Bas’s Burns Basses

A pair of hell cool Burns basses sent in by Bas from Amsterdam.

“The first vintage Burns I bought is the Vista Sonic. It’s from 1963 and in pretty good shape, the only thing that’s removed is the string dampening system between the bridge and the bridge pickup. It has 3 Tri-Sonic pickups, a pickup selector switch, a Fender bridge cover, volume and tone knobs”

“The pickup selecter switch has the cool ‘Wild dog’ position. On the Vista Sonic it enables both the bridge and the middle pickup and on the Jazz Bass all 3 pickups. This difference is due to people messing around with the electronics, collectors always ask for the function of the pup selector to find out if the electronics are in the original condition.”

“It has a deep and haunting tone that is partly due to the pickups being very close to the strings. I bought it from a very nice guy who kept his word when we agreed on a price and he got higher bids. He also owned a beautiful sixties stratocaster!”

“The second one is a modified Jazz Bass, not to be confused with Fender Jazz Bass the Burns Jazz Bass is a totally different bass.”

“Like the Vista Sonic it features 3 Tri-Sonic pickups, tone selector with Wild Dog, volume and tone. The previous owner told me the story on how it came to having a maple neck because Burns guitars and basses never have maple necks. The previous owner bought just the body from a friend who had the body lying around since the original neck broke in half in an accident. He fell down from a flight of stairs holding the bass!”

“The neck was specifically chosen so no modifications would have to be made in the body and features an engraved metal plate which mentions the brand and serial. no. (homemade by previous owner). I reckon that there are new holes drilled for this nek but I haven’t checked. I did find a little suprise when I screwed off the bridge cover, on the inside of the bridge cover I found the remains of a piece of foam that once was there. Something Fender added to their bridge covers in the sixties! This bass sounds amazing, has tons of low end and a real clear trebly edge too.”

Thanks very much to Bas for sending in his story & great photos of his awesome basses. I gotta say that Vista Bass is a thing of beauty. Plus any bass with a Wild Dog setting is a match made in heaven for me.

If you have a cool guitar that you’d like to see  up here on guitarnerd, send me some photos and the story behind it and I’ll post it up.

Thanks again, Bas!