The Burns Steer is a strange guitar indeed, first because its design seems to have been conceived to avoid any kind of glamour - not that you can't appreciate the central rectangle metal plate with the O shaped soundhole on a acoustic guitar body or the beetle headstock, but it takes a certain sense of second degree... Actually the body is not so big as you'd expect, it's a thinline and has the scale of a regular electric guitar.
All the reviews about this guitars are really laudatory for its sound, its split bridge humbucker and a singlecoil in neck position allow a great versatility and as one review states: 'all the sound you can have are interesting'. This is far from being true for all the guitars with plenty of pickup combinations! The O-hole, the chambered body and strings-through-body bridge contribute also to its powerful sound.
Conceived in 1979 by Jim Burns but actually issued by Burns London only in 2001, there is also a later version with a small cutaway that is slightly less bizarre, but all the finishes are sunburst (the green one being the main one), that is a pity, I'd love it in a sober transparent black...
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These duitars WERE produced in the late seventies/early eighties, and Billy Bragg played one for many years. And rather than a beetle, I believe the headstock is meant to resemble the horns of a cow, hence the name "Steer".
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