"BURNS"

As a serious suggestion to someone in need of My knowhow regarding Guitars I use to say that the potential buyer of a guitar shall never look for a certain brandname. The best guitar for You and Me can be totally different guitars.

Wich is the Best? Fender, Gibson, Ephiphone, Gretsch, Burns, Ibanez, Grecco, Martin.... to many different brands to mention.

In my youth MY dream guitar of all time was the Gibson Barney Kessel archtop model. A great guitar with double Venetian cutaways. (extremly expensive)

Will this Dream guitar, also make the other Gibson´s as good as? The Fender Jaguar/Jazzmaster range of guitars was top of the line in the 60-ies. Is the Strat and the Tele as good as? During the years Ive owned several guitars, Gibson´s, Fender´s You name it.

By the way, the best ever Stratocaster that I played and owned was´nt even a Fender!

Already as a teenager I fell in love with Les Paul. Not the guitar but the inventor - the artist. The Les Paul Gibson guitars was heavy, impossible to play sitting down and in my oppinion not at all a great Gibson!

So how come, someone like me still fall in love with a Guitar brand. I dont know for sure. Maybe partly caused by the fact that one of my idols used to play one. On the other hand, I never said that every guitar made from this producer was great. Not at all.(some was pure shit!)

Cliff Richard and the Shadows stared in the Summer Holiday movie. They used mainly Greenburst Burns Marvin guitars.

When as a youngster I worked in a musicshop I did have the opportunity to try em out. Leading to he purchase of me first Burns guitar. A thing called Burns Split Sonic. It was a true beuty and included various sounds that no other guitar could produce.

I really loved that guitar, but a while later I was offered to trade it to a Burns Black Bison. A swap that took me all the way to guitar heaven. No other electric guitar was to be compared with this beuaty. Me a rather thin youngster was soon to realise that the Bison and especially its owner-player needed to be a bodybuilder. It was extremly heavy especially playing it standing on stage.

Both guitars did have a similar microfon setting and almost the same tremolosystem. The later proved to be almost unbreakeble. Properly stringed and tuned the you could hang the guitar in its wammy bar. But it was Heavy!

How come I didnt go for the Fender´s? Hmm I dont know, somehow everybody was playing em in the early 60-ies. A Stratocastar was at that moment priced the same as the "Burns Split Sonic" while the "Jazz Split Sound" was app 25% more expensive. The "Bison" was more then 50% more expensive. The only "Fender" that got me was the "Jaguar & Jazzmaster" but only a few of those was imported to Sweden.

During the same years in the mid 60-ies Burns offered a transistorised Guitar Amplifier with 50 watts output, and no background noice. Something that forced me and many others to swap Our VOX AC30-50 to this new amp!

A couple more Burns guitars was joining me collection and in the late 70-ies My collection included 12 Burns guitars. Pics below show either me old guitars or similar with pics that Ive borrowed.

Burns Hank B Marvin 1965

Burns Virginian 1965

Burns Jazz Split Sound 1964

Burns Vista Sonic Bass 1963

Burns Jazz Split Sound Bass 1964

Burns Split Sonic 1963

Burns Bison Albino 1964

Burns Bison Albino Bass & Guitar

Burns Black Bison Bass 1963

Burns TR2 or Vibraslim

Burns TR2 1964

The Burns Flyte ca 1974

Well what about those guitars? The Marvin guitar was sold in favour of a couple of other Burns guitars, somehow I did love its design but never to play on it. My all time Burns favorite is still the Jazz Split Sound guitars and the Jazz Bass is possibly the best bass-guitar I ever played with its rubbercovered strings it did have a great sound.

Due to economical problems my complete collection of "Burns" guitars was sold. Instead I started to build me a Bison copy out of a piece of honduras mahogony. The guitar have since its birth been played frequently and also re-designed several times. Hopefully it will be ready in a couple of years. But 25+ years has proved its quality.

Iy contains a Floyd Roose tremolo unit and the bridge pickup is an original Gibson Les Paul Studio. Maybe the two other microphones will be swapped in the future.

Somehow Jim Burns also made the acustic line of guitars very heavy, why I dont know. The"Flyte" a guitar I bought only because it was a Burns. God knows it was a shitty guitar!

Years after me buying the Burns Orbit amp natuarly I did regret the deal. But on the other hand times was new and an old second hand Orbit was cheap to buy. One is still in my collection.

My interesst for English sportscars led me to Brittain where Ive got the idea to meet with Jim Burns, the former constructer/luthier of the Burns guitars. It was fairly easy to find Him and we did meet at a pub. I reccon that He wasnt feeling alright so it became a very short meeting, over a couple of beers.

A year or so later during a wisit in the UK, I was told about a very special car. A car that was supposed to be designed by the same Jim Burns. I didnt find the car then, but later I saw it for the first time at a car meeting in UK.

Somehow in 1967 Jim Burns wisited the Alvis Car Company to discuss the idea of a car that He dreamed of. He did like the cars produced by Alvis but wanted a stronger motor. Jim made his first down payment on the car and the company started to build it.

The car as You can see on the pics was a redesigned Alvis TD21 Coupe. With diffent lowered roofline, double Bently-ish headlights and under the bonnet a Chevrolet Corvette V8 Motor.

The car was ready for delivery in 1968 where it also went to various carshows round Europe before delivery. But at that moment Jim Burns didnt have the possibilities to pay the car. So in fact the car He ordered and designed was never to become His car. He didnt even get the chanse to take it for a testride.

Rumours tells that instead of letting Jim Burns borrow the car for a test, the car was lent by a guitar player who took Jim for a ride in the Alvis Corvette. Natuarly the guitarplayer was none other then Hank B Marvin.

Even if it aint a collection of old Burns guitars its still de start of a collection. At my 60-ies birthday My Lady-love gave me a Burns Marvin Marquee 2005. It has since then proofed it self as a really good guitar. The perfect substitute for the old Burns guitars.

Finding an advert with a as new second hand Bison-62 reissue made me jump and suddenly there was 2 Burns guitars on me wall. ( I do miss the original tremolo system)

Beeing a Burns-freak in my search I did find this Hard Rock Cafe guitar. Unfortinutly its from Mexico and it may be hard to get it to Sweden.