Guitaripedia

Every guitar has a story.

Framus

Tennessee

A German hollowbody built to take a hot rock pickup. One player said that’s when everything made sense.

Markneukirchen, Germany, around 2000. An old guitar name has come back to life in a new factory, and one of the first new designs is a single-cut hollowbody with one f-hole, a flamed maple top, and a pair of Seymour Duncans. It’s called the Tennessee. It has nothing to do with Chet Atkins.

Introduced
2000
Type
Semi-hollow electric
Class
Production
Read the story · 3 min

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The short version

  1. 1946

    Framus begins

    Fred Wilfer’s company starts building instruments.

  2. mid-1970s

    Gone

    The original Framus factory in Bubenreuth goes under.

  3. 1995

    The name comes back

    Hans-Peter Wilfer revives Framus under Warwick in Markneukirchen. Guitar production follows by 1996.

  4. 2000

    The Tennessee

    One of the first models designed for the revival.

  5. 2004

    Lefebvre’s Framus years

    Simple Plan’s Sébastien Lefebvre starts playing Framus, the Tennessee among them.

  6. 2008

    The Pro goes

    The cheaper oil-finish version is discontinued. The Custom follows later.

Side A

A1

The name came back first

Framus had a whole first life. Fred Wilfer’s company started in 1946 and built a lot of guitars in Bubenreuth before the factory went under in the mid-’70s. For about twenty years the name sat on the shelf.

Then, in 1995, Fred’s son Hans-Peter Wilfer brought it back. He already ran Warwick, the bass company, and Framus came back to life under Warwick in Markneukirchen: same name, new town, new building. By 1997 there were new models on the floor. Around 2000 came the Tennessee, one of the first guitars designed for the revival.

It had one job. Framus wanted a hollowbody that could take a hot rock pickup without turning into a Gibson ES-335. Same old ingredients, in a new body.

A2

A hollow with a JB in it

The body is mahogany, hollow, with a bookmatched flamed maple top and a single f-hole on the bass side. It’s a single-cutaway. The neck is bolted in, not glued, and the scale is 25.5 inches, longer than a Gibson’s, which gives it a bit more snap.

The pickups are Seymour Duncans: a ’59 in the neck and a JB at the bridge. The JB is a hot, bright rock humbucker, the kind usually found in a solid body. Put it in a hollow one and the note gets more air around it. Pull up on the tone knob and the humbuckers split, for something thinner and quicker. There’s one volume and a three-way switch, and that’s all.

Framus made it a little bigger in outline than you might expect, but not thicker, so the top could move more freely. It isn’t light. One 2006 example weighed just under nine pounds. One owner measured his at about two inches deep through the f-hole, and a little over fifteen inches across the lower bout.

The hardware is all business: a Tone Pros Tune-o-matic bridge and stop tailpiece, locking tuners, and frets dressed at the factory on a Plek, the computer-guided machine that levels them to a fraction of a hair. There’s at least one early Custom out there wearing a Bigsby vibrato. That was one guitar, not the standard.

Same name, new town. Same pickups, new body.

What the neck is made of depends on which one you pick up. Some are mahogany, some are ovangkol, a dense African hardwood. The sources split, and nobody has sorted it by year.

Flip the record · By the numbers

  • 25.5"

    Scale length. Longer and snappier than the Gibson hollowbodies it gets mistaken for.

  • 1

    F-hole, on the bass side.

  • A$3,699

    List price of a Tennessee Custom in Australia in 2008. The Pro was A$2,599 to A$2,899.

  • 2

    Seymour Duncan humbuckers, a ’59 in the neck and a JB at the bridge. Pull the tone knob and they split.

Side B

B1

Not that Tennessee

The name confuses people. Gretsch made a Chet Atkins Tennessean, the 6119, in Brooklyn. It’s a completely different guitar from a completely different country. If you see a Chet Atkins photo on a Framus Tennessee listing, somebody got carried away.

It isn’t a 335, either. The 335 is a double-cut with a shorter scale and a glued-in neck. The Tennessee is a single-cut, bolt-on, longer scale, one hole.

There were two versions. The Custom had the fancy flame top, ebony board, and a high-polish finish. The Pro was the same hollow in plainer clothes: a maple top, rosewood dot board, and an oil finish. Both are discontinued now. You can’t order a new one from Framus.

B2

When everything made sense

Sébastien Lefebvre of Simple Plan started playing Framus guitars around 2004. His main ones were other models, the Mayfield and the Panthera, but the Tennessee was in the rack. He’d used the same pickups for years. In 2014 he explained what changed:

I’ve always played with the JB pickups, but it’s when I finally put them into a hollowbody-shaped guitar that everything made sense for me. The Tennessee and the Mayfield by Framus are the models I used.

An old name in a new town. A familiar pickup in a new body. Lefebvre didn’t change his sound. He changed the house it lived in, and everything made sense.

The cast

The people, and the specific guitars, that made the legend.

  • 1946

    Fred Wilfer

    Founder of Framus

    Built the original company. Its Bubenreuth factory went under in the mid-’70s.

  • 1995

    Hans-Peter Wilfer

    Revived the name

    Brought Framus back under Warwick in Markneukirchen. The Tennessee was one of the first new designs.

  • 2004

    Sébastien Lefebvre

    Framus Tennessee and Mayfield

    Simple Plan’s guitarist. Put the pickups he’d always used into a hollowbody, and it clicked.

Liner notes

Specs, construction, rarity, value, and every source we used.

Bolt-in mahogany hollow, one f-hole, a ’59 and a JB — Framus’s Tennessee, not Chet’s 6119, and not a 335.

Body
Single-cut mahogany hollow; bookmatched AAAA flamed maple top; one f-hole. Factory: thinline. Mix flagged.
Neck
Bolt-in. Factory Custom: mahogany. 2003 Reverb / Blue Book / 2008 Pro: ovangkol. Mix flagged.
Fingerboard
Tigerstripe ebony, 12" / 305 mm, 22 jumbo, traditional Custom mother-of-pearl inlays. Mix flagged.
Scale
25.5" (648 mm)
Pickups
Seymour Duncan SH-1n chrome (neck), SH-4b chrome (bridge)
Hardware
Tone Pros Tune-o-matic with stop tailpiece; Framus locking tuners; Warwick security locks; chrome
Electronics
Volume; push/pull tone for coil-split; 3-way toggle
Finish
High polish. 2008 AU catalog: wood binding except Natural High Polish.
Nut
Framus low-friction, 43 mm / 1.7". 2003 Reverb: 42 mm (1.7"). Mix flagged.
Open the full research fileConstruction details, the complete player record, production numbers, dated value estimates, and sources

Classic living example = Tennessee Custom (Markneukirchen). Factory discontinued-features page, fetched 21 September 2026. No current typical SKU on shop.warwick.de this pass. Factory mixed inch/mm flagged; do not invent millimetres for the unstated depth. Tennessee Pro is the oil-finish sister — ovangkol, rosewood dots — same plate, not a second slug. Mayfield is the double-cut hollow. AK-1974 is Akkerman’s. Hollywood is the P-90 offset hollow. Television is another Framus name. Gretsch Tennessean (gretsch-tennessean) is Chet’s 6119. No Gibson SKU.

Construction

The job was a Markneukirchen hollow that would take a Duncan JB without becoming a 335. Single-cut. One f-hole. Bolt-in. 25.5". Framus, not Gretsch, not Kalamazoo.

Hans-Peter Wilfer revived the name in 1995 under Warwick in Markneukirchen, after Fred Wilfer’s Bubenreuth factory went under in the mid-1970s (Wikipedia; Blue Book, citing Wilfer, puts guitar production back in 1996). Panthera and Hollywood were already on the floor by 1997. The Tennessee is that shop’s single-cut hollow, not a Bubenreuth leftover. Vintage & Rare dates a Custom to 2000 and calls it one of the first models Warwick designed for the revival. UsedPrice.com’s database window is 2003–2012. Keep both. This plate starts in 2000.

What you get is a thinline mahogany hollow with a bookmatched flame maple lid and a single f-hole on the bass side. Factory Custom: bolt-in, AAAA top, tigerstripe ebony, traditional Custom inlays, Tone Pros Tune-o-matic and stop, SH-1n / SH-4b under chrome covers, volume plus a push/pull tone that splits the humbuckers, 3-way, 25.5" (648 mm), nut 43 mm / 1.7". Plek on the set-up. The 2008 Australian list adds wood binding except on Natural High Polish. Factory photo, that catalog, and Blue Book are single-cut. Chorder’s “double cutaway” is the mash; do not follow it.

Neck wood is split. Factory Custom and Guitar Riot’s 2006: mahogany. A 2003 Reverb Custom, Blue Book, and the 2008 Pro: ovangkol. Keep both.

Not a 335 (gibson-es-335). Kalamazoo, 1958, double-cut laminate, maple stick, 24.75". This is Markneukirchen, single-cut, bolt-in, 25.5", one hole. Not Chet’s Tennessean (gretsch-tennessean) — Brooklyn 6119, then Booneville; Gibson later sold a Chet Atkins Tennessean of its own. Neither is a Framus. Do not hang a Chet photo here because the word Tennessee is on the truss-rod cover.

Not Mayfield. 2008 catalog: laminated double-cut, two f-holes, set neck, 24.75". Lefebvre’s later main guitar. Not AK-1974 — Akkerman’s; Wikipedia’s Summer NAMM 2010 shot puts Custom and AK-1974 on the same table so people mash them. Not Hollywood — P-90s, roller bridge, trapez or Bigsby B7 in that 2008 list. Not Television. Not the 1970s Nashville (11010).

Tennessee Pro is the same hollow in cheaper clothes: maple top, ovangkol, rosewood dots, oil or colored satin, $2,599 / $2,899 AUD in August 2008. Custom that year: AAA flame, ebony, Custom inlays, high polish, $3,699 AUD. Historical list, not 2026 street. Blue Book dates Pro discontinued 2008; Custom it still prints as current mfg — stale against the live discontinued page. A Vintage & Rare 2000 Custom wears a Bigsby; that is one guitar. The 2008 catalog puts trapez and B7 on Hollywood, not here.

The owner’s manual groups Tennessee with Hollywood as a little bigger in plan, not thicker, for a freer top. Factory will not advertise a weight. Named measures, not a midpoint: Guitar Riot 2006, 8 lb 15 oz; 2003 Reverb Custom about 4.4 kg. The Gear Page (9 July 2007): about 2" deep through the f-hole, lower bout a bit over 15" — one player’s Custom, not a factory cell.

Classic vs current: there is no current typical. Factory files Custom and Pro under Discontinued Models. shop.warwick.de’s Custom Shop this pass is Diablo, Panthera, Mayfield, AK 1974, Television, The Blank, signatures — no Tennessee. You cannot order a new one from the page.

Players

Do not hang a 6119, a 335, a Mayfield, or a Hollywood here. Do not recruit Lennon’s Hootenanny, Wyman’s Star Bass, or Earl Slick’s signature as if they were this guitar.

Sébastien Lefebvre. The named player of this silhouette. Seymour Duncan interview (2014): “I’ve always played with the JB pickups, but it’s when I finally put them into a hollowbody-shaped guitar that everything made sense for me. The Tennessee and the Mayfield by Framus are the models I used.” Wikipedia’s Framus page: Simple Plan’s Lefebvre “include[s] the Framus Mayfield and Tennessee models.” French Wikipedia dates his Framus years from Still Not Getting Any... (2004), mainly Mayfield and Panthera, Tennessee among them. Named studio-track credits for the Tennessee are unpublished here.

Also known to play stays empty this pass. Slick’s Framus is the Mayfield and the Hollywood-based signature. None invented.

Rarity

You cannot buy a new Tennessee from Framus this pass. Custom and Pro sit on the discontinued index. Living Framus production is other silhouettes. They are not this hollow.

Framus does not publish Tennessee unit totals. None invented. Serials date a guitar. They don’t count a year. That is why a first-year census is unknown, not the chapter.

What is actually thinner: Vintage & Rare’s 2000 first-revival Customs; complete originals with the Duncans un-swapped; Bigsby examples that were never catalog-standard on this table. Current Diablos and Pantheras do not substitute.

Value

Informal estimate, 21 September 2026. Not an appraisal.

Ask vs sold labeled. Celebrity lots are not-comps. No invented medians or factory counts. A Mayfield is not a Tennessee comparable. Period Australian list is 2008 money, not 2026 street.

New street. None under Tennessee this pass. Factory discontinued; shop.warwick.de has no Tennessee family (fetched 21 September 2026). Historical lists, not a 2026 cart: Dominant Music, August 2008 — Pro Natural Oil $2,599 AUD, Coloured Oil $2,899 AUD; Custom AAA flame high polish $3,699 AUD. The Gear Page, 9 July 2007: “about $2200 US” on a Custom, forum first-impressions, not a MAP. A Reverb seller six years ago wrote originally £3500 new — that seller’s memory, not a factory sheet.

Used modern. Named ask, not a hammer: Blue Book widget this pass, 2004 Natural $3,122 (Reverb deal). guitar-list 2006 Custom $3,799. Wild Custom Nirvana Black €1,985. Vintage & Rare 2000 sunburst €1,810. Named older sold listing, not a series: Reverb Excellent Custom $1,702.55 (listed six years ago). Named older ask, listing ended: 2003 Custom $4,311.49. Do not average those. No clean Reverb Price Guide band isolated this pass. Flag: thin sold-comp access.

Vintage / collectible. This is a 21st-century Markneukirchen guitar. Early Customs trade as used modern. They are not a 1958 6119 and not a 1958 335.

See also

  • Tennessean — Chet’s 6119; Brooklyn hollow, other factory, other name
  • ES-335 — 1958 Kalamazoo double-cut this single-cut bolt-in is not
  • Starplayer — Hannover’s German semi; spruce/maple, sustain block, not this mahogany hollow

Sources

Guitars this one gets compared to, confused with, or descended from.