a good opportunity to start
checking out that wood pile... |
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Pop the hood and start
measuring. A cheesy 1 cm (3/8") thick and 55
mm (2 3/16") high plywood rim sort of
supporting the 17 mm wide arch top tone ring, not
quite a snug fit. Take a look at the boxy gizmo
inside the rim on the right, it's where you
adjust the neck angle by turning the adjuster
bolt. |
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Off with the head and lookie
loo, a nice square stock aluminum (or aluminium
if you insist) dowel stick. Some of the earlier
model used round stock dowels. The other stuff is
of course, totally optional, especially the roll
of tape. |
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I forgot to take pictures while
I was making the hexagon rings. Or, knowing
myself all too well, was that because I was
scared the camera would get slimed with all the
glue. Anyhoo, here's two layers of the hexagons.
The wood is the same awesome 'enigma' tonewood I
use for bridges. Mistake ONE: I pre-rounded
the hexagons to make life easier when it would go
on the lathe. Yeah, so I forgot that now all
reference points for lining up them rings were
toast. Who knew...
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After a lot of measuring and a
whole heap of guessing I got them glue-stacked
nice and neat despite the pre-rounding. Hold your
breath because at some spots there was only about
3 mm to spare to make it come out as an 11 inch
outer diameter (OD) rim, 17 mm (about
11/16") thick. Mistake TWO: On this cheapo
lathe you do your stuff to completion on the same
day. If you wait till the next day the platter
shifts by just enough to make the whole job go
out of [previously] round. Who knew...
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Here's the rim after final
sanding. I took it down to 1,500 grit, talk about
smooth, no finish on it even. I'm not into
coating beautiful wood with stain and layers and
layers of plastic. In my twisted way of thinking:
if you coat an instrument with plastic you got
yerself a plastic instrument. Gorgeous stuff like
this deserves to be shown even if it's covered up
by the resonator most the time-I did finish it
with four coats of oil. Man, oh man, you should
have seen the grain jump out when the oil hit the
bare wood. This step of the process is always one
of the most exiting things for me as it lets you
appreciate the slendour Mother Nature keeps
treating us on. Provided of course, you keep
looking for miracles like that. |
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Fitting the tonering was simply
enough, just shave a smidgen off the top and
that's all it took. This particular stash of wood
had been drying in my basement for several years
[longer than my wife cares for] so I turned it to
exact dimensions right away. About the tone
ring, I had always figured it was made out of
aluminum. Figured wrong, it's chrome plated brass
and now that I've heard it in it's full glory I
finally realize just how good a tone it really
is.
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On the left you can see where the aluminum
dowel has an L bracket screwed into it and the
rim to keep it from sliding in and out. Not much
too it but quite effective. The hooks over the
edge of the rim aren't overly fancy but they do
do a great job of holding the top tension bolts
in place. Cosmetics are irrelevant because the
resonator covers them all anyway. |
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A closer look at the way the
aluminum dowel is attached. Because of the notch
in the rim it took a bit of filling the gap with
nuts to make up for the seven millimeter
difference in width between the old and the new
rim. Some might consider this setup a drawback
because the heel of the neck doesn't make proper
contact with the rim. Maybe so but the volume
level readouts, see below, sure make that a moot
point.
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A close up of the Framus magical
neck angle adjuster box. I had to notch the rim
to make it fit, again, because of the new rim
being seven millimeters thicker than the original
rim. I've talked about the benefits of this set
up on the "tuning tilt necks" page
elsewhere on this website. If you've never seen
it, or heard the tone change as you're adjusting
it to dial in the proper neck angle and string
length then your ears have been missing out for
sure.
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The whole thing bolted back
together, time to string it up and tune it. I
grabbed the nearest bridge I had kicking around.
Played a few notes and, darn, it sounded
terrible. Huh? Didn't take long to figure out
why, it was a prototype bridge I had made to try
and dumb down my Stelling. A quick swap out to an
Archie sure made it sound like what I'd been
hoping for and then some. |
So what's it sound like? Loud, hugely
loud. A quick check with the volume level meter @ one
meter distance showed an average of 85, and peaks of 98
dBA. Volume of course, isn't the end-all but I don't mind
admitting, when I saw those numbers flash I cracked a
smile that put global warming out of business for a
couple of hours as they are the same readings as my
Stelling. The tone is incredibly clear, it has the growl
of a flat top and the bite of an arch top depending on
how, and how hard, you lean on the strings. The neck is
what my fingers have come to be accustomed to over the
many years I've played it. Talk about being a happy
camper, I can see a few of my other banjos being for sale
real soon. . .
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