roger bayliss wrote:http://burnsguitars.cn/home-page/history/
Some reference to this in the section about the Marvin...
Quoted material:
Over the next few years the Burns Company added several new models to its line including the Split Sonic, the Jazz Split Sound guitar and the semi-solid TR2. With the introduction of the Marvin in December 1964, however, Burns came of age. That Hank Marvin – the lead guitarist with the UK’s top instrumental group, The Shadows – should have laid aside his famous red Fender in favour of a British-built Burns guitar represented a remarkable coup for Jim and one that he could hardly have envisaged just a few years earlier. The Shadows, who were experiencing tuning problems with their Fenders, had approached Jim with the request that he build them a Stratocaster-style instrument that would play and stay in tune. Taking Hank’s Fender Stratocaster as a point of departure, Jim had incorporated various ‘improvements’ including the newly designed Rezo-Tube vibrato unit and Rez-o-Matik pickups. With a ¥1,900 price tag (around ¥220 more than a sunburst Fender Stratocaster), the Marvin replaced the Bison as Burns’s flagship model.I don't know what currency those figures are in, and the inaccuracies are understandable enough considering that the information must all be secondhand to the website manager.
The Marvin was released in the early part of 1964, and it is known that Hank (at the least) had one in late 1963, though perhaps not in final form.
A real problem was caused by the leisurely development period for the Marvin.
It is known that the project started in early 1962. For instance, the Associated-Rediffusion TV programme (broadcast May 1962) "Dan Farson Meets The Shadows" contained a sequence where Hank explained to Dan that they had recently designed a guitar which they were expecting to receive eventually. When the Marvin was later made available, the contemporary publicity made it clear that the gestation period had indeed been that long.
One could have reasonably expected a fall in the sales of the Fender Stratocaster and Precision if the Shads had been playing Burns guitars by (say) the late summer of 1962. But by March 1964, the guitar played by the group was becoming much more of a minority interest. That delay was fatal, because the Beatles and Rolling Stones, with their semi-acoustic guitars (for the most part) appeared in the meantime and changed the scene completely.
JN