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Following a chance remark in another posting, I am now the proud owner of Nick Allan's 1961 Vibra Artist.

After a day's concerted work, it now has a recut string guide, a new zero fret, reinstalled pickups (to allow lower heights), cleaned pots and switches, lubricated/cleaned bridge & trem, and a fretboard spring clean.

I'll post some pics later today, but, in the meantime, some amazing facts... posted as jpegs to preserve formatting ...

David,

The closest I ever got was the picture below which my electronic friend drew up at the time I first took the pick guard off the Artist that you eventually bought off me. I've used this before on previous querries about the various combinations of sound these guitars produce.

Hope this is similar to your layout?

Here are the pics I took whilst fettling the Vibra Artist...




















Comments and observations are most welcome.

David

You lucky man (subject to what you paid!!). When I was at boarding school at Woodbridge the school group included Nick Lowe (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AI2k6ase ... re=related) playing bass and Brinsley Schwartz (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xWvrMoPp ... re=related) on lead guitar (this was in 1963), both of whom went on to various degrees of fame in the music industry. The second guitarist, Philip Hall, had a Burns Vibra Artist, one of the models with the mini-jack rather than the conventional one and he used to let me practice with it from time to time. I remember being in the dog-house when I trod on the lead and snapped the mini-jack off in the socket.

In 1964 Brinsley left the school and I formed the next school group and when we played at the end of term Christmas Concert Nick Lowe played bass with us. I still remember that we played three numbers - Stand By Me, Flingle Bunt but cannot remember the third song. At the time I had a Hofner V3. Two years later I left school and traded the Hofner in for a Burns Vibra Artist - with a standard jack! I used that through a Vox AC30 while playing with my college band gigging in the Eastbourne area. It was a great guitar but I never did suss out how the controls worked!

By the way going back to teh original school group I remember that Brinsley played a Fenton Weil three pick-up model. The drummer was Barry Landemann who went on to play keyboard and the recorder solo on Vanity Fair's one and only number one hit http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oIbaISxK8QY

Brian

David,

I don't recall the Artist that I parted with had the "chisel" mods to the pockets - can you remember?

Regardless you are a very lucky man to have secured your second Artist!

This one clearly is one of the earlier guitars because of the design of tremolo unit?

Clearly you won't let this one go - obviously the neck on this one hasn't bowed - which you pointed out was a feature on some of the earlier models.

A very lucky man indeed - I have withdrawal symptoms now that I've seen the details!

Yes... the neck is true... no twists!

I'm about to lower the zero fret and replace the string guide with one of the correct colour and height, the modify the bridge saddles to allow a lower action with the correct break angle over them... then we should be all set...

Reference to the knurled edge on the knobs seems to suggest that this is one of the earliest...

And I love it!!

(p.s. Am I suffering from "insertion" symptoms? )

Great.... post the pics here for all to see... BTW, that's not multicore, it's single strands in a covering sheath...