Those 'mass-produced one-offs'

[RayL]

Picking up on Adrian Fountain's point about original fittings and no filled holes in the 'Ebay Burns Vibra Artist' thread, my early Artist demonstrates the same Burns approach to guitar building. The Artist models had no tremolo (that came with the Vibra-Artiste). However, my Artist (a late 1959 model which I bought in 1963) had a Bigsby fitted from new, presumably as a special order. There are no filled holes in the body where a 'standard' bridge would have been fitted, so the Bigsby must have been fitted from new at Queens Road.

Back in the 1960s there was no way that I could have imagined what an 'untouched' Burns Artist might be worth 50 years later so I merrily made all sorts of modifications to the circuitry and over the years I have made half a dozen new panels. However, I kept the original panel (the only one I've ever come across made in cream plastic with a black scratchplate rather than the other way round) and here it is:-

Burns Artist panel.JPG (15.37 KiB) Viewed 8521 times

The arrow shows where someone (maybe even Jim Burns himself) had to cut into the panel to make room for the Bigsby's mounting foot.

The output of the Burns 'factory' in those days was probably only a few dozen guitars a week so making 'specials' for particular clients who would have paid up when the guitar was handed over must have been a useful addtion to the intermittant payments that would have come in from wholesalers and shops.

Ray

[Adrian Fountain]

I totally agree with the above Ray...very well said!!!....... Im lucky enough to have an untouched 1960 'Artist' and original case and I havent seen another for sale anywhere....mine has the standard Black scratchplate, secondary creamplate......I'll upload some photos when I get the chance!!! Cheers Adrian

[RayL]

Per's book includes a colour picture of what appears to be an untouched Artist, something that Paul was not able to include in The Burns Book. Would the Artist in that picture be yours, by any chance?

Also, does your Artist have those other 'early' features, the offset contour neck and the 1/8th inch jack socket?

Ray

[Adrian Fountain]

Hi Ray, the one is the 'Pearls and Crazy Diamonds' is the very same......I purchased the artist, a vibra artist, a split sound 6 string bass and a Fenton Weill Triplemaster an Twinmaster from a guy from Watford called Roger Morse....he was a big Burns collector at one point. He had a look at the Vibra artist deluxe at the time I purchase it and he also beleive it to genuine. I remember he uesd to own a Vibra Artist Deluxe bass another Burns Rarity!!!...

Cheer Adrian

[burnsbonkers]

Ray,
Maybe your artist could be THE prototype?
It could have been altered by Jim and co, by fitting a bigsby as a special order, or to just get rid of it ?
Pat

[RayL]

Pat,

THE Artist prototype is shown in Paul's Burns Book on P.53 (with a para about it on P.52) and it differs significantly from all other Artists. However, I have a letter from Phil Storm (one of Jim's managers writing to me from the Burns Romford factory in 1964) in which he acknowledges that mine is one of the very early ones.

Ray

[mgeek]

It'd be nice to see the Burns book reprinted...always sells for silly money when it appears.

Per's book is AWESOME, don't get me wrong, but it could go into a lot more depth, pictorially, and some of the copy bothers me.

He manages to describe almost every guitar apart from the 4 pickup Bison and the Marvin as a 'down market' version of something or other. Down market isn't a turn of phrase I'd normally choose when describing say, a 'Split Sonic', when you consider how flash it is compared to most Fenders etc

Also the 'most sonics have been trashed for the pickups myth'. If that were true they wouldn't turn up more often than any other Burns guitar, on Ebay.

Stil- I believe he's working on a new version, so maybe some of those quibbles will be addressed