I tried hard to not like it, but it is unfortunately the best sounding fenderoid I've played in years, so I'm stuck with it. It had been gathering dust at a local shop for a couple of years.
I picked it up used just because I was curious about its intense ugliness and fairly high price tag as a new guitar/incredibly low price as a used guitar. The pots and switches on mine are all German.
It actually makes a lot of sense while playing. The volume has a push-pull that kills the single coils gives you only the humbucker - presumably for hot leads. Switching is strangely useful - the middle position on the 5-way Schaller switch doesn't give you the middle pup but rather the two outside strat pups. The swamp ash on mine is mid-weight, not light, although they claim to use light-weight swamp ash. Three SD strat "vaguely vintage" pups, plus an SD lil 59 jr humbucking thingy as well. Very clever angled neck joint that provides better access than usual and makes Tom Anderson's latest neck joint look just plain stupid.
The maple/rosewood neck is oiled as well, and supremely comfortable. Some kind of semi-gloss "oiled" finish on the body - mine is almost translucent black. Yeah, It's an older Renegade Pro -swamp ash tele shape, USA Wilkinson trem. The thing is, even during the early goofy years, most Framus guitars still sounded good, mostly due to the pickups. The BL-10 was named for Bill Lawrence, who was involved in many Framus designs from the time when he was known as Billy Lorento this one looked cheap and spacey, but was actually quite warm and full, and for a solid body guitar it made for a fine jazz guitar. The Nashville was homely in a way that only a mother could love, but it had essentially the same electronics as the Akkerman and also sounded good Peter Green played one for a while and has spoken fondly of it. Very wide flat neck, and tiny frets (remember, this was from the time when Akkerman was playing a Fretless Wonder), so I never really got comfortable playing it, but it was very well built and sounded good. I had three of the older Framus: an Akkerman like the one pictured above, a Nashville, and a BL-10 solidbody. I haven't found any of the new Framus guitars to play yet, but a friend of mine, whose tastes I trust, has the somewhat Tele-ish Diablo Pro and says it's a hell of a good guitar.
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