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  The road to success is, usually by definition alone,  a difficult one to negotiate - as Greg Burman would undoubtedly confirm were  you to ask him yourself. Despite appearances to the contrary - and Beat, by virtue of a couple of rave reviews given to his products during 1978, must share some of the blame - Burman is far from being an overnight success story. That should surprise a number of people, for it's difficult to remember when last an individual company rose, seemingly from nowhere, to occupy the exhalted position in musicians' minds that Burman have in such an incredibly short space of time. ( Musicians in the Newcastle area, however, will undoubtedly raise the eyebrows querulously at this statement for they have been fortunate enough to have had experience of Greg's products for a good few years now.)

So, where did it start? Greg Burman must be the most philosophical (about his own situation - not in the Bertrand Russell sense!) man in the musical instruments' business. The success of the past twelve months has -as yet - gone neither to his head nor his wallet, probably because it nearly all happened before but he got pipped at the post. This time he's probably recognising past pit-falls on his way back up the ladder! "It's a little strange for me when people start congratulating me on the success of the amplifiers," Greg told us, "because it tends to bring on an attack of deja vue. I've been living with them for the past twelve years or so, and I don't see it in the same terms as you probably do."

Greg's first venture into the manufacturing business came when he decided to build a couple of cabinets for the band he was in at the time - back in 1966. Newcastle then did him a favour. The flourishing live gig circuit gave the band many opportunities to display not only their talents as musicians (underscored!) but also Greg' s own talents as a 'manufacturer' It was, if you like, advertising at It's very basic form. Another band saw and heard the cabinets and asked Greg to build some for them. "It was pretty desperate" he recalls now. "I hadn't enough money to buy the components, and so I was forced to ask for the money up-front, then buy the bits, put them together and keep what little profit there was then for the next order." Someone suggested that he ought to open a shop and really get serious:

That suggestion - a good one as things have turned out - also had its problems."I managed to rent a small shop for £2.50 a week, so it seemed like a good idea and I took it up." As it happened Greg fitted out the shop, kitted out a small manufacturing area in the back, placed an ad in the local paper and then stood in the shop on a Saturday morning to realise that he hadn't a single piece of equipment to display! "I phoned all the bands in the area whom I'd supplied previously and asked if I could borrow the gear back again! "Fortunately for Greg they did him another unwitting favour.   Sure enough, they lent the equipment but came back in the early evening to take it back for their customary Saturday night gig! "People saw all this gear going out and thought,' hey, he's doing all right, he's sold out after the first day!" Greg laughed.

From there on things got better, although, as we said earlier, success was far from being instant. Greg's unflappable belief in the very best components for his amplifiers has, at one and the same time, been his biggest asset and his biggest drawback.

" After two years we hired an accountant because it seemed we were trading nicely- and he mentioned the fact that things should improve even more because the spare parts trade would be flowing in soon or so he said," Greg says now. What the accountant hadn't taken into account (groan.. Ed) was the fact that Burman amps don't go wrong - and if they do Greg takes it more as a personal insult and supplies replacements himself. "In the nine years I've been making amplifiers I've not had a single transformer blow - not one." In other words, the spare-parts business was just not to be!
 
 Greg then began to promote his amplifiers - not by splashing out hard earned notes on  advertising, but by lugging them down to the big gigs in Newcastle, worming his way past the  stage-door security, and into the hallowed dressingrooms of the famous. The Nice, If, Jackson Heights, and home grown starts like Geordie and Lindisfarne became regular users of Burman amplification. AII Burman amps are valves - they were then and they are now, and their reputation grew and established itself, primarily in the Newcastle and the north of England and by the end of '73 Burman was ready to launch itself on the UK and, hopefully, the international market as well.
 
 "We were all set up," Greg continued, a little ruefully, "and then came the three day week, oil shortages, industry shut-downs, the whole lot." As we all know, even though the three day week lasted only a short time, it was months before production elsewhere managed to right itself, and the shut-down precipitated a general, world recession. Burman were unable to get supplies of  their necessary component parts, new workers hired especially to cope with the until-then expected boom had to be laid off, and the bubble, if you like, didn't exactly burst. but rather  slowly deflated. Greg, however, didn't run out of puff, and rather than letting it collapse, he took out his puncture repair kit, pierced the glue tube, and began to put things back together again.
 
 "I suppose what helped really was some guy coming in saying he loved the amp but why couldn't he get it to distort? I was amazed. I’d spent years building what I considered to be one of the  very best power amplifiers available anywhere, and some geezer comes in and asks why It doesn't  distort? I could hardly believe it." His astonishment, however, didn't last long: after all,  valve amps are as famous for their ability to distort as they are for the unmatchable warmth and  clarity of their non-overloaded sound.
 
 Much research and development followed until he came up with the Pro-Series amps which made their first appearance in 1974. Not content merely with manufacturing an amplifier with a whole range of tones and one kind of distortion, he produced one with a whole range of distortion as well. This was achieved by incorporating a '3-gain' pre- amp. Why so much gain?,   you might ask. The best answer was given by Peter Douglas when he reviewed the Pro-2000 in the December issue of Beat: "The answer is that they provide you with absolutely any type  of   sound from clean to infinitely sustained, with the entire spectrum of subtle clipping, blues bite and heavy metal thunder between."
 
 Greg Burman is honestly pleased with comments such as these (well, who wouldn't be!) but finds them difficult at times to come to terms with - after all, he designed speakers, the Burman XP5O12s, ten years ago, the basic specification of the power amplifier eleven years ago, and the distortion facility five years ago. "I guess it's nice hearing these complimentary things about my products now, but because we've been concentrating on quality and localised usage, it still seems a little unreal hearing them from other musicians and reviewers."
 
 1978 was, indeed, a strange and successful year for Burman in general, but when we asked about his plans for '79 Greg seemed a little reticent. "It's difficult - no, almost impossible – for me to project '79 in the light of what has happened in the past twelve months. We had anticipated promoting in the UK towards the middle of'78 at the BMITF, and then thought we might try exporting early this year: but it all happened differently, almost as if it wasn't my doing: we quadrupled production over the past year to 90 units a month, and we started exporting to Europe five months earlier than we had planned. With that sort of a record, how can I honestly predict what will happen now?"

  It would be easy to advise Greg to grab the coming success with both hands, get into a large capacity production plant, and become a millionaire over-night - after all, twelve years may seem a long time to wait for that! But, after you've spent some time with him, you know it's not his way
  "It's not the way - I'm not going to blow it now just for the chance of instant money. If I expand, I’ve got to be able to guarantee that the quality will stay the same, and that's not easy. Production line and Burman aren't that easy to marry together." At present there are twelve people working in the Burman organisation, and each amplifier is built from components of the very highest quality, by people who honestly care about the product they're building. It's very easy to come over the printed page with platitudes like that, but remember Greg's earlier statement - no transformer blow out in nine years. That sort of record should speak for itself.
 
 With increased production, the danger of loosing that uniquely personal touch also raises its unwanted head. If anyone has a problem with an amplifier - no matter how small - they'll receive a  letter of regret from Greg himself, even after the dealer has fitted up the repair. As Greg says, if something does go wrong, he feels it's personally his fault, A lad in Gloucester, for example, had trouble in setting up the controls, and found Greg  - who happened to be in the area at the time, knocking on the front door and spending time with him to get things right. Personal service from Burman means exactly that - each item that leaves  Handyside Works carries Greg's own name and reputation with it, and he's aware of the problem that over-increased production could bring. "We'll work it out," he assured us as we left to get the train back to London," but there's no way now I'm going to rush into it, bulldoze my way through and emerge with a fat cheque but no satisfied customers."
 
 There are, lets face it, some bad amplifiers, some indifferent, some 0K,some good, and there at the top a very, very few which stand alone for reasons that in all honesty, only their owners can really appreciate. Beat and other magazines can wax lyrical, musicians can boast and shout, but it's really the man who has one of these rare beasts who will recognise the genuine sincerity of both Greg Burman and this article. Personal service, care, quality control,  guarantees, and all that are phrases that often arouse distrust - what is the   man trying to  hide who has to go to the trouble of protecting his product with such euphemisms?
  No, Burman is not like that. We described the Burman 2000 as 'the best amplifier to come into Beat's offices since Peter Douglas has resided here' - and that' s nearly three years. How many other new amps have come and gone in the same time? No further comment should be necessary.