burns sonic?

[unol]

Hi basschatters. Im a long time lurker on here but haven't really felt the need to say very much until now....

I've found someone with a Burns sonic with thru body strings for sale that looks like it could be good fun. I'm really struggling to find much info out there though. Anyone have any experience with these basses and some opinions they'd like to share?

Cheers
Unol

[BigRedX]

I have a Burns Sonic that was my first bass and main one for all of the 80s. It's short scale so you may need to experiment with strings to get a decent sound out of the E (I ended up with a custom set from Newtone). Through-body strings sounds like a modification do you have any photos to show us?

There are two excellent books on Burns guitars - The now out of print "The Burns Book" by Paul Day which was published in the early 80s and consequently doesn't have any info on the current incarnation of Burns, and the far more lavish "Pearls And Crazy Diamonds" by Per Gjörde which is available [url="http://www.burnsguitarmuseum.com"]here[/url].

Here's my much modified Burns Sonic Bass that was my mainstay for 10 years and on all my early band recordings:



Any thing specific you want to know just ask, and I'll do my best to answer although a lot of the mods were done to mine before I bought it, so if the bass you are looking at is stock apart form the through body stringing, it might be quite a lot different.

Edited March 23, 2013 by BigRedX

[unol]

Hi mate thanks for the reply. I guess I'm really interested in what sort of sounds and tones I could get out of it, common problems, quirks and general opinion and thoughts and feelings about them really. I'm quite into playing alot of garage and old motown type stuff so I'm guessing it could be a nice. What wood were they made of and why was it superceded by the nu sonic
Are a couple of things I was also wondering about.

Here's a few pics. It looks like the wood from under the bridge is gone, also like I said it's now thru stringed and the tuners have been replaced.

Cheers again

[BigRedX]

Nice, it's considerably more original than mine is.

The wood under the bridge on mine is a modification to raise the bridge up to the required height to be usable.

I see that yours has a more suitable replacement bridge as well as the through body stringing. Also the machine heads have been replaced, originally they would have been guitar sized - how does it balance with the extra weight on the headstock?

The main thing to watch for is the fact that there is no adjustable truss rod in the neck (although there is some re-enforcement) which means that if you've got too much relief in the neck it won't easy or cheap to fix.

What is worth experimenting with is the pickup wiring. Mine puts both pickups in series when they are on together (rather than the more usual parallel wiring) and this gives a big fat punchy sound. It was so extensively modified when I bought it that I have no idea if that is the standard way of doing it or not.

[unol]

Thanks again big red x. I haven't had chance to see it in the flesh yet but hopefully tomorrow. I did think the lack of truss rod might be an issue but I guess I'll get a chance to see how it's behaving when I check it out.I'm really hoping it plays nice because it certainly looks pretty cool.

Anyone else out there played one of these?

It seems like there's very few of these instruments out there so I guess I'm not going to get too many replies but it seems like you might know a thing or two about Burns kit mate. I'll keep this thread updated once I have a go and if I buy it.

Cheers
Unol

[Chris Horton]

Hi Unol.

I have never played these basses before but just wanted to say hi as I am also from Plymouth
Chris

[superclive]

Never played a Sonic bass. But I had a go on a Sonic 6 sting just last week and it really was a plank. It had just been refurbished and had had some parts custom made was still awful.

I have no idea how this would equate to the bass version. But it just felt cheap and poorly made.