More thoughts about Guitar´s

Burns guitars will always be number-1 for me no doubt about that and you may even realise I hate Fenders. Well not all of em but most. In my so called collection of guitars I then keep a couple of Burns guitars but also other guitars not at all related to Burns.

Some of them cheap guitars bought just for the fun of trying another guitar or as spareparts for some mad projects. Some of those guitars have proved to be real good one´s. Not to be compared with me Burns but still useful tools for making music.

As I do  runt the Burns forum on Facebook, I do me best to keep non Burns items out of the forum. I dont post pics of me non Burns guitars and amps, if I do post them I´ll do that in a more proper forum. 

Here I´m going to show some non-Burns gear in me so called colelction.

Akustika Western bought at fleamarket 20,oo euro.

sounda good - tuners are crap

CORT also a fleamarket guitar 30,oo euro

after some adjustments a really nice guitar.

Dare-burns bass. Hmm me DIY 4-pickup bass that sounds good

but still in need a some modifications.

Dare-Vibraslim 5-pickup DIY not bad at all but HEAVY and more 

then 30 different sound patterns.

Dare-Bison. Long term project that started in 1975. Honduras mahogony 

and Gibson Studiopickup.

Fleamarket Telecaster that aint bad at all for its price.

Harley Benton fretless bass. Fleamarket package including 

a huge Bass combo

Rämje Strat, one of the best Strat-type guitars I ever play´d - owned.

Fleamarket Strat at 15,oo euro. ok.

REd metallic Strat. impossible shit

ES335 copy that both sounds good and is a real nice player

all at the price of 120,oo euro brand new, excluding tremolo.

Nice violin copy, cute little bass well worth its money

Levin school guitar from the 60´s. Extremly nice guitar.

Lincoln - Vox organ from the 60´s. such a great old organ.

The Hagström Echo, sound of the 60´s and 

was in as new condition when I got it.

A set of Pearl with Paiste cymbals and not to forget

the Slingerland steel drum.

Washing board for skiffel music

CASIO syntheiser saxofone with a couple of nice sounds buildt in.

found in a toybox at fleamarket.

Yamaha mixer o poweramp

AUDEX mixer and poweramplifier

a pair of Dynacord´s

WHAT IS REALITY ?

As many of us I spend some time at the laptop, Facebook with its different forums might be of interest. We do have a Swedish guitar forum but also local buy and sell second hand. Always on the lookout there it was a guitar for sale for less money then the parts that was included did cost. A phonecall and a quick trip in to town and I was the new owner of a  Telecaster tyoe of guitar.  Made somewhere in the far east i looked upon it only as spareparts. Didnt even think it could be used as a guitar, not at the price of 20 pound.

Sure it did look like a Telecaster, and its condition was great, almost as new. A gigbag was included.

Back home it was tuned and adjusted and suddenly I realised that it wasnt bad at all. In fact it sounded and felt like an American made Telecaster. Well not one of me favorite guitars but as a music tool it seam to work out just find. No vorse or better then any other guitar in the price range up to 4-500 pounds!

Sure if one thing is no good its the tuners, that need to be replaced. Anyway this cheap guitar makes me wonder how a guitar with the same design cans cost such a load of money. 

What the .......

I´m a guitarplayer, no doubt about that. I do me best to play all kind of different tunes. to get that very special sound that i can hear in my head every now and then.  Writing a new song always mean that I know before the last word is written, last note is on paper how I want the song to sound recorded.

In hope to get the right sound I use one of me guitar´s (got a small collection by now) Each guitar has it´s own very special sound and feel.

All of us wisit´s musicshop, testing different guitar´s with dreamy eyes. "Whooow what a great sound I can get with a guitar like this!" 

Suddenly something happens that I did´nt notice before. Wisited a musicshop in Gothenburg and there on the wall was no less then three Gibson J-200!!! That´s what I call a western guitar with the Every Bros in mind. What really made me curious was that those three Gibson J-200s hade totaly different pricetags! All of them according to spec´s made in USA. Prices started with the blond one at 19000,oo skr (2100,oo euro),  next one at 3000,oo euro and the most expensive at no less the 5800,oo euro.

30 minutes later I play´d em all three, now with questions in me mind. Alright the two sunburst guitars did look better and more expense, but what about the sound? I would say they was close to the same for all three guitars. And a bit funny was the fact that just a look on each guitar I thought that the midpriced J-200 was the most expensive!

Maybe one day a guitarplayer show´s up with the 2100,oo euro Gibson J-200 and tell me it´s the 5800,oo guitar. who am I to doubt that. Problem as far as I can see is that guitarproducers make the same guitar with small differeces in hope to sell more.  Here you could buy an original Gibson J-200 for 2100,oo euro or 5800! Still it´s a J-200. the same goes for many other producers like Fender where you can buy a Strat for everything from 150,oo euro´s to 3000,oo euro´s.

I would call this a big problem as well as all those guitars made in Asia by the same producers in order to have a product that is much cheaper for all of us player´s.

Santa is back!!

Time to fool around with word´s once again, in hope to tell the latest story regarding My so called musiclife. Not that easy you might understand as I´m not born with english as my first language. Some has natuarly seen and try to understand my bad gramma.

Anyway it´s early morning 4 a clock and hopefully some have a good night sleep at this hour. Here I arrived home after Wendsday rehearsel with " The Görans Garage Band". Natuarly our sweet black fluffy cat "Mr Piiiiiiiip" hurried out after beeing kept inside for the hole evening. When I planned to go to bed He was still out and it didnt matter that i called for him. I even went out on the mainroad to look for him, he might have been a victum on the road. Well when he arrived to the house the time was 20 minutes to 4!!! 

This day started with some work on one of me cars, then a few minutes after one Santas little helper arrived with Christmaspresents.

There was a natural break in the carwork, instead I unpacked the delivered packages! And there it was just as Ive seen it on a ebay picture. A Burns Orbital De Luxe speaker cabinet and inside a 12" Orbital-FANE speaker. It did look fantastic and I was told earlier by SANTA - me freind Bill L in UK that it was working.

next step to unpack the smaller package. A few minutes later in my hands I held for the first time a genuine Burns Orbital Stage One, pa amplifier.! Today its impossible for me to tell, but as far as I know the Swedish Burns importer during the 60´s didnt import any of those amp´s. So maybe this 50 year old amplifier is the first that is in Sweden.

Natuarly I couldnt resist testing it but first I had to remove the original AC power cord and install a new one. (I dont trust those old cables). A cleanup inside and some electronic spray in  the potentiometers (variable resistors) and it was ready for action. Some black spray used on the amp cabinet made it look much better.

 

A guitar was plugged in and some kind of weird sound was heard. Well it was notes for sure but the sound was very much Heavy Metal with an extreme Marshall type of distorted sound. What was wrong. Tried every possibility but the sound coming from the speaker was bad, really bad!

So i gave up and was about to go back to my cars. But before i did that a microphone was connected to the amp. Suddenly the sound was GREAT. At this point I realised that the input impedance was made for vocal microphones and not high output guitar pickups.

Burns Amp collection. Left to Right

Burns Orbit Three, Burns Orbit Three Double 12, Burns Orbital Stage One, Burns-Baldwin Double BB 100, Burns Clone Speaker, Burns Orbit Two, and finally Burns Orbital De Luxe speaker.