Then it turned up on gumtree a week later, for £500, and the seller was trying to pass it off as a Burns prototype (it's absolutely not)...
Finally a week or so ago it was back on ebay with a low start, and I won it for under half what it previously sold for. Result!
In the meantime, it turns out that it isn't some mad home build, but an actual small scale maker/company, from Bournemouth. Still searching for information, so not gonna say too much, but as a lover of sixties UK guitars, I'm thrilled to discover a new maker, and this is a very very cool guitar. Apparently the builder also made a semi.
The scale and number of frets has obviously been inspired by the Burns Vibra Artiste (24 frets on a 23 3/8s scale) and the headstock is nabbed from Fenton Weill/Vox design but aside from that it's very original. The hand tooled intonatable bridge bolts directly onto a massive metal block which is embedded into the body to hold the springs in place, and most of the wiring, which uses Burns Trisonic pickups, screws together. Sounds great! The fretwire available back then wasn't great (not much in the way of tang) so it needs a refret due to lifting, which I'll do this week, and someone stripped it, but quality wise it's up there with the better Burns, Fenton Weill and Vox guitars of the early sixties. Better in some ways! The fret positioning is very good, which often can't be said for the bigger makers (plenty of Vox and Fenton Weill guitars have say, a 9th fret wider than the 8th), and the neck has a decently fat, comfortable profile without being impossible to grapple with.
