Tag: features

In early 2009, VG columnist Peter Stuart Kohman turned his focus on Burns, the pioneering British guitar builder. We’ve compiled the first three installments for a special edition of VG Overdrive. Watch for the complete history in the upcoming weeks.

James Ormston Burns’ solo foray into the electric-guitar market began at the start of 1960; he had briefly partnered with builders Henry Weil and Alan Wooten beforehand, but from this point on, the instruments would bear only his name.

Sales of the early Artist and Sonic models enabled the small company to move out of the basement of a Victorian house into something resembling a factory, listed in 1961 as 300 Mace Street, Hackney, London E8. Many entrepreneurs would have been content with this level of success, but Burns had just begun, and his next project would be a milestone in the history of British guitars.

By the middle of 1961, the line had proved commercially viable and Jim Burns, no stranger to gambling, must have felt ready to up the ante. The models in production were good instruments with many innovative, if quirky, design features, but not really in league with the Fender and Gibson guitars being imported at the time. The next Burns guitar would be a major creative departure, intended as the equal of these American imports – at least! Alongside the original Vox Phantom, it would rank as one of the most visually striking electrics of the ’60s, but unlike JMI’s trapezoidal favorite, which was little beyond a hacked-up Stratocaster, the Burns would have a wealth of original concepts.

The anecdotal story has Jim’s old cohort, Ike Isaacs, naming the new model when, upon seeing the swooping cutaway curves of the prototype, remarked “Looks like a bloody bison,” Burns must have been taken by the idea… the finished guitar carried not only the name Black Bison, but a tiny cartoon bison head on the vibrato handle and cover plate! Later Bison models still sported this enigmatic if amusing decoration, even when all else changed beyond recognition.

The guitar appears to have been developed in 1961 by Jim and several collaborators who helped with the technical aspects. The U.K. patent filing for the ornamental design of the body was made in August; from the look of it, the instrument’s layout was pretty well formalized by then. The neck was seamlessly fitted into the body like the earlier Artist model, but the body styling was far more dramatic. The trademark cutaway horns curve not only inward toward the neck, but outward from the face of the guitar – an elegant touch that must have made sculpting the body not only more work, but required a larger block of wood, as well. Interestingly, this is a roughly contemporary design to the Gibson SG, following the first SG/Les Paul guitars into production by less than a year. Few of those actually made it to England, so whether Burns himself was aware of the new Gibson design or was simply following a similar thought process is likely unknowable. The Bison’s headstock was not Gibson-influenced, but quite Fender-like, albeit more sculpted, an elaboration on the Artist model’s quasi-Telecaster shape. The Bison was also the first Burns guitar with a full-scale neck (well, Gibson scale anyway – 24 ³/₄") giving it a more professional feel than the short-scale Artist.

These first Black Bisons were laden with innovations; nearly every part of the guitar was a new design, and different from any existing instrument. Burns publicity materials were often overrun with hyperbolic prose, but this actually merited much of the self-praise seen in the sales sheet, which appears to date from soon after distribution commenced, around December of ’61. This trade advert is a masterpiece of semi-scientific ad prose: “…the distortion free ‘cushioned impact’ of the unique Burns circuitry in which the initial signal from the string is controlled and subsequently fed through a powerful boosting network” is just the beginning. Also touted is “The Miracle of Split Sound” and the “Tremolo arm, which is hyper-sensitive – The ball-bearing spindle, working in sweet harmony with the floating cradle… really backs you up on spontaneous expression… brings a new relaxed feeling to your work.” You get the idea.

The Black Bison’s elegantly carved body was made of English Sycamore; Jim always wanted to use native materials if possible. Obviously, the bound ebony fingerboard had to be imported timber, however! All metal hardware, including a decorative inset pickguard section, was gold-plated, which contrasted nicely with the ebony finish. One neat feature was a gold-plated machine head cover, concealing those nasty string ends! The machines were Dutch-made Van Ghents, probably the best in Europe. The headstock was adorned with a snazzy “OB” (Ormston Burns) lightning bolt logo… the Burns name was not large on these instruments, as it would soon be on following designs. Another eccentric feature was the oversize multilayered pickguard (“scratchplate” in U.K. terminology) that covered most of the face of the guitar – even the upper horn, where little “scratching” could be expected. This abundance of plastic would become a Burns trademark. One hidden but well engineered feature was the Burns geared truss rod, which was first used on this model. The patent filing date for “final specification” version of this was September 25, 1962 so it may have been reworked more than once, as by then it had been in use for some time. Earlier models had employed a simple and rather generic truss rod adjusting at the headstock, but this hidden (under a backplate) rod was a real practical advance and actually quite efficient in use, though so discreetly hidden, some Burns users are unaware of its existence!

The heart of the Black Bison is the four (yes, four) Burns Ultrasonic low-impedence pickups coupled to internal transformer coils in one of the most complicated wiring setups the guitar world has ever seen! Two selector knobs allowed eight pickup combinations including “Split Sound,” essentially a mono adaptation of Gretch’s Project-O-Sonic stereo using different half-pickups to mix bass and treble string tonalities. This would become another Burns trademark, used on several subsequent models. The pre-set sound designations were numeric on this first model, but would soon gain names; the very thin out-of-phase rear-pickup selection would become infamous when labeled “Wild Dog” sound on the next generation of guitars! This system was developed by Jim with Gordon Chandler, and would be the subject of one of the densest guitar patents (filed October 20, 1961) ever issued.

The actual pickups, Burns’ first with adjustable pole pieces, are most striking looking with the “Ormston Burns Ultra-Sonic” logo etched in silver on the underside of their clear plastic covers. They are less powerful than the earlier Tri-Sonics, even with that “powerful boosting network,” but with a higher-fidelity response. They are also quite oddly made, with no coil, as such, but an internal donut of wire wrapped around the magnet structure. Burns was well ahead of the game with this low-impedance experiment. The Ultra-Sonics’ tone is generally clean and hi-fi in most settings, though like anything else cranked through an AC15 they can really sing! Still, the guitar’s basic sound leans toward clear and distinct – perfect for the clean instrumental styles of 1962-’64, but not particularly well-suited to the raunchier sounds popular from ’65 onward. By the late ’60s, when overdrive crunch and distortion ruled the roost the elaborately wired Bison would seem far too clever for its own good!

One of the most interesting features of all Bisons was their elaborate vibrato tailpieces. The first model Black Bison marked the appearance of the perfected “floating cradle” bridge/vibrato system, the bridge had appeared on the last Vibra Artist Deluxe. It would be progressively developed over the next several years, as the simplified Series 1 and 2 vibratos used on many Burns models. The long, integral tailpiece/bridge structure occupies a lot of real estate on the face of the guitar. This would be another Burns trademark. The patent filing for this unit was December 6, 1961, by which time the guitar was just being introduced into production. Actually, “production” may be a misleading term, as according to some recollections of folks involved, the Burns shop was essentially a cottage industry at the time, and the original Black Bisons were each handbuilt under arduous circumstances! These carry the earliest Burns serial numbers – many have only two digits. Burns’ master woodworker/right hand man Jack Golder recalls that only 49 original four-pickup Black Bisons were built. These retailed at £157, an unheard-of sum for a solidbody English guitar. A real American could be had for that, including the Hank-Marvin-approved Fiesta Red Stratocaster, a scant £3 more from Selmer in 1962… or an ES-335 – for two quid less! Still, they seem to have sold out soon enough. Of the 50 or so built, a small number survive in Burns collections, while several more are known to have been destroyed or modified beyond retrieval. One of the very few in the U.S. is in the collection of the Hard Rock Cafe in New York, coming from dedicated Burns fan Chris Stein, of Blondie.

Few successful period players appear to have used an original Black Bison professionally. One was Nicky Crouch, a fixture on the pre-Beatle Merseybeat scene with both Faron’s Falmingos and The Mojos, briefly a top 10 act in the spring of ’64. Crouch is pictured with his guitar in both bands before apparently switching to an ES-330 by ’65. It seems likely that Faron’s Flamingos raucous ’63 Oriole recordings including “Do You Love Me” and “Shake Sherry” and “Let’s Stomp” as well as the Mojos U.K. hit “Everything’s Alright” feature this guitar; perhaps not the way Jim Burns would have preferred his masterpiece to be heard for posterity, but still great listening for Merseybeat fans! More recently, renowned English avant-gardist Fred Frith still often uses a highly modified four-pickup Black Bison, but it is so little original it may not exactly count! Still, it’s a testament to the adaptability of the design.

The elaborately handmade four-pickup Black Bison proved simply too fussy to mass-produce, so success spurred its own innovation. Taking a leaf from the Fender book Burns’ upper end guitars shifted to a bolt-on neck, three-pickup configuration. The Black Bison thus mutated into a more practical, if subtly less elegant, creation. One far easier to build in quantity. This second version of the Bison appears to have been phased in circa mid/late 1962, as the earlier Artist series was replaced by a less-elaborate set of guitars – the Vista-Sonic, Split-Sonic, and Jazz – that share hardware and construction features with the new Bisons. Apparently, even maverick Jim Burns was beginning to appreciate the production benefits of standardization!

At this time, a new branch of the Bison family was introduced. Burns seems to have been sensitive to the needs of bass guitarists, and most Burns guitars had a “big brother.” Thus the second generation Bison guitar was paired with the new Bison Bass, easily the most versatile and impressive bass guitar yet built in Europe in 1962! The bass, which is gigantic and striking in terms of looks and sound, went on to be arguably more successful than the guitar – certainly a milestone in electric bass history, with a long-scale (33¹/₂") neck and low-impedence Ultra-Sonic circuitry, though without Split Sound settings. A Rose-Morris catalog sheet showing the 1962-’63 guitar and bass, has the latter strangely illustrated in sunburst instead of the usual black! Both were, in fact, available in a range of colors, but black appears to have been the overwhelming favorite – a Bison in any other color is a serious rarity! White examples exist with a matching white pickguard, and are called “albino” among collectors. A ca. ’63 Burns flyer shows the second version of the bass, this time in the expected ebony finish!

These second-generation Bisons – both bass and guitar – went through some evolutionary changes during a production run of approximately two and a half years. With their solid sycamore bodies, they tend to be quite heavy, and feel far more solid than many later Burns and Baldwin guitars. The thick black polyester finish bonds to this wood fairly well, and they usually have less finish issues than ’65 and later models. Most Bisons feature a bound ebony fingerboard with a zero-fret and plastic dot inlay. The notable differences in these models come down to the control layout on both and the vibrato tailpiece on the guitar. Earlier examples show four plain alloy knobs, with the control indications engraved on the scratchplate (in squint-worthy small print!). This changes to more elegant “clear skirt” knobs, also used on the “Orbit” series amplifiers. These are a minor work of art in themselves, with a transparent outer section carrying a painted dot attached to the small center knob and travels over a separate little number plate affixed to the pickguard… surely the most elaborate knob ever conceived! The Series 2 vibrato introduced by ’64 features a more massive bridge section than the Series 1, with more elegant saddles and strings fed through the block, along with a different internal spring layout. It is also more reliable in operation… some consider it one of the best whammys ever designed.

This timeline, as dedicated Burns followers will have already noted, contradicts most previously published information… it’s based on detailed observation and a photo/serial number database built over 20-plus years. Still, I’m sure there’s some lively discussion ahead. There is absolutely an overlap of the evolving features; the earliest guitars with serial numbers under 3,000 generally feature the Series 1 bridge and solid alloy knobs, with the control markings on the pickguard. The “skirt” knobs appear by the 3,000s and finally, the most commonly seen version of the guitar appears in the higher 3,000s range with the new Series 2 bridge mated to the two-stage knobs. This version is built up through the summer of ’64 in the largest numbers. It must also be noted that, like Fenders, most Burns guitars carry their serial numbers (a single series for all models) on a neckplate that is easily lost, changed, and certainly never originally installed in proper sequence, so, all number and dating information must be seen as approximate. Still, like Fender instruments, the patterns tend to be fairly consistent. Burns numbers usually run in batches with the occasional “ringer’ that just doesn’t want to fit in!

This new Black Bison guitar was priced 140 to 150 Guineas, the bass slightly less. While it seems to have sold fairly well, the second-generation Black Bison saw relatively few top professional users. For the most part, English guitarists who had reached that level still wanted a “real American” guitar, not an English one; no matter how distinctive it might be! Burns instruments seemingly ended up being endorsed by pop groups, not “musicians’ bands,” and the influential players of the day rarely were seen with them – until Hank Marvin, of course. One slight exception was Wout Steenhuis, a studio player who had a specialty in re-recording instrumental versions of hits of the day, much as the Ventures and others did in the U.S. While not a “rock” player per se, he was well regarded as a musician, but wasn’t showing off his Black Bison on “Top Of The Pops” regularly! A player who did was Allan Ward of the Honeycombs, who usually played an early three-pickup Bison. Perhaps because of this, the band emerged as a fully-equipped Burns showcase (we’ll meet them in a future installment). Whether their lively Joe-Meek-produced records were actually cut with Burns gear is hard to say, but their bright twangy sound on discs suggests it. Billy Thorpe and the Aztecs were a well-known Australian band that similarly featured the striking Black Bison guitars to good effect. Indeed, older Burns guitars were sent to the antipodes in fairly large numbers, and can still sometimes be found there more easily than in the rest of the world.

The later Bison Bass would score some high-profile U.K. endorsements, but the 1962-’64 model was often seen in the London clubs in the hands of Paul Williams of Zoot Money’s Big Roll Band, a jazzy, hard-swinging outfit much loved by hip music fans and trendy mods in 1964-’65. Williams may well have been the most respected musician to have played any Bison!

There is no evidence that early Bisons were ever distributed in the U.S., despite efforts on Burns’ part to tap into the American market. With freight and duties, the already-expensive Bisons would have been astronomically priced by the time they reached the U.S. On this side of the Atlantic, they remain an extremely rare sight. Most American players have never seen an original! Ironically, they are often thought of as a cheap or cheesy guitar here. Still, to this day, any Burns Bison will help you stand out from the crowd! One place the Bison was definitely noticed was Japan… quite a few mid-’60s Japanese guitars carry a strong whiff of this Burns design. The inward-curving horns and general layout of the ’62-’64 Black Bisons proved to be a very influential stylistic starting point for a number of Japanese instruments – at least until the Ventures arrived with their Mosrites and started a new design trend!

Despite their relative success, the second-generation models were fairly short-lived, with a production span of probably just over two years. In the wake of the introduction of the Burns “Hank Marvin” signature model in mid 1964, the Bison series would mutate yet again, becoming essentially a curvier Marvin and shedding most of its original character. Burns U.K. recently offered several versions of Bison reissues, including an especially nice limited-edition scroll-head 1965 version. But the original four-pickup model has never been revived in any form. Still, it remains an unmistakable guitar, and a testament to the vision of its brilliantly eccentric designer.

This article originally appeared in VG March 2009 issue. All copyrights are by the author and Vintage Guitar magazine. Unauthorized replication or use is strictly prohibited.

In early 2009, VG columnist Peter Stuart Kohman turned his focus on Burns, the pioneering British guitar builder. We’ve compiled the first three installments for a special edition of VG Overdrive. Watch for the complete history in the upcoming weeks.

Before American guitars became obtainable, most guitars supplied to the ’60s “Beat” era players in the U.K. were brought in from Europe or Japan. Seeing a void, a few venturesome spirits pursued the goal of creating original English-made guitars.

There was a small but solid tradition of lutherie in the British Isles; high-quality banjos had been built in the U.K. from the 19th century and a few makers like Grimshaw and Clifford Essex/Paragon had produced professional-grade instruments – including guitars – in limited numbers. Still, compared to the U.S. or Germany, Great Britain had no fretted-instrument industry to speak of, and apparently few ready to take up the challenge.

One who did became an enigmatic electric guitar legend – James Ormston Burns – often described as “The English Leo Fender.” While both men’s lives and the product lines they created do lend some creedence to this comparison, Burns instruments remain an obscurantist’s delight instead of a world standard. Still, buoyed by renewed collector interest and the efforts of a U.K.-based company carrying on his heritage, the Burns name is perhaps more familiar today in the U.S. than ever before – even during his mid-’60s heyday. Ironically, this is the one “Burns” company that has had long-lasting success – the one Burns himself (who died in 1998) had the least involvement with. Burns U.K., run by longtime enthusiast Barry Gibson (we’ll ignore the irony there!) created a variety of instruments ranging from carefully crafted reproductions of ’60s classics to a selection of Asian-made guitars that draw inspiration from the original line.

Still, it is the original ’60s Burns creations we’ll be looking at here. From 1960 to ’65, James Ormston Burns’ relatively small company produced an astounding array of distinctive, original designs. Even those obviously derivative of existing guitars always had an original look and distinctive design twist. Everything for these instruments except the tuners (Dutch-made Van Ghents) was designed and produced either in-house or by dedicated contractors; pickups, electronics, hardware, vibratos, etc. were always unique, and the sheer volume of original ideas they encompass is most impressive. If you watch the evolution of Burns’ designs, you can follow the trains of thought that must have occupied his restless mind. Nearest competitor JMI/Vox was supported by the stream of revenue from a highly successful amplifier line, but the Ormston-Burns company was dependent on the success of each new generation of guitars to survive… and in this period the generations came at blinding speed! Despite this, the one thing Jim Burns never had was an English equivalent to Fender Sales maestro Don Randall, the man who could consistently sell his ideas. He did have an ever-growing dedicated staff of specialists, and many little-known employees were major contributors to the company, but unfortunately business acumen was never his (or the organization’s) strong suit.

There are two print references on Burns history. Paul Day’s The Burns Book, first published in the U.K. in ’79 and reprinted by The Bold Strummer in the U.S. in 1990, remains one of the earliest and most comprehensive surveys of any guitar maker. The trim paperback, written with love, also sports a spiffy green sunburst cover! The second is Pearls and Crazy Diamonds, published in 2001 in Sweden by Burns collector Per Gjorde. Gjorde’s book is more a visual feast, with lush color photographs of many Burns models… though quite a few are unfortunately only shown at smaller squint-worthy size. The book also details Burns instruments until recent times, including a wealth of visual material on all eras. Despite much new research and very illuminating interviews with many of the personalities involved much of the actual guitar descriptions are little changed from Day’s work… in some cases reappearing virtually verbatim. Still, both volumes are essential for the budding Burns fan, and they complement each other well. There are also several collectors websites of note, which are invaluable in documenting some of the more perfect – and unusual – extant examples of the company’s 1960s output.

A good deal of the following information is deeply indebted to these sources, especially Day, though in examining hundreds of instruments over the past 30 years I can “agree to disagree” with previously published information on certain points! Also, in this series I’ll attempt to cover details and raise questions little discussed in these two tomes, and leave it to the interested reader to seek out the above mentioned reference works for more detail on the basics of Burns history. This is more a personal stroll through the Burns saga, and as those who love them know, it’s an often quizzical world, filled with split sounds, Ultra Sonics, Rezo Tubes, and Martian sunbursts!

Burns guitars are for the most part little-known to American enthusiasts, and often dismissed as cheap, shoddy, or just plain strange. While some halting attempts were made in the 1960s at American distribution, cost and tariff issues made it uneconomical to market high-grade British-made instruments to the US. Vox faced the same sort of challenges, and the result was the Thomas Organ licensing deal that eventually subsumed that company. As we shall see, Ormston Burns Ltd. would meet a somewhat similar fate at the hands of American piano/organ giant Baldwin after 1965… but that’s getting ahead of ourselves. The few Burns-made guitars most American players ever see are almost always labeled as Ampeg and Baldwin, and often are not the best examples of the U.K. company’s offerings.

Like Leo Fender, Jim Burns was by all accounts something of an eccentric, and there are many stories from the people who knew and worked with him. He was generally reticent about his personal history. In a Beat Instrumental profile in 1964, he is described as “wanting to work in peace, he is generally known to dislike publicity – personal publicity, that is – he’ll tell you all you want to know about his staff and equipment but won’t talk about himself.” This dislike of celebrity was one trait shared with Fender. Unlike Leo however, Burns was actually a guitar player, primarily Hawaiian-style, and built his first instrument for himself in 1944 while a fitter for the RAF stationed in Africa. In the profile, he was noted as having “his own private collection of Hawaiian makes, the pride of which is a fine koa model.” Burns was originally from the Newcastle area in the northeast, but settled in London fairly soon on after his airforce stint. He worked variously as a professional Hawaiian guitarist, guitar teacher, cabinet maker, joiner and paint sprayer… developing a “perfect storm” of skills for a budding guitar maker!

Burns seems to have been determined to establish himself as a builder, and made gradual progress getting into the guitar business. He built a few electric Spanish and Hawaiian guitars and amps by hand starting around 1952, eventually interesting highly regarded U.K. jazz guitarist Ike Isaacs in an amplifier. By ’58, Isaacs was testing Jim’s creations and advising on the design, and the result was the “Ike Isaacs Shortcale Model,” a vaguely Les-Paul-esque creation built (by hand!) and sold one at a time. The electric pickup rig was supplied by Alan Wooton, and the “Supersound” brand name Wooten was to subsequently continue using was applied to this instrument. With perhaps 20 or so built, these guitars had little commercial impact and are so rare few collectors have ever seen one.

In 1959, Burns’ next project in the guitar-making business was a short-lived in partnership with Henry Weill, who was an electronics “boffin” in British parlance. With his pickups married to Jim’s design sensibilities and woodworking skills, the Burns-Weill line was born. These were also hand-made instruments, but produced in somewhat greater numbers. Still, the surviving examples are very rare and show quirky individual differences. At the lower end of the line were the fairly conventional “Fenton” Guitar and Bass models, which owed something to the popular Guyatone branded Japanese made electrics, with small single-cutaway bodies, two pickups and an elongated headstock. Of considerably more interest – at least aesthetically – were the RP2G guitar and RP2B Bass, a rather bizarrely styled set affectionately known as the “Martian Cricket Bat.” These were designed with input from Roy Plummer, a well-known British jazz guitarist responsible for the asymmetrical neck design inspired by the 1930s Gretsch Synchromatic. Just who designed the slightly demented-looking sloping boxy body is unrecorded, but it certainly is original! The “RP” series were different and distinctive, love it or hate it, and must have helped draw attention to the Burns-Weill brand. Despite some success the partners split around the turn of 1960, and Henry Weill continued with the re-named “Fenton-Weill” range, in fact the first instruments sold after the split simply had the “Burns” part of the nameplate cut away! Weill continued to produce the RP-2 line in a somewhat smoothed-out version with the cutaways given a subtle curve, renamed for some reason the “American Range.” It’s hard to imagine a less “American” looking guitar! The early-’60s catalog page shown here gives an idea of their appearance. While little-associated with Jim Burns, these guitars remained essentially his earliest successful design.

After splitting from Weill, Burns established his own factory located at 131 Queens Road, Buckhurst Hill. This was actually the private residence of a Mrs. Farrell, who was Burns first major investor, so the term “factory” is perhaps optimistic! Jim’s few workers toiled in the large basement, filling it with sawdust while building the instruments that would set the Burns brand on a successful track. Jim Burns individual ideas about electric guitars were fully encapsulated for the first time in the “Artist” and “Sonic” instruments created there. Interestingly, Burns seems to have always been concerned with the needs of bass guitarists, and most Burns guitars from the beginning had a “big brother” four-string issued alongside. These models – the Sonic, Artist, and Vibra Artists – were basically the same design from a construction standpoint, and are a more original creation than often credited.

The first of these, the Artist, was built in very small numbers. This was a three-pickup/double-cutaway guitar with fairly advanced controls including individual volumes and tones for each pickup. The most radical feature is an elegant and comfortable heel-less dovetail neck joint which made the guitar look as if it was fashioned from a single piece of wood. The Artist was fitted with a truss rod adjusted at the headstock and a 24-fret double-octave fingerboard, quite unusual at the time. With a fairly short scale of 23³/₈", this led to some cramped fingering up the neck!

The Artist was quickly succeeded by the Vibra Artist – the same guitar with (surprise!) a vibrato added. This first unit was called the Vibra (Burns product naming would soon get much more creative!) and the simple flat-plate mounting would be developed into the Mark IX vibrato unit, the subject of several distinct patent applications in 1961. This particular hump-backed piece of hardware is a bit more advanced with a tension adjustment built into the housing, and will be familiar to many Gretsch fans as it somehow found its way onto that company’s Jet guitars in ’62. How this initial Burns-Gretsch connection was made remains a mystery. It’s tempting to speculate that Jim Burns and Gretsch promoter Jimmy Webster might have met at a trade show somewhere… certainly both men were brimming with creative, if sometimes impractical, ideas for the development of the electric guitar! The Vibra Artist bridge used with this tailpiece was an elaborately engineered if somewhat Heath-Robinson-looking concoction of stamped metal saddles and protruding screws; the final patent application for this engineering marvel was filed in March, 1961.

The cheaper companion to the Artist was the Sonic Model, a simpler guitar with two pickups, a solid floating bridge, and a smaller, slightly squashed-looking body. The Sonic guitar and bass were good-quality instruments offered at a reasonable price and respected for their surprisingly gutsy sound. Sonic bodies were mostly built by an outside contractor, helping keep the small company from getting overwhelmed.

One of the major factors in the success of all these instruments were their distinctive pickups, which were much more powerful and better-sounding than the typical European units of the day. Burns (learning the value of a catchy moniker) called them “Tri-Sonic.” These little wonders look fairly unassuming, housed in a round-edged chrome metal cover with six polepiece holes punched in the top and a donut of wire wrapped around the magnets without a coil form. All early Burns guitars mount their Tri-Sonics above the pickguard’s surface, supported by little springs with the wires meandering down into the body, giving a slightly precarious appearance!

The success of this line led to a more upscale model being introduced – the Vibra Artist DeLuxe. A flashier version of the Artist with more flexible controls (including an on/off switch for each pickup), its hardware was gold plated, fingerboard was bound, and the guitar had a classier appearance. The Deluxe bore a small “OB” (Ormston Burns) logo plate with a lightning bolt on the headstock in place of a prosaic “Burns London” engraved plastic piece. By this time, the Burns company had moved out of Mrs. Farrell’s Victorian house to an actual factory at 300 Mace Street, Hackney, London, E.8. But it quickly outgrew this location, as well. While these guitars were not cheap, they were still priced below the American instruments lately available. Catalog pages shown here from Rose-Morris (Burns’ first major distributor) and Bell’s of Surbiton show the Sonics offered at around 50 Guineas and the Vibra-Artist closer to 80 in 1961-’62. The Vibra Artist Deluxe was priced at over one hundred pounds… quite a lofty sum for a homemade guitar in ’61! These prices are on par with the best continental imports, but Burns line were arguably the best solidbodies being built in Europe in 1960-’61.

These early Burns instruments did attract numerous professional users, albeit mostly those just able to afford them. “Before Fenders or Gibsons, we had something called a Burns,” noted Ron Wood once in an interview. The Searchers’ Mike Pender (still being noted as “Pendergast” at the time of this picture!) was a long-time user of an early Vibra-Artist model when his group shot to fame in late ’63. “We’re still using our original battered guitars stuck together with tape” noted bassist Tony Jackson in the notes to their first LP; if anyone thinks this was a hyperbolic comment, look very closely – you may note clear tape on the upper pickup selector! The Searchers would go on to be one of the most visible Burns endorsers of the company’s “golden” year 1964-’65. Many up-and-coming U.K. bands had at least one Sonic or Vibra Artist in the lineup.

None of the Artist or Sonic models bore serial numbers, so surviving examples can only be roughly dated by features. The Vibra Artist was already phased out by late 1962, succeeded by the next generation of bolt-neck solidbodies, but the lowly Sonic – the longest-running of these primal designs was still being offered in the summer of ’64. The construction and hardware on earlier models are a bit cruder and they feature a lacquered maple fingerboard; later ones sport a rosewood board and Mk IX vibrato in place of the flat-plate “Vibra” unit.

Surviving Sonic models outnumber Vibra Artists by a wide margin, and not only due to the lower cost and longer production run. Since the mid ’70s, old Burns Artists have suffered greatly under the predations very dangerous guitar carnivore – the dedicated Brian May fanatic! The Queen guitarist’s original Red Special, hand-built with his father, used three Burns Tri-Sonic pickups and for many years, the only way to obtain a set was to sacrifice a guitar! Although in the early ’60s, Burns freely sold the pickups separately, by the time May rose to fame they were long out of production. An unsuspecting Artist – or one and a half Sonics – were often stripped of their rig to provide the raw material to re-create this one-off guitar, or at least its sound. The cheaper Sonic pickups, built without individual polepieces, will work, but are technically wrong for accurate “May-Hem!” Happily, the modern Burns organization offer both the pickups and a full re-creation of May’s guitar, so the original Artists are less at risk today!

By the middle of 1961, with the Burns line proving seriously viable, economically, Jim Burns was ready to up the ante and create an instrument priced to compete with American solidbodies. The guitar, dubbed the Black Bison, was a major stylistic and creative departure, and, along with the contemporary Vox Phantom, would rank as one of the most visually striking electrics of the 1960s. It was the ultimate expression of the early Burns aesthetic, and will serve as the next chapter in “As the Burns Turns!” here at “The Way Back Beat!”

This article originally appeared in VG February 2009 issue. All copyrights are by the author and Vintage Guitar magazine. Unauthorized replication or use is strictly prohibited.