1960s Selmer Futurama III Electric Guitar
Mr. George Harrison is the famous user of this model guitar. He played a late-'50s Futurama in early Beatles gigs in Hamburg and, apparently, they were a popular instrument in the UK at the time. They were sold through Selmer but were made in Czechoslovakia, first at the Resonet (Blatne) factory and then later at Hradec Kralove where this version (with its darker fretboard and side-mounted jack) was made.
It's an odd duck and was a terrible player when it arrived. The bridge/whammy system looks -- at first glance -- like a good idea, but the body rout was not cut in the correct place and there's too much play in the bridge's mounting posts to allow for good intonation and adjustment -- so I blocked it. Sorry!
The pickups are also on the really-low-output and microphonic side which is a sound, of course, but nothing like the Strat-style sound this guitar seems to have been shooting for in its design elements. They do sound really cool for strum-n-fun backing work or with a boost pedal for clean lead work, though.
The neck is actually almost a carbon copy of a '60s Fender cut -- slim-to-medium C in profile and with a tight, 7 1/4" radius to the fretboard and with a 1 5/8" nut width. It even has the same scale length -- so clearly the Czech company who made this did their homework. The problem with it is that the neck was twisted into a pretty bad S-curve warp and so it needed a heavy-handed board plane and then a refret with jumbo stock with longer tangs to "fret-compress" the neck into stability. Thankfully, that worked and it's now playing bang-on.
One other quirk is that the truss rod is not anchored at one end and at the nut it has a bolt/nut that is tightened-down by turning the truss adjuster at the body end. You have to hold the bolt/nut with some grippers on the nut side of the neck while tightening at the body to get it to work correctly.
Repairs included: a board plane and refret, truss rod tweaking, bridge/whammy blocking/adjustments, and setup work.
Weight: 8 lbs 4 oz
Scale length: 25 1/2"
Nut width: 1 5/8"
Neck shape: slim-medium C
Board radius: 7 1/4"
Body width: 12 1/8"
Body depth: 1 1/2"
Body wood: beech
Bridge: proprietary weirdo-Strat-style
Fretboard: stained beech?
Neck wood: maple
Pickups: 3x original single coils
Action height at 12th fret: 1/16” overall (fast, spot-on)
String gauges: 44w-9 I think
Truss rod: adjustable
Neck relief: straight
Fret style: jumbo
Condition notes: it appears to be all-original save one saddle (someone hacked-up some hardware store bits to make a replacement and it... works!) and is in relatively good condition, though it has minor wear and tear throughout.
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