Burns Barracuda Baritone Guitar

[BrianD]

And a closeup of the beast itself.

barracuda4.jpg

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[dusty fretz]

The PRS SE Mike Mushok baritone is certainly a very nice instrument that plays well and sounds very good, but again it employs humbuckers and therefore could lack sufficiently authentic twang for your intended needs.

I repeat my opinion that the similarly priced, single-coil equipped Fender Jaguar Baritone Custom offers the best feature/performance/cost combination. It lacks a vibrato unit, but I don't think this is essential, as pitch deviation potential reduces in ratio to increasingly lowered tuning.

Wacking an Allparts baritone neck onto a complete Strat, Tele or Jazzmaster body would also do the trick. This method involves some DIY work of course, but I've had great success using a Squier 51 and a Jap-made Fender Jazzmaster, ending up with two really excellent baritones.

The Shergold was indeed a very good old-style six-string bass, although I must admit I found the neck a bit too broad and the fingerboard a mite too flat for my tastes.

[cockroach]

Paul

Where I live here in Adelaide, South Australia, there is an excellent local luthier called Brian West, who has a retail/repair shop in the city- and a few weeks ago I was in the shop having a look ,and he has a very nice Tele style baritone which he built - baritone neck- possibly a Warmoth?- Tele body, neck humbucker and Tele type bridge pickup...tempting, but being a very high quality handbuilt job, well out of my price range!

Ah well, as I said earlier on this thread, for we impecunious types, a cheap and cheerful alternative is to buy a set of flatwound 13-56 strings, and put them on a Strat, Tele, Jag, or Jazzmaster type guitar, then tune 'em down to D, C,B, or even A...which would just about do the job!

[JimN]

Ah well, as I said earlier on this thread, for we impecunious types, a cheap and cheerful alternative is to buy a set of flatwound 13-56 strings, and put them on a Strat, Tele, Jag, or Jazzmaster type guitar, then tune 'em down to D, C,B, or even A...which would just about do the job!

Bearing in mind the fact that the Burns six-string bass (back in the early-to-mid-sixties) had a scale-length of less than 24", why not just use a heavier set than 13-56 and tune EADGBE? You might have to adjust the nut slots and it might take an hour or two for the strings to settle into the correct shape where they bend over the bridge, and there are one or two other issues.

First of all, 13-56 is simply not in the bass range. 13-56 is the archetypal medium gauge for guitar. Gibson Sonomatics (the originals, that is, not the current impostors) were 13-56, and The Shadows used them extensively during the 1960s (when given them free by Selmer) for normal tuning on electric and acoustic guitars. You can get 13-56 if you look around a bit. And if you want them at a lower tension (equivalent to a set 10-46 at concert pitch), you can get 13-56 to tune easily and consistently at BEADF#B (there's a reason for that relationship, but I shan't bore you with it).

But that's spoiling the ship for a ha'porth of tar. What you really want is EADGBE an octave lower than a guitar. You can do that on a 25.5" scale, but you'd need heavier strings than 13-56. I calculate that to tune to correct octave-below tuning (with a string tension in the "light gauge" range equivalent to about 10-46), you'd need to use a set of roundwounds (low to high):

E: 0.095"
A: 0.080"
D: 0.065"
G: 0.042"
B: 0.030"
e: 0.020"

The thinnest three are easy to find more or less anywhere. The others would be less easy to find, but not impossible. The lowest string in a genuine Fender Bass VI set (I have a spare set right here) is 0.095", but it is calculated for higher tension than a 10-46 set.

One other problem though (and I alluded to it earlier) is the bend over and through the bridge saddle. For the heavier strings, it could be a serious problem, though a possible solution would be to fit a replacement bridge unit with a top-loading facility.

Food for thought, I hope...

JN

[dusty fretz]

Although lighter than Jim's proposed octave-under set, Ernie Ball Baritone Slinky strings will help to do the job of going down at least to A below, as they're intended for shorter scale (27" or 28") baritones rather than old-style, E to E six-string basses, but the company also makes makes a set for these.

The Baritone Slinky set runs : 13, 18, 30, 44, 56, 72 and costs around £9, while the Six-String Bass Slinky set spans: 20, 30, 42, 54, 74, 90 and retails at £14.

D'Addario also offer baritone sets and these are a useful alternative, as this maker's strings are more generous length-wise than those from the Ball boys. They come in Medium (14-68) or Light (13-68) gauges, each costing around a tenner.

[cockroach]

Needing to heavily cut the nut irreversibly to fit really heavy gauge strings on a standard guitar is a bit of an issue..

Years ago, I made a simple home made Frankenstein job, with an old regular guitar neck on a solid mahogany body- then I stuck on an old Rowe De Armond pickup from my old long gone Harmony Stratotone. I then concocted a sort of baritone set of strings made up of part of a heavy gauge standard guitar set, and a couple of old bass strings- I would guess the set was about the same gauges roughly as Paul's baritone sets which he details above.

I used that guitar on some home made multi-track recordings of original tunes which I was writing and recording back then - mainly in a country syle- with the guitar giving a great baritone sound for a sort of Glenn Campbell style of solos - as on Galveston, Wichita Lineman etc

[Geoff Alderton LH]

Hi all.
Before Jet moved from his Burns Barracuda to the Fender Bass VI, Man With The Golden Arm was and still is Jets fantastic entrance onto the stage. It has always been done on the Barracuda and since the change, the Bass VI. Either guitar will give you a good start towards Jet's sound for that number. Just like Hank,some of it is in the fingers and playing style. Same goes for Jet, for The Man number he uses a heavy pick and pick's very hard, believe it or not. The last gig I attended, where Jet used his Burns Barracuda and his Burns Blue Shadows Bass, this is a fantastic looking and sounding bass, was the London Paladium gig a few years ago, Spotniks, Johnny and the Hurricanes, Tornadoes etc etc. Jet toped the bill with his two Burns guitars and his Blue Bass.
What a great sound from all of them.
Regards Geoff.
PS. Here is a pic.