Why did the Shadows shift to Burns guitars?

[abstamaria]

And why did they shift back to Fender?

Someone in the Ventures forum asked.

l assume they shifted to Burns for commercial reasons. That is the reason the Ventures shifted to Mossrite guitars. Would that be correct?

[Didier]

And why did they shift back to Fender?

At this time they were using the rosewood neck Strats provided to them by JMI in 1961, but they complained about tuning problems with these guitars (particularly Bruce). According to the official story, they asked Jim Burns to design better guitars for them in 1963 and got final models in 1964 after testing several prototypes.

I discovered Burns guitar when I saw the Shadows at the Paris Olympia in 1964. I had never heard of Burns guitars before, and was very surprised. I was close enough from the stage to read "Burns London" on their guitars, so I thought they followed the "Buy British" slogan of this time !

Their Burns guitars were stolen around 1970, but at this time Burns was out of business, so they went back to Strats.

Didier

[abstamaria]

Ah, thank you, Didier. I have never seen the Shadows live; how lucky you were to be so close.

I wonder how real those tuning problems were, as the experience seems unique to the Shadows. One would imagine the same problem would have plagued the series or at least a whole run of those early Rosewood Strats. We of course know about Bruce's problem, but seems unrelated to guitars.

Regards,

Andy

[dave robinson]

I suspect that the 'tuning' problems were indeed 'pilot error' - I have owned two of those Strats from that period, as have many of my colleagues and there's nothing wrong with them.It's knowing how to set them up, nothing more. I still have one and will probably use it tonight.
It provided a good excuse to for them to go to Jim Burns for a commercial deal, but it speaks volumes when Hank was in no hurry to replace his stolen Burns in 1970, he couldn't get another Strat fast enough. That said I have a couple of Burns Marvin guitars and i love 'em.

[roger bayliss]

http://burnsguitars.cn/home-page/history/

Some reference to this in the section about the Marvin...

[JimN]

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

[Geoff Alderton LH]

Hi all
Have to agree with Dave here, pilot error.There are several pictures showing the rosewood Strats with bridge saddles in a straight line and not as we know, staggered to get the correct intonation.
Regards Geoff.

[George Geddes]

It was, in fact, only Hank's Marvin which was stolen - this was the MWF era - and Bruce used his white Marvin several times at Shadowmania, as did Neil Aimsby of the Rapiers

George

[Paul Childs]

When they switched to Burns, have you noticed that around the same period the chart placings dropped with new releases after that and hardly anymore hits until the 70s when they switched back to Fender. That tells you something.

[abstamaria]

I think that may have been due more to changing tastes rather than the guitars. JN's point above is an important one. When the Shadows (and the Ventures) changed guitars, the all-instrumental era was ending.

Andy