Danelectro - any thoughts?

Whitecat

Danelectros are great. Not pretending to be anything they are not - made out of junk, sound like they're meant to and are priced fairly for what they are.

I too could not have one as my ONLY guitar but as an additional guitar, absolutely. Used to have a DC59, the original vintage spec with the rosewood bridge - I felt the wooden bridge took some of the icepick-in-the-eardrum effect of the tone away in a good way. The 59M with the Badass bridge etc was a tradeoff for that sound vs slightly better stability and intonation...

dindude

They are great.  Best thing about them is that they sound ace - I’m allergic to CGGSO’s (cheap generic guitar shaped objects), and Dano’s stick two fingers up at their price range competition, they are anything but generic in both feel and sound.

I recently discovered this little vid I did when I owned one briefly 6 years ago, slightly frantic playing aside, I miss that tone you only get with a Dano. I see another in my future.

https://youtu.be/rCP91_x0jyA

vale

Whitecat said:

Danelectros are great. Not pretending to be anything they are not - made out of junk, sound like they're meant to and are priced fairly for what they are.

not sure i would call £400 (and up) new for something "made out of junk" fairly priced. they are massively overpriced for what they are. medicore guitars made from sub-mediocre materials, for all their charm.
compare them qualitywise to other things in that price range; £350 will get you a top of the range squier jazzmaster, jag, strat etc and £500 will get you into fender proper. they are decent guitars.

i get why people like them, especialy those into blues and slide, because they have that designer wasp-in-a-coke-can sound that suits ragged & swampy. in that way the case for them is like that for the shinei fy2, fuzzrite and other low-part-count 'crappy thin' sounding vintage pedals.
but those pedals were always priced according to their quailty (cheap as). they weren't made from junk but priced above far better stuff.

as for taste, i love the look of the hornet (redone as the 'dead on') but the others i find conspicuously ugly. but each to their own.

Bridgehouse

@vale - you surprise me... they are the quintessential 60s short scale thumpy zingy bass icon!!

vale

Bridgehouse said:

@vale - you surprise me... they are the quintessential 60s short scale thumpy zingy bass icon!!

well aside from the 'shoddy quality + inflated price = raw deal' equation, the rest comes down to taste, aspiration, fantasy, etc. all those subconscious intangibles that make up a preference.

for example, if you think the USA is it, rock-and-roll ground zero, and your dreams are filled with images of 1950s hot pink and lime green diners, chrome winnebagos, those futurist jet and spaceship styled cars, hot rods too, then you have to have a danelectro. nothing else will hit that spot. it's all of those aspirations and all that imagery wrapped up in a single product. the american dream as a guitar, and they package it well. i will give them that.

but i've always been the other way. indifferent to or anti that thing. and the groups that always pressed my buttons are (mostly if not exclusively) those that turned away from US flavoured rock-and-roll (dayglo) and heavy rock (denim and leather) in the mid 1970s, and towards europe (specifically germany). dark, austere, minimalist. a psychogeography haunted by its recent past.
so those key dark post-punk bands (siouxsie, joy divison, etc) and artists (eno) influenced by krautrock, avantgarde synth, music concrete and experimental.

so while others fetishise the USA and product, germany has always held a perverse-opposite aspirational charm for me. and (accordingly) not wanting my guitars to look at all 'rock' or 'usa' is very me.

maybe i'm 'guitar racist' like that. anti-USA and that whole 'rock and roll' thing.
so burns, vox, hofner, eko... yes please. but danelectro, harmony, supro, not so much.

all purely personal and subjective. while price and quality can be more objectively compared.

tbm

I've had a thing for long horn Danelectro's for years. At one point I had the bass, the guitar and the baritone guitar. I only have the baritone left, but I do regret selling the bass in particular. The lightness. The unique tone. They're fantastic. 

Creed_Clicks

Alan Sparhawk of Low has been using one the last few years and is getting some interesting sounds using modern effects pedals like the Red Panda particle. Would love a crack off the Convertible

tbm

Creed_Clicks said:

Alan Sparhawk of Low has been using one the last few years and is getting some interesting sounds using modern effects pedals like the Red Panda particle. Would love a crack off the Convertible

Yeah, the convertible is on my list of WANTS. there's a late 60's one in a shop in town going for a little under €950. Its tempting me. 

vale

tbm said:

I've had a thing for long horn Danelectro's for years. At one point I had the bass, the guitar and the baritone guitar. I only have the baritone left, but I do regret selling the bass in particular. The lightness. The unique tone. They're fantastic. 

i watched this recently, might interest you. your comment reminded me of it.

if you miss your bass but have a baritone guitar, maybe you could take two strings off, put short scale bass strings on, and adjust nut and bridge to suit. (eg do what this player has done in reverse, guitar to bass).
if you keep the screw holes on the bridge plate the same guitar or bass, it should be ok to swap on and off.
if the pickups are rail rather than pole, you might not even need to swap them out.

maybe do a 'persephone in the underworld' thing, six months as a guitar, six months as a bass?

Creed_Clicks

tbm said:

Yeah, the convertible is on my list of WANTS. there's a late 60's one in a shop in town going for a little under €950. Its tempting me. 

Dublin by any chance in Some Neck Guitars? I notice Sparhawk's guitar has a different headstock, but you can hear it all over their last album, Ones and Sixes. It sounds like an acoustic, but you know it isn't one! I'm not sure what the reissues are like, but most of the video demos are playing the type of music I wouldn't be using it for.
The one that's for sale in Dublin has a wood bridge, so not sure if this is a pro or con...

Another live clip of it

Henrytwang

Cool guitars if you can find one at the right price. I picked my 90s reissue single cut up at a car boot sale for £25 and it’s a nice guitar. The more recent ones seem to have more sophisticated 6 adjustable saddle bridges mine just has a single rosewood saddle fixed to the metal plate just like the originals. I’m sure that the simpler bridge arrangement has a significant effect on the tone, the rosewood tames the rather harsh top end pushed out by the single coil pickups. One small problem I’ve noticed on older Dano guitars is that the tailpiece plate is inclined to sag in the middle, there are various simple fixes for this problem to be found on line.

Bridgehouse

vale said:

Bridgehouse said:

@vale - you surprise me... they are the quintessential 60s short scale thumpy zingy bass icon!!

well aside from the 'shoddy quality + inflated price = raw deal' equation, the rest comes down to taste, aspiration, fantasy, etc. all those subconscious intangibles that make up a preference.

for example, if you think the USA is it, rock-and-roll ground zero, and your dreams are filled with images of 1950s hot pink and lime green diners, chrome winnebagos, those futurist jet and spaceship styled cars, hot rods too, then you have to have a danelectro. nothing else will hit that spot. it's all of those aspirations and all that imagery wrapped up in a single product. the american dream as a guitar, and they package it well. i will give them that.

but i've always been the other way. indifferent to or anti that thing. and the groups that always pressed my buttons are (mostly if not exclusively) those that turned away from US flavoured rock-and-roll (dayglo) and heavy rock (denim and leather) in the mid 1970s, and towards europe (specifically germany). dark, austere, minimalist. a psychogeography haunted by its recent past.
so those key dark post-punk bands (siouxsie, joy divison, etc) and artists (eno) influenced by krautrock, avantgarde synth, music concrete and experimental.

so while others fetishise the USA and product, germany has always held a perverse-opposite aspirational charm for me. and (accordingly) not wanting my guitars to look at all 'rock' or 'usa' is very me.

maybe i'm 'guitar racist' like that. anti-USA and that whole 'rock and roll' thing.
so burns, vox, hofner, eko... yes please. but danelectro, harmony, supro, not so much.

all purely personal and subjective. while price and quality can be more objectively compared.

Slight thread divert - but @vale - saw this and thought of you

https://youtu.be/LVlcqTWaIug

Creed_Clicks

I picked up a Dano 59 recently off this forum and love it. Sounds very close to a tele and the neck, for me, is superb.
I replaced the wooden bridge with a modern one. It’s a light guitar but heavier than a squier strat bullet I have knocking around.
I have a 90s Dano U1 as well but will need to replace the bridge. Tuners May need replacing but so far they hold tune and again, the neck is fantastic to me.
I have thought about replacing the pickups on both with something hotter but will see...
I had a Dano convertible for a while too. 

Dodge

Creed_Clicks said:

I replaced the wooden bridge with a modern one. It’s a light guitar but heavier than a squier strat bullet I have knocking around.

Interested to know what you put on it, and whether it's changed the tone.   My U2 has the wooden saddle, the metal bridge commonly bow in the middle (mine has).  It's still completely playabable mind.  I've pondered those Senn DRB2 beidges, but they're rare as hen's teeth.

What did you replace it with, and was there any drilling?

Creed_Clicks

@Dodge The stock bridge was fine on my 59, just that the bridge on the U1 I have is sagging. Still playable as you say, but I bought a Jeff Senn one, but have yet to fit it, as the guitar is stranded in another country currently!
I just thought I didn't want to be dealing with a sagging bridge on the 59, and am playing everything from stoner rock to clean to blues on the 59, so don't need to replicate any vintage sound as such. I don't hear any sound differences anyway, but apparently there are.
No drilling, and it was an allparts replacement bridge. I had a look on Thomann now and they don't seem to be there currently.

Dodge

Creed_Clicks said:

@Dodge The stock bridge was fine on my 59, just that the bridge on the U1 I have is sagging. Still playable as you say, but I bought a Jeff Senn one, but have yet to fit it, as the guitar is stranded in another country currently!
I just thought I didn't want to be dealing with a sagging bridge on the 59, and am playing everything from stoner rock to clean to blues on the 59, so don't need to replicate any vintage sound as such. I don't hear any sound differences anyway, but apparently there are.
No drilling, and it was an allparts replacement bridge. I had a look on Thomann now and they don't seem to be there currently.

Thanks - I do wonder whether the U3 bridge fits the U2.  The mounting holes look similar, but I think it's mounted the same way and will probably ultimately suffer from the same sagging.

I suspect I'll just have to keep an eye out for the Senn bridge...

Creed_Clicks

@Dodge yes it was the chrome dano bridge I got, think it was called the "u3". I can't recall but will check later.

Snap

I have the 63 baritone, had it for a long time now. It's great. Lovely clean tone, great dirtied up too, and a nice full open both pickup sound. Can't fault it for the money or the feel. 

Creed_Clicks

I don't mind the aluminium nut, or whatever it's made out of either.

tbm

Just got a 90's Korean Convertible. It's great. Had read on here about the experience @ICBM had with his, and had to do a bit of work on the neck angle, but its lovely now. Been my lockdown guitar, living in open G.

I now want this Jerry Jones Longhorn six string bass:
https://reverb.com/item/32125019-1992-jerry-jones-bass-vi-coral-red-usa-made
because I'm worth it. Sort of.