Nick Jennison brings back the shimmering sounds of the '60s as he reviews the Framus Hootenanny 12-String. A favourite among some of music's biggest names, the Hootenanny delivers lush, chiming tones in a beautifully vintage package. Featuring a nitro high-gloss finish and meticulous craftsmanship, this acoustic is all about rich, full-bodied resonance and that unmistakable 12-string jangle.
One of the things that's so special about guitars is how they connect us to the artists and songs we love. The guitars our idols used to write, record, and perform with develop stories all their own, and some of them become legends—like John Lennon's 12-string Framus Hootenanny. Long thought lost, the original (as seen and heard on "Help!") was discovered after being gifted to Gordon Waller of Peter & Gordon, and later passed on to a fan of the duo—and it was in said fan's attic that the guitar remained for almost 60 years.
The vintage-correct 2025 reissue is a guitar that Beatles fans have been waiting for with bated breath, and it most certainly delivers. But we'll be focusing less on the history of this guitar's storied ancestor and more on how it stands up as an instrument in its own right in 2025.
Designed by Fred Wilfer, the Hootenanny blends elements of the classical and jazz guitars Framus was producing in the 1960s into something of a platypus, with a flat classical-style neck, a zero fret, a floating bridge with a nickel saddle, and a trapeze tailpiece. It's an odd combination that's visually striking and extremely evocative of a "wild west" period in guitar history, where the "rules" of guitar design had yet to become orthodox.
I'd love to tell you that my first strum on this guitar was beautiful and sonorous, but in reality, it took almost an hour to get this guitar tuned, stretched in, and intonated. A floating bridge can be a pain at the best of times, but on a 12-string it's positively torturous, and when it arrived, it was almost a semitone sharp at the 12th fret. It was an hour well spent though, because once this guitar is "in," it's glorious.
This guitar's silvery, slightly metallic highs and pronounced transients, combined with a lean and recessive low end, make for an ideal strumming guitar. There's plenty of clarity in the tone for little lines within chord patterns to emerge, no boisterous bass to mask the details, and a very pleasing natural compression that gives the Hootenanny an almost "recorded" sound. Do not confuse this with a "produced" sound like, say, a modern Taylor—the Hootenanny sounds like an old guitar, but it's also very well-behaved. More complex flatpicking lines have the "mandolin-only-bigger" quality that we love in a good 12-string, and it's also a lot of fun for delta blues (although the strings on the review model are a little too new and shiny for that).
Interestingly, the Hootenanny is being offered in no fewer than six finishes—"Satin," "Nitro," and "High Gloss" versions of both a tinted natural and a dark sunburst. This all depends on how you'd like the guitar to age with you. "High Gloss" will remain shiny and new-looking for the guitar's whole lifespan, while "Nitro" will crack, check, and age gracefully—and is definitely my preferred finish.
Available in both 6- and 12-string models, both with hard cases as standard, the Framus Hootenanny is a fitting tribute to a legendary instrument, and a very cool guitar in its own right. It's unashamedly vintage in its spec and that comes with some quirks, but the end result is very much worth it.
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