Danni and Billy Fury's Burns

Written by archtop girl on Tuesday, 23 February 2010

Danni Nicholls - Brighton-based singer-songwriter, music promoter and all-round good gal - has a cute little Burns, a short-scale jazz guitar made in Britain. Story goes that it once belonged to Brit rock'n'roller Billy Fury: "My uncle bought it off a guy in the late '60s who said he was a friend of Billy Fury's", she says, "and that he had bought it off him. There's no hard evidence but that's the way the story goes!"

"I inherited the guitar from my uncle, and it sat in my room for ages before I decided to get it serviced", Danni adds. The guy who looked at the guitar was so taken with it he wrote her a page-long essay extolling its virtues - "a real little beauty it is too."

One of the budget models in the Burns range at the time (it's a model built 1962-64), it's not worth vast sums to a collector (unless it could be proved to have been Fury's), but the guitar tech reckoned that its "build quality and playability is quite amazing". You can see its original red finish beneath the scratch plate (elsewhere, it's faded to a yellowy tone) - and on the back under the scratch plate, there is a signed and dated sticker giving the day the guitar was made: 9th November 1964. 

Danni's guitar tech adds that "the electrics in particular are of a very high quality and the components and tidy workmanship are something you’d only find today on guitars costing a small fortune like custom shop Gibsons & Fenders.

"The pickups on these Burns guitars are great and have a nice powerful percussive tone, which in the days before distortions and overdrive, was the thing which gave something of a Shadows/rock'n'roll kind of feel. That said, wind them up through an amp with a bit of overdrive, and shit, do they rock or what?"

He explains that "as it is a short scale, it means the strings would be at a lower tension at concert pitch so I’ve loaded it with .011 inch gauge strings. Being that bit heavier than usual (these) will give a raunchier, fuller sound but because the tension is lower, it's easy to play and (to) bend notes when soloing."

Danni's got lots of shows lined up, so check her itinerary - and music - out at her Myspace site.