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This arrived in the post today next Wednesday is my birthday wonder what will arrive then

Strangely this has a non standard size Jack socket. I remember the early Artistes had a smaller socket and wonder if these were fitted to the bass. The socket however looks in good condition. Will have to fit a 1/4" socket. Shame as would have been nice to keep it original. Wonder if there is an adapter

Regardless of string number, all the earliest Burns models came with that mini jack socket as standard, because the normal 1/4" equivalent was a rare commodity here at the time. Burns' original choice back then has long since been a 'bastard' size and I've never come across an appropriate adaptor, so I'm afraid an update is inevitable.

Just a thought Bill..

You may need to check under the scratchplate to ensure there is enough depth in the routing of the body to fit a wider and longer normal 1/4 inch jackplug when plugged into the new jack socket- as I recall, those early Burns bodies were not that thick (I had an Artiste 6 string)

I have seen adaptor plugs with a small plug for stereo use which enable a 1/4 inch stereo jack plug to be adapted (as for headphones) but these are usually stereo wired although could work in mono for a guitar connection.(I still have one somewhere)

A quick Internet search finds that Gear4Music do a mono quarter inch jack to mono mini jack cable for under £4.

http://www.gear4music.com/G4M/Mono-Mini ... oCMirw_wcB

The small plug and socket used on the early Burns guitars was not a metric 3.5 mm. It was a good old Imperial three-sixteenths of an inch (about 4.5 mm). Here's a quick pic with a Burns-style plug in the middle. For comparison I've added a standard quarter-inch plug above and a 3.5 mm plug below.

This is not the plug from my Artist, which has a black bakelite casing.

Jim Burns' reason for using the smaller jack plug may not have been due to availability - after all, every other guitar and all guitar amps at that time used quarter-inch so it was not uncommon.

The reason may have been, as Cockroach points out, that a quarter-inch jack would mean routing perilously close to the back of the guitar body. Measuring my early Artist, the body is only 1 3/8" thick. The stem of a standard jack plug is 1 1/4" long. Jim Burns may have been 'playing safe' to avoid scrapping perfectly good guitar bodies because of a slightly mis-set router. By comparison, a modern Burns guitar is 1 7/8" thick (and a Stratocaster is similar).

That brings up another thought. Was there a standard thickness for an old-fashioned mahogany pub counter? Paul D. has mentioned to me in the past that Jim would make guitar bodies from reclaimed pub counters.

Could someone with, say, a 1961 or 1962 Vibra Artiste (with standard jack socket from new) , measure the thickness of the body? Is it thicker than the 1 3/8" of my early Artist?

I have measured several Artiste and Sonic bodies between 1960 - 62 and they all come up 1 3/8". The routing depth is 1".
You would then have the depth of scratchplate and nut for output takes it to 1 7/16" so would just fit. As stated by Ray perhaps variations in early routings was a bit haphazard so they used the mini as a safeguard. I hated that little plug.
In any case the latter Artistes were fitted with the standard Jack which just about worked. I did have a Burns once where an extra thickness of scratchplate had been added under the socket head I guess to increase the thickness.
The raised bulbous switch again was raised in order to fit into the routing. A Strat switch would fit in this but not on a flat scratchplate
My other Artiste bass has the standard 1/4". I think I am going to be safe enough to install a 1/4" one.
May have to put in some research on pub counters will take my guage with me starting tonight !

Looks like Fender copied some ideas from the Artiste Bass with this model

This is the infamous 3/16" socket. Wanna sell a plug Ray ! Good nic though