Burns Cobra gets award

[RayL]

The latest issue of 'Guitar & Bass' (Gear of the Year Winter Special) awards the Cobra 2nd placing in its 'Electric Guitars Under £500' category. The concluding comment is "You'd be hard pushed to find any S-type that plays or sounds better at this price".

Ray L

[JimN]

Have you bought one, Ray?

JN

[RayL]

Hi Jim

I've already got the Batwing and the Artist - that's enough Burns three pickup single coil guitars.

If I didn't have them, then the Cobra looks a very tasty guitar for the money.

Ray

[George Geddes]

No shame, either, in being runner up to the Squier Simon Neil Stratocaster... which is a great guitar. Alas, I don;t have a Cobra (yet!) but I do have the Squier and love it.

George

[David Martin]

No shame, either, in being runner up to the Squier Simon Neil Stratocaster... which is a great guitar. Alas, I don;t have a Cobra (yet!) but I do have the Squier and love it.

George

How do you get on with the rather unusual pickups fitted, George?

D

[George Geddes]

Can't say I have any problems, but then I'm not playing lead... and so far I've had no adverse comments. Pickup selector is more or less permanently on the neck pickup.

It plays really well, I've always preferred rosewood 'boards, and for me the F Red + rosewood is *the* definitive Shadows look. Probably because that's what they had the first time I say them.

George

[George Geddes]

There's a Cobra in red on eBay with a BiN of £200

George

[cockroach]

The Cobra always looked interesting to me, and although I'm not an internet buyer, the Cobra doesn't seem to hold resale value like a usual Strat type or the more 'Burns' looking Marquees etc..

Maybe it's the fate of a lot of good but different instruments...not really popular because few -or no- famous players use or used one...

Look at those Ovation Breadwinner types- a very good instrument, but with that unusual shape, and no celebrity users, despite their practical intelligent design etc , they never caught on...

[RayL]

Maybe it's the fate of a lot of good but different instruments...not really popular because few -or no- famous players use or used one...

No maybe about it, John. For a lot of guitar players, that link to a famous player is terribly important - and they are willing to pay for it.

However, over time and as new players come along, the 'overlooked' instruments become valued for what they are, rather than who might have played them. Many Burns guitars have moved from 'going cheap in the junk shop' in the 1970s (before Paul Day wrote The Burns Book) to being highly valued today.

Barry Gibson's Club range of guitars are very well made (a lot of the reason, I'm sure, is down to quality control by Barry and his team) and although the Cobra is the lowest price model I'm sure its value will rise over time.

Here's another prediction for the future - Alden guitars. They are designed by Alan Entwhistle (who has recently designed the new noiseless pickups for the Burns Apache) and built by Muse in Korea. Mr E. has taken 'classic' designs then produced a worthwhile variation. So my TV Cruiser DLX looks superficially like a Telecaster Thinline, in Fiesta Red and with a rosewood fingerboard. However, it has a gold-plated tremolo (in fact, all the metalwork is gold-plated) and Entwhistle's very unusual MVH split-coil pickups - high output, low noise and with a very tasty harmonically-rich sound. This particular model was only available for a short time, from one outlet, and I've been getting enquiries about it ever since I started gigging with it.

Ray

[Tab]

[quote="cockroach"]The Cobra always looked interesting to me, and although I'm not an internet buyer, the Cobra doesn't seem to hold resale value like a usual Strat type or the more 'Burns' looking Marquees etc..

The original Drifter (circa 1999) suffered with re-sale value with the introduction of the Marquee, as, to the untrained eye, they look the same.