Lately I've been looking through some of the lap steels and Hawaiian guitars being sold on eBay, becuase, let me tell you, there are some really wacky designs in this whole sub-group of our favourite instrument.Look at this one. There are currently two sellers on eBay.co.uk selling a guitar like this (here and here). Both are using the same photos and have copied the same text from somewhere which very mysteriously claims that:
This guitar is made by an "official" overseas manufacturer for one of the biggest name-brand guitar companies (which I can not name here, per eBay's ebay rules).I'm not aware of anything in the eBay rules that says you can't name the manufacturer of the goods you are selling, but I get the impression that this isn't really what the seller means. It's more likely a question of copyright infringement.
This lap steel guitar is obviously based on the now legendary Burns Flyte guitar, which is one of my personal all-time favourite designs. However, unlike the real deal, it does not look sculpted, elegant and classy. It looks flat and two-dimensional as if it had been cut out of a sheet of MDF (although apparently it's the ever-popular basswood) and the pointed headstock looks like it could be lethal.
Even more disturbingly, standing up like that in the photo, it resembles the silhouette of a member of the Ku Klux Klan.
Please don't tell me that this is genuine Burns products (if it was, why the secrecy over the name of the manufacturer?) because I'd hate to think they'd lower their standards so very much as to produce this abomination.
G L Wilson
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