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I found this Vibra Artiste picture (note white pickguard and control switch) in a 1980 Burns promotional leaflet with a partial history of Jim Burns.
The address on the leaflet states
Jim Burns
Actualisers Ltd
Padnal Road
Littleport
Cambs

am not sure what its all about any ideas ?

This is the back page

I have that brochure too.

I'm fairly sure that the picture of the Vibra-Artist model was copied from one of the pages of Paul Day's "The Burns Book".

Do you know who this company Actualisers were / are up in this remote part of East Anglia and the connection to Jim

Billyboygretsch wrote:Do you know who this company Actualisers were / are up in this remote part of East Anglia and the connection to Jim

Yes. I visited the factory once. They made modern (let's be accurate - cheapened) versions of the Marvin and the Bison, plus basses as well as lower-volume models like the original Steer and Scorpion. There was also the Magpie range (no doubt named for Jim's north-east roots).

There were two or three workers at the facility in Littleport near Ely. Jim was there, but not taking a very active day to day role. On the day I was there, he turned up at about 15:30. Make of that what you will (good old Jim!).

Thanks for that Jim. At that time I used to travel to Littleport once a week - wish I had known it had been there. I checked out the Burns book but could not find a similar picture although it looks around that era. Probably one Jim kept up his sleeve. I do have a shot of a band using an Artiste with a white plate but poor resolution and it seems to have a black selector switch.
I made up a cream scratchplate with black controls but it just didn't look correct. Since then I sprayed a body black used a b/w/b plate and truss rod cover with a small w/b/w top plate and I like the look of this.

Isn't there a picture of Paul Day himself with a white scratchplate Vibra Artist in the book '17 Watts'?

Just to put the record straight, the photo of the Vibra Artist was incorrectly printed in NEGATIVE form during the production process, thus reversing the supplied monochrome image of a standard example from the era, so actually nothing special instrument-wise. It's just one of a number of errors to be found in this particular piece of publicity - all subsequently spotted but never rectified and sadly providing something of an ill omen concerning this chapter in Jim's mercurial career.

Paul,

If what you say is true the dot markers on the fingerboard would be black on the guitar, in order to 'reverse-out white'?

Kind regards

Harry

PS....or have been retouched......