Firebird I Reissues?

[Tales of Brave Ulysses]

As a huge Cream fan, I find myself looking more and more into the Firebird I that Clapton used from '68 on, mostly live. I've been looking to find one of the reissues made in the 1990's, but can't find much information on them. Can anyone tell me what I can expect for price, playability, comparability to an original, etc?

 

[Serial]

Avoid the ones they did in '91. They're wrong. Stop/tuna rather than wraptail or vibrola. They did a run in '99 that was spectacular. I've played three of the ones from that run and they were all virtually perfect, so I went with a Kerry Green one.

I know of another run in the later 00s, but I've heard reports that there was a few done in '94 that got the tailpiece right.

I've seen the '91s as low as $1500, the correct ones between $2250-3500, but the higher figure was in '08.

 

[slapshot]

20 years before HJ decided to reissue them Burny made replicas of all of them in the late 70s from their "Masterhand" series
half the price twice the vintage 10 times the quality

no these were not "cheap foreign copies"

 

[Serial]

I've played a few of the Burnys from that era-Grecos too. Very nice, but nowhere close to the Gibson Historics. I'd take one over the '91 version though. They had odd inaccuracies as well.