Burns Jet Sonic

Newish model in the Elite series, made 2009 in China. Interesting guitar with a pseudo Les Paul meets cut off Jaguar body, straight cut across the neck joint area, clearly meant to be retro Space Cartoon influenced (ie The Jetsons). Basswood body, fixed maple neck with rosewood board, skinny frets, reverse 6 in a row headstock. Two odd looking slanted humbuckers, LP style toggle selector on the top bout, sinle volume and single tone, both acting as push pull coil splitters, side mounted jack. Mine was matt satin black with pleasing back-sprayed cream onto perspex pickguard and selector roundel. Can't remember the number of frets. Wilkinson easi-lok tuners. Neck felt nice, a pleasing average C shape, although the frets were too small for me. Came with a full goodies package including a lovely, silve croc case with plush fitted interior, retro leather strap, straploks and various other bits.

I didn't much like the sound. In full humbucker mode the guitar was very warm. It sustained well but had no bite. In single coil mode it sounded pretty good, like a well-mannered muscular Tele. The coli splitting push pull pots were a pain to use, especially as the pots were quite loose, meaning that pulling to switch the sound meant knocking the volume or tone setting. Lousy system, give me a Yamaha push/push any day. The guitar's worst feature was its balance - it was neck heavy and felt clumsy to play, there was no freedom of movement which, allied to the skinny frets made me put it down after a few minutes. I just didn't want to play it.

The finish was, overall, pretty good but let down by details. Out of the box it played okay. The nut was cut unevenly and the string spacing meant the strings were set closer to the treble side of the board than the bass. The paint itself was immaculately done, The bridge is an odd design consisting of six individual bridges with brass saddles. These saddles had sharp corners that made for occasional discomfort. Far worse was the bridge saddle finishing which made the top E and B strings sound like a sitar. I fixed the B string sound by cleaning the burrs out the saddle groove but had lost interest in the guitar by then and didn't bother with the top E. The toggle selector switch intermittently cut out leaving the guitar silent.

I had this guitar for two days and disliked it. As a gigging musician, I wouldn't have taken it out of the studio - the switch unreliability and the bridge issue killed it for me, the sound was uninspiring and the handling was awkward.

Bought new from Coda music who took it back without hesitation and issued a refund.

Been playing 35 years, have around 40 instruments and have owned them all. I know my way around guitars. This instrument looks lovely and the case is gorgeous. Unfortunately, you can't play the case. I might buy one of these in the future if I see it dirt cheap and secondhand, but I'd want to relocate the strap button, change the tuners and counterweight the body to get the balance right and then I'd expect to have to work on the bridge and controls.