Fernandes Burny Les Paul.

[evan47]

A UK dealer has a few Fernandes Burny Les Pauls up for sale at a rather tempting price.
I do not see these for sale in the UK very often and reviews are pretty scarce so just how good are they?
I remember Fernandes having a good reputation in the 1980s and Burny seem to have been known for making decent "lawsuit " guitars in the past but, can anyone give advice as to how good their modern counterparts are?
Importantly, I would like to know where they are made.

 

[eclecticsynergy]

Re: Fernandes Burny Les Paul.

Don't know anything about the new ones. But I have a mid-80s Burny LP Custom that's very nice indeed.
IMO build quality at that time was every bit as good as Gibson. Maybe better.

As for the new builds, there is some variation between models. And I have no idea which factory is building them.

Here's the Burny models page on the Fernendez site:
http://www.fernandes.co.jp/products/burny_guitar/

EDIT: It occurs to me that the new models probably are made in Korea or Indonesia, possibly even in China. So there may be little or no correlation with the build quality of the Japan made guitars.

 

[evan47]

Re: Fernandes Burny Les Paul.

Don't know anything about the new ones. But I have a mid-80s Burny LP Custom that's very nice indeed.
IMO build quality at that time was every bit as good as Gibson. Maybe better.

As for the new builds, there is some variation between models. And I have no idea which factory is building them.

Here's the Burny models page on the Fernendez site:
http://www.fernandes.co.jp/products/burny_guitar/

EDIT: It occurs to me that the new models probably are made in Korea or Indonesia, possibly even in China. So there may be little or no correlation with the build quality of the Japan made guitars.

Yes, this is the problem. I do not really want to buy a Chinese guitar. Not that there is anything wrong but the resale value would plummet.

 

[eclecticsynergy]

Re: Fernandes Burny Les Paul.

A lot depends on the specs too- many of the Asian factories can build a mighty good guitar if high quality is specified. They get a bad reputation because of the Alibaba guitars, which are made as cheaply as possible. But I have a couple Epiphones that were made in China and they're not half bad, now that they have decent pickups. (And word is that the Probuckers in some of Epi's better models are pretty good right out of the box.) Another case in point is PRS' Indonesian-made SE models. Awfully good instruments for their price point, and usually they're even set up well.

Not high resale value on these, I'll grant you. But a lot of guitar for the money.