Burns Sonic guitar, 1960 ("The Aristone")

One of my modest insights into the world of Ebay is that it's only good at finding things that are correctly identified. It's like cataloguing; one the places where parts of my job extend into my real life. If someone is selling an original Fuzz Face and they call it that in the main description, lots of people will find it/see it/bid on it. But if it's described as a 'round grey guitar peddle', a lot less people will see it. This was how I got the Silvertone/Valco - interest in Supro-type guitars was at a generally lower level than now, and someone checking a Silvertone listing would probably be looking for a Danelectro, and pass on it - I recognised it as a Valco and got it cheap. Look for the vague descriptions, and there are bargains if you don't mind wading through the crap. I got the Burns the same way.
 

People with an interest in guitars of the early '60s would recognise it as a Burns, but the name on the headstock is "The Aristone", so that was the main Ebay description term. Deal! Aristone were a London company who had been making banjos and ukeleles and archtop acoustic guitars since the 1930s. I've seen one other electric guitar with the same headstock logo, a late 50s semi-acoustic, on sale for a huge sum at Andy's Guitar Workshop in the year they went into liquidation. How Aristone were related to Jim Burns is a mystery, but there's no sign of any other markings, and in every other respect it's a straight-up 1960 Burns Sonic - complete with maple fretboard, white plastic knobs, army surplus 3-way switch and first-stab trem system. My only guess is that if you're starting out trying to sell guitars and nobody knows your name, you might strike a deal to use a bigger name, even if they are best known for banjos. A lot of companies were testing the water of the future beat tidal wave, and Aristone must have been one of them. Whatever the arrangement was, it didn't last. The only other clue is that the word 'foreign' appears at the bottom of the logo - maybe it was an export model.

The tuner covers reveal another unusual detail. Guitar nerds will recognise these as Van Gent tuners from the Netherlands, but they are also stamped with the logo of their British distributors, Boosey & Hawkes. I've seen these on some 1950s Grimshaw guitars online, but mostly they are plain.

It's a funny looking thing, badly designed in some ways and brilliant in others. The major problem is the weight of the neck/body joint versus the tiny, admittedly kind of silly-looking body. I had a friend in a band in the grungeful early 90s. He was a very small person and my first thought seeing him playing it was that he must have chosen it to match his stature. I was plain wrong (and probably size-ist), but with this design, how could it be anything other than neck-heavy? This photo also shows up the brittle hollow scratchplate and military grade switch.

You see some examples with the strap button moved to the lower bout, to move the centre of gravity, but this one has stayed as Mr Burns (tee hee) intended. Balance problems come into perspective when you plug it in - theses are really great pickups, maybe even better than the Valco single coils I love, so why not just sit down if its a problem? They really bite - a very punky spiky beat sound, but with a smoother mid-range and a good growl in the bass. Yay! This the best guitar for fuzz ever.

I mentioned the trem system above and you might be thinking 'what trem system?' I took the 'pat. pending' arm off and disabled it to get the action a bit lower, but the pieces are all safe. It didn't work too well in the first place. I also reversed the polarity of the bridge pickup, for more usable sounds. Originally the pickups were out of phase, which made for a strange hollow sound in the middle position that I didn't like. I changed it, but to me it's an improvement. It's been through the wars a bit, so I don't mind making a few positive alterations. To me it's still a working instrument.

One last thing I should mention is the Selmer strap. This was another ebay find - it didn't come with the guitar, but it's a good match. American collectors call this kind of thing 'case candy'. I could never use that expression, but I don't have the case either.