 Jim Burns set out to make, in his own words, "mass produced one-offs", such as the Marvin, a radical take on the Stratocaster style with many more differences than it is generally credited with The Bison, now considered as a classic, combined fewer Fender influences with a shorter scale length of 25 inches, and the "Wild Dog" electronics, allowing the high-output Tri-Sonic pickups to be selected in many different, and sometimes unusual, combinations.Burns had a proprietary vibrato system, which was used also on Gretsch guitars.The original guitars made many showbiz friends, and were seen in the hands of some high-profile performers of the time, such as Elvis Presley, Hank Marvin and Jimmy Page, and were quite popular since they were much cheaper than US brands such as Fender and Gibson, helped also by import tariffs that made it expensive to buy US-made guitars in Britain.