Music found in a 1988 Burny RLC-60

[Voidoid56]

This one was literally written around a particular guitar and how it sounded, and I'm pretty sure it wouldn't exist if I hadn't bought it. In fact, it was my third-ever MIJ guitar, a 1988 Dyna Gakki-built Burny RLC-60 '60 BL, picked up locally in 2011. I'd never owned a Les Paul before, this one was black and I'm a massive Neil Young fan, so I began goofing around with a tweed Deluxe amp model and cranked it. After playing the verse riff of Rockin' In The Free World for like 40 minutes, this one sort of came out.

The Burny is the left-hand side rhythm guitar. My '66 Tele gets a word in on the right. The banshee lead guitar is (sadly) not me, it was delivered by email by an old MySpace collaborator, a seriously talented musician called Nikodemus Enger, and is outrageously good, imho. Lyrics in Swedish, sorry 'bout that, but there's nothing really important going on in them.

I resell about as many guitars as I buy these days, but that RLC is a firm keeper.

 

[Homer J. Simpson]

Grym låt! How exactly the RLC inspired the song/riff might be prone to elude the listener in the completed mix but I do know that it has that low output PAF-y open sound that makes it work really great for everything between authentic slap-back-echo rock 'n roll and crunchy rock riffs...

 

[Voidoid56]

Tack! Yeah well, inspiration and execution are often two different things. But, I don't think I would have found that vibe and hence not that riff on one of my customary Strats (or at that point, my ONLY Strat, a 1982 ST-60MRR), simply because I wouldn't have thought to look for that particular sound.

The pickups on the RLC are the original VH-3s, just under 8k, with ceramic magnets, but still quite PAF-sounding. The pickup spec changes to gen 2 VH-1s (and the model no to RLC-65) in 1989, and remains so with the 90's RLC-70s. I've had a few of those too, and they sound really very close. Close enough to make me wonder if it's in fact the same pickup with another designation, though I suppose the gen 2 VH-1s would have alnico magnets?

 

[Homer J. Simpson]

I know what you mean of course - you try a different guitar than usual and by coincidence you hit some notes that come out in a way that's setting off a chain of associations (a.k.a inspiration). I think there are many famous riffs that probably wouldn't exist if the guy who came up with it had played a different guitar or amp.

Not sure if I missed some bit of evidence in the often contradicting patchwork of information/folklore but I always found it odd that the VH-3 would have ceramic magnets, contradicting much what Fernandes tried with the RLG/RLC series. They offered the e.g. SH-1 with "ferrite" (=ceramic) magnets and mentioned that in the description, the description for the VH-3 (1987) goes like this:

VH-3 ¥8,000 Basically the same poppin and magnet as VH-1. It is a P.U. with excellent cost performance. Low price However, it is an old model with a strong waist and a full set of tsupu. It perfectly reproduces the dry sound characteristic of P.A.F. Additionally, four conductor wires allow for various configurations. line, front position, bridge position Produces a wide variety of sounds at its best even in various situations.

To me that sounds like the VH-3 is just a cheaper (but splittable!) version of the VH-1 and "same bobbin and magnet"* sounds pretty unambiguous in my book. Also, unlike single coils where a ceramic bar magnet might be cheaper than individual magnet slugs, humbuckers always have a bar magnet so that would be more of a sound design (making hot pickups brighter) than a cost cutting thing?

*This translation is amalgamated from the output of 2 OCR tools, run individually through Google Translate.

 

[Voidoid56]

Hm. Well there you go, classic case: someone told me a long time ago that VH-3s are ceramics, which I apparently internalised without ever double-checking during the years that followed. Thanks for setting that straight.

The VH-3 being basically the same as a -1, only splittable and a whole lot cheaper seems to me to be another symptom of something that a lot of MIJ instruments seem to suffer from: artificial price differences, i e basically variations just for the sake of being able to offer a range of prices, with not much in the way of meaningful differences in quality and appointments.
Imo, it's especially obvious if you compare 50k and 60k Fender copy models. Tokai Strats are a good example, basically the same guitar with different pickup types, both of which are good enough to make it a personal choice which one you prefer. Greco SEs are even worse, I've never been able to tell any appreciable consistent difference whatsoever between the PU-S5s and - S8s in 1980-82 SE-500s and -600s, for instance.

But apparently it was what retailers and customers expected, I mean even Fender Japan had to toe the line when they appeared, with their -65, -85 and -115 Strats, after decades of US Fender Stratocasters being just Fender Stratocasters. Traditions are important, I guess.

 

[Homer J. Simpson]

Well to be fair, only the VH-3s they started to sell separately have the 4 wires, the VH-3s I have seen (on pictures) don't and you know how hard it is to tell the exact build year with Burnys so you can know for sure what pickup is in there (unless they have a sticker of course) - so many sources of confusion. On top of this there is the theory that the L-8001/-8002 became the aftermarket VH-1 and the VH-3 is just the L-8000 adapted to the new naming scheme or something along these lines.

artificial price differences...

Efforts like scatter-winding coils or hand-selecting coils to pair in an "imbalanced" pickup, selecting woods, one- vs. 2-piece bodys or making massive or veneer flame tops... almost everything in a guitar is a "diminishing returns" affair, particularly when the upmarketing details become literally invisible like the wire insulation material. The price gap it creates is surely artificial for the most part - (how much difference can 20cm braided shield wire make, particularly when this feature comes with the historically correct omission of wax potting?

Whether or not this is (or was!) typically MIJ is an interesting question I never thought about until today but that's obviously true: When they started this "multi-tiering" in the second half of the 70s, e.g. Fender had e.g. one Stratocaster with very few options, pricing tiers were mostly created by different models in product lines divided into "pro" and "student" level instruments. They added few more models in the CBS era but the scheme remained the same.

Apart from creating the Squier brand as a "budget" line in 1982 and the last effort to save the company, it wasn't before the mid-80s that Fender adopted creating different tiers for the same models, and then they supersized it to the almost impenetrable flood of models and quality tiers it is today, with the sad effect of guitars with somewhat guaranteed quality and attention to detail costing a fortune, and the lower 5? tiers of instruments being increasingly all over the place, with 3 more lower tiers made in Asia often being more consistent.

...basically variations just for the sake of being able to offer a range of prices, with not much in the way of meaningful differences in quality and appointments.

Be careful what you wish for... I think what set the Japanese guitar tiers apart from the FMIC mess I described above was that they used appointments and materials to create the differences more than quality as in "craftsmanship", at least Tokai and most of the other big factories did to the greatest extend possible.

 

[Voidoid56]

I think what set the Japanese guitar tiers apart from the FMIC mess I described above was that they used appointments and materials to create the differences more than quality as in "craftsmanship", at least Tokai and most of the other big factories did to the greatest extend possible.

Amen to that. It seems to me that they only had a single standard of craftsmanship, regardless of which price tier the instrument was positioned at. An early 1980 EG500T recently passed through here, and it was an insanely well-crafted instrument, despite being only one tier up from entry level. Solid construction, three-piece maho body, one-piece maho neck, beautiful solid maple plaintop, fret edge binding (!). The U-1000s are no Z's, but still fine PAFs. Great, great player.
They poured top-grade materials and bells and whistles into the EGFs, but there is no way the basic craftsmanship of the -500 could be improved in any appreciable way.
Rumour has it that they lost money on most instruments they manufactured during the Super Real years, and that guitar made it easy to believe. Same thing with SE500s from the same era, imo, you'd need to be a serious nitro addict to pay three times more for a Super Real SE-800 if you're just looking for a great player.

But maybe it's just me. I grew up a punk in the late 70's, I just can't help rooting for the underdogs.

 

[Homer J. Simpson]

But maybe it's just me. I grew up a punk in the late 70's, I just can't help rooting for the underdogs.

I have a soft spot for underdogs too but my punk era was rather short - IIRC it was on a Thursday evening in 1986 or 87, coincidentally in a fritidsgård in Göteborg to perform an awful punk version of "Här kommer Pippi Långstrump". 🤪

I tried to collect what's currently to find in DC-R readings for VH-1 and VH-3 pickups:

VH-1 DC-R

Framesticker - gray/gray - 8.15/8.17
Framesticker - gray/black - 7.9/8.25
Framesticker - gray/gray (dark) - B 8.1/N 8.0
Backsticker - gray/gray (dark) - 8.3/8.3
Backsticker - gray/black - 7.9/7.9
Unstamped - gray/gray - 7.6/7.6
Unstamped - gray/gray - 8.4 / 8.35
"Allman" RLG - braided - 7.0/8.0 // "real" VH-1
"87 Custom" - gray/gray - 8.16/8.16
"90s SG" - gray/gray - 8.16/8.17


VH-3 DC-R
Your VH-3s - "just under 8k"
Unstamped "Custom" - gray/gray (dark) - N 7.64/B 7.66
Unstamped "Custom" - gray/gray (dark) - N 8.09/B 8.12

I'm pretty sure that unmarked VH-3s are often mistaken for VH-1 and/or vice versa, and the sample size for VH-3s is very small so there is no clear trend. Apart from the two 7.6kΩ pairs and the two 8.3+kΩ outlier sets they're all in rougly the same ballpark. They should be I guess, but that begs the question what the difference between the VH-3s and the "cheap" plastic wire VH-1s might be. Not surprising that "magnet material" became a suspect, and that the catalogs can be erratic is no news either so we're basically more or less on square one until a lot of people start buying Gauss meters (not going to happen). The wire color isn't a big help either. Typical case of "shut up and play yer guitar".

 

[Voidoid56]

Hehe. I clocked a few local fritidsgårdar myself, but also shitloads of Errol's and Sprängkullen gigs and even Konserthuset once (!). I was all done by 86-87 though and as far as I can remember Pippi Långstrump was never involved.

I'll get some readings from the two sets I have, the VH-3s in the above guitar and the braided-lead ("proper", I like that!) VH-1s in my -87 RLG-90. I might have some Burny humbuckers in my scrap boxes as well, but if they can be ID'd and/or connected with a specific guitar model anymore I've no idea...