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This one walked through the door to go on consignment at the shop today and once I had it plugged in I had a bad feeling I wasn't going to be able resist grabbing it for myself. Once the previous owner offered it up to me unprompted for $100 under his reserve it was pretty much a sealed deal.

It's got a few minor dings on the back, some minor pick wear on the top, and had a small repair to the binding and edge of the low side of the headstock but it's in great shape otherwise and plays like a dream. It also had a CTS/Vitamin Q/Switchcraft rewire along w/ an SD Slash Alnico II Pro put in the bridge and a JB in the neck and the whole setup sounds really great and hot vintage + to me, w/ plenty of glorious body and bite in very pleasing proportions:


I'm not a fan of the gold hardware and will probably wind up converting it over to some kind of brushed/aged nickel setup on purely aesthetic grounds, but by initial impression I couldn't be happier w/ this guitar in every other regard. I think what hooked me was the similarity in feel and sound to my '92 LP Studio. The Burny has a slightly more tapered down neck profile to it and the action as setup w/ .010-.046s has a slightly lower effort/smoother feel than the Studio w/ .010-.050s. Tonally it seems very similar to the stock 498/490 set in the Studio, but w/ a bit more output and articulation.

I'd keep the gold. It's part of the whole Black Beauty thing. Love these Japanese knockoffs. Congrats!

mbene085 wrote: ↑

Sat Jan 20, 2018 5:23 pm

I'd keep the gold. It's part of the whole Black Beauty thing. Love these Japanese knockoffs. Congrats!

Yeah, I hear yah but I won't play it if it's gold and that would defeat the purpose of owning it I'll definitely hang onto all the gold bits it came w/ so it can be quickly reverted should I ever want to move it along.

And thanks!

I'd keep the gold, too. Just looks right on that guitar.
Great score, BTW!

I wouldn’t be able to resist it either, live these.

Perfect. I was just playing my own version of this (Yamaha SL650 from the mid-70s) for the first time in awhile and realized it could stand to have some TLC. Was considering putting some Dimarzio SDs in it ala Elliot Easton, but those gold covers really are delightful

Thanks guys!

I got to play this one w/ the bass player for about 2.5 hours today and I'm seriously loving it. It's never going to sound like anything other than an amped up Les Paul but man it does that thing well. It was actually pretty damn comfortable and I'd say noticeably less fatiguing than the '92 Studio. I've got nickel bits and a 5 ply guard inbound

The extent of my knowledge or 1st hand experience of Burnys was the widespread nearly universal praise I'd heard for them prior to running into this one yesterday. Based on this limited sample set I'd say all the praise is very well earned

nice lp ,burny are great guitars

The de-pimp-ification of the Burny is underway...

Had the tuners (nickel Grover 102V "milkbottle" style 18:1s) and some relic nickel screws show up yesterday and the majority of the rest of the hardware showed up today:

I kinda jumped the gun and ordered up one of the aluminium base/titanium saddle Pinnacle bridges and a machined steel tailpiece in nickel before really thinking about it so those bits will most likely get used on another guitar in favor of the aged nickel Faber Tone Lock setup that ought to work w/ the existing metric bushings/bridge posts. I'm kind of excited to see how the hybrid titanium and brass saddle set works out on here.

I've got a set of of nickel keystone buttons for the tuners that should be in tomorrow. I may or may not want to try aging those, the pickup covers and the jack plate. Seems like the contrasting shiny and aged bits could actually look pretty good, but we'll see as I start putting stuff on the guitar.

De-golded and massively upgraded in the bridge/tailpiece department:


In the process of swapping stuff I discovered the nut wasn't glued down and all 6 saddles screws on the gold Gotoh ABR were missing C clips. It wound up being not so much of a controlled change as I also put in a spare 498T at the bridge and '57 Classic at the neck since I didn't feel like trying to pull SDs from the gold covers, but it's sounding and feeling pretty damn great w/ the Faber bits and I'm much happier w/ the aesthetics.

Looks great and greater!!!!