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My first instrument was a cheap copy of a Fender Precision bass guitar that I bought from a music shop in Cornwall in 1981 for £79.50. With that I learned to plonk along with the tablature in, and the flexi-disc that came with, a book called, ‘How to Play Blues Bass’. It got me going, at least enough to play in a somewhat naïve and idiosyncratic way with my first band, a three-piece we called The Playground.
 
We rehearsed, or rather made a glorious racket, in St. Blazey Labour Hall once or twice a week. But we came to a bit of a halt when, in teenaged frustration, I slammed the bass, still plugged into my Vox Escort bass combo, to the floor and cracked its neck. That was met with open-mouthed silence and hard stares from Les (drums) and Ringo (guitar). Very clever. That was in early 1982. Within a week or two of that tantrum, on February 27th, I went to Plymouth to visit Biggles, a music shop in which I had previously spotted a relatively small and somewhat odd looking bass called a Burns Artist. It was still there, so I peeled off £150 and swaggered out with it. I loved it, and still do.
 
That led me to get hold of a copy of The Burns Book, by Paul Day, published in 1979. Paul’s book told me that my Burns Artist was made in 1960, which made it older than me. The Burns Book was, and still is, a goldmine of information, and the foundation from which all subsequent Burns’ books derive. I quickly struck up a correspondence with Paul, who patiently replied to my flow of inquisitive and pedantic letters. I was hooked on Burns guitars and basses, and went on to amass quite a few, as you’ll see!
 
Burns was, and remains, a bit of an outlier on a guitar market saturated by Fender and Gibson, and their Far Eastern knock-offs. Back then I was adamant that I would never own a Fender or Gibson, and as my guitar obsession developed I sought guitars far from the norm. And that, in a nutshell, is how I ended up with all these guitars.
 
Joe Cook

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