Mystery Framus labeling

Where are the detailed hi-res pix?

 

Try over at Warwick.de. I bet they'd come up with an answer quickly.

 

Close-up of the button?

 

Two suggestions:
- They had hundreds of labels left over from the 1940's
- wishful thinking.

 

Could also be old stock that was retained after the bankruptcy and then sold after the company bounced back in 1995, with a new label?

 

Possibly a mid century Hofner made bass with a Framus label?

 

That's kinda where I was going - but is that plastic binding they're using for purfling?

 

The purfling looks like a decal to me. I'm not seeing Hofner...my first bass was a mid-century Schroetter ply that was almost certainly a Hofner factory bass, and the resemblance is almost nil.

 

One question I'd have is whether manufacturers were required to identify East versus West Germany in their labelling.

While there was probably always more status attached to West German manufacturing (think BMW versus Trabant in auto manufacturing terms), perhaps Framus believed that everyone would know they were a West German company (ie., no need to state the obvious).

Just a thought. I'd guess there is a definitive answer somewhere in cyberspace...

Cheers,

Paul (eh_train)

 

The federal Tariff Act of 1930 requires every item imported into the US to be conspicuously labeled, in English, with the country of origin. I imagine the Berlin Wall would be a factor.

g, have you checked with the webmaster at framus-vintage.de? There is pretty good information there, but maybe someone knows something specific about your model of bass?

 

Then you may wish to do a Google image search, in parentheses, of the words Framus, bass, and each of the model numbers listed on the page.

That's how I identified a recent find (which I unfortunately missed) as a Framus soloist model 4/14.

 

Thanks for the clarification, and you're probably right that the U.S. government would want to distinguish East from West.

Living in Canada, I've seen plenty of 1960s era German basses that are labelled with only "Made in Germany". The Ontario school system, praise be, used this as their go-to model of student bass, so there are still plenty of them around here, in various states of repair...

Cheers,

Paul

 

Oh, and I meant to say that perhaps the bass was originally exported to a country where the East/West labelling wouldn't matter...

 

Another likely source for the info you need might be Ric Heinl in Toronto. He runs George Heinl's in Toronto...a venerable long-time violin and bass repair shop. They import and used to distribute a lot of new basses, strings etc from Europe. They are online.