’57 Guitar & ’59 Divine
Over six decades on from his early creations, the production vision of designer Nathan ‘Nat’ I Daniel still shines. But what place does Danelectro have in today’s different world?
What You Need To Know 1 Are Danos still made from plywood and hardboard?
Back in the 50s, Danelectro pioneered a very different construction using a wood frame (poplar and/or pine) topped front and back with Masonite, better known in the UK as hardboard. These new models use a “semi-hollow body with centre block…[with] a composite/solid wood construction”.
2 These don’t seem particularly cheap, do they?
Agreed. Since owners the Evets Corporation started making reissues of the originals back in 1998, prices have slowly crept up. The guitars are made in Korea, not China, and with the exception of the tuners use virtually zero ‘off the shelf’ parts. Our models also feature upgraded Vintage 50s pickups.
3 Do they still offer the ‘Page’ model?
Yes, currently it’s the ’59M NOS+ (from £599) based on Jimmy Page’s original Danelectro 3021, first introduced in ’58. Page’s guitar is built from two originals and was modded with Grover open-back tuners and a Leo Quan Badass bridge. If you’re in any doubt about what a Danelectro can do, find Led Zepp at Knebworth on YouTube: Kashmir is Dano-powered!
While there are probably enough tomes written on the big brands from the 50s and 60s to fill a small library, Danelectro and the guitars and amps that the company made – also under both the Silvertone and Airline brand names – are far less documented. Thankfully, Doug Tulloch’s Neptune Bound: The Ultimate Danelectro Guitar Guide, originally published in 2008 by Centerstream Publications, is the bible for anyone interested in the unique story of Danelectro, ourselves included. And as we paraphrase elsewhere in this feature, it’s quite a story. While repros of many original models have been in circulation since 1998 – a far longer period than Danelectro originally made guitars – it seems we still can’t get enough of these unique designs. Every year, the Dano owners release a trickle of new designs and it’s about time someone started to document these!
Our review duo was launched back at the start of 2020, along with the more Mosrite-inspired ’66 12 String, some lefthanded models and that latest incarnation of the ‘Page’ ’59M NOS+ with an expanded choice of colours. But both of our new guitars here look rather familiar, don’t they? Let’s take a closer look.
’57 Guitar
Nat Daniel’s take on the affordable production electric guitar was not a million miles away from what Leo Fender was creating on the other side of the continent: a single-cutaway, slab-bodied electric with a 21-fret bolt-on neck and two single-coil pickups. The ‘peanut’ shape we see here is slightly larger than the Telecaster: 457mm (18 inches) long, 367mm (13.25 inches) wide and 41mm (1.6 inches) deep compared with the Telecaster (whose measurements are closer to 400mm/15.75 inches long, 324mm/12.77 inches wide and 45mm/1.8 inches deep). The design went through a couple of incarnations, beginning in 1954, before it found its stride as the U series of 1955 introducing the famous Masonitetopped, semi-solid body construction.
Our ’57 is effectively based on the 1957 U-2 (there was a single-pickup U-1 and triple-pickup U-3 plus a U-2 six-string bass that was introduced in 1956) and in basic style isn’t very different from numerous contemporary models we’ve seen over the past two decades. As per the original we have the distinct ‘Coke bottle’ headstock and the clear plastic ‘D’ logo’d pickguard.
Exactly what body materials Danelectro uses today isn’t offered up on the company’s website, although the top and back are definitely some kind of compressed wood, approximately 3.5mm thick, which looks more like MDF than hardboard or the original Masonite.
“Masonite is, of course, a brand name for pressed wood,” says Evets’ Steve Ridinger. “I think today many people call that material MDF. For our guitars we use a much more dense type of pressed wood than what might be commonly called MDF. The benefit of the hardboard material is it increases body resonance.
In a guitar like a Strat, you have the pickup in a cavity so it largely just picks up the sound from the strings. But in Danelectro guitars with the hardboard, there are many sound reflections inside the mostly hollow body: sound is bouncing off the back and front inner surfaces of the guitar body, and the pickup is receiving all of that reflected sound.”
The frame here is a soft, creamy coloured wood that could be one of a number of timbers and is different from the plywood of earlier reissues. It’s pretty hollow, although the sides are kept quite thick and there’s still a large wood block underneath the bridge.
“We switched from the plywood frame to a spruce frame in the middle of last year,” continues Steve. “There are two benefits to this solid-wood spruce frame. Firstly, better tone. Spruce is, of course, a tonewood and the glue in the plywood layers tends to impede sound vibration. Secondly, there’s less chance of the frame chipping in spots where the wood is thin – namely, the neck pocket.”
Today’s Dano necks are much more conventional than the original design: maple with a two-way adjustable truss rod and a pau ferro fingerboard. Back in the day, Danelectro used Brazilian rosewood for the fingerboard – imagine that!
But it’s not a slavish reissue. The famous aluminium nut, for example, is replaced here with nicely cut bone. That original ‘four-way adjustable’ bridge (up, down, forward and back) with its Brazilian rosewood saddle is updated with the more contemporary Danelectro design that has adjustable metal saddles. It still mounts in the same fashion as the originals: it sits above the face of the guitar resting on two height-adjustable screws at the front and is held in place by the single screw that mounts through the back of bridge into the body. The saddles look like solid versions of Fender’s pressed steel Strat types with a central locking bolt and two screws for individual height adjustment. Rather oddly, the very nice Gotoh Deluxe three-on-a strip tuners and their cream buttons are aged while everything else looks brand-new.
’59 Divine
Thanks to Jimmy Page, the double-cutaway ‘shorthorn’ design will be burned into every guitarist’s psyche for evermore. And judging by the number of shorthorn models currently offered, it’s easily the most popular. Modelled on the top-of-the line 1959 Deluxe (originally the model 6026), construction here is identical to the ’57 – shape aside, of course – although here the gloss cream finish covers top, back and sides and we have a brown binding to the top and back edges. Another difference, certainly on the other two ’59 Divine colour options (Dark Walnut and Flame Maple), are wood veneers on the top and back.
The same ‘Coke bottle’ headstock is retained. The pickguard would originally have been white or walnut-painted Masonite that was glued to the top but here it’s a rather sharp-edged brown opaque plastic that’s screwed to the top.
Danelectro used a different number of screws to secure the necks on its various models back in the day and that’s reflected here with five screws on the ’57 and four
on the ’59, which more likely would have had three screws in a straight line back in the 1950s. Both necks sit on a similar length heel platform that’s slightly thinner in width than the neck on the ’59 and quite a lot narrower on the ’57 on the treble side – this was originally where the upper strap button would have been placed. Today, that button sits at the tip of the heel.
Another thing separating the two models is the actual placement of the single-coil pickups, even though both use two single coils. The centre of the ’57’s bridge pickup sits approximately 35mm in front of the bridge; the neck single coil is 135mm away. The ’59’s pickups are slanted so the treble side sits closer to the bridge than the bass side: 26mm to 32mm for the bridge pickup and 113mm to 120mm for the neck. This placement means that you’d expect a little more treble cut on the ’59’s bridge pickup and less depth on its almost mid-placed ‘neck’ pickup. Conversely, we’d expect the ’57’s bridge pickup to have less treble while the neck pickup should be a little deeper sounding. We’ll see.
Feel & Sounds
Both guitars weigh in the same and are nicely light, too – they hang well from a strap, though. The extended heel stops directly under the 14th fret and houses the upper strap button, and despite the guitars’ differing outlines, the heel’s position means fluid upper-position fretwork is somewhat compromised on the ’59, and slightly more so on the ’57.
If you like slim necks, you’ll feel at home here and we could be describing a contemporary shred-friendly design. 1st fret depth on both is 19.9mm, filling out a little by the 10th to 22mm. In profile we have a flattish ‘C’ without the shoulder of a D shape, which is combined with a pretty flat fingerboard radius that we measured at 392mm (16 inches), not the quoted 356mm (14 inches). This slightly unusual feel is enhanced by a medium width wire that is a little on the low side (around 2.67mm by 1mm), and you can’t help thinking a slightly higher wire with just a slightly rounder fingerboard would elevate these further. Mind you, both are set up nicely
The Danelectro sound shoots for character, which frankly both of these models have in abundance
and intonation is very good – unlike some originals we’ve played over the years. Scale length, by the way, is 635mm (25 inches), the same as PRS.
Quite possibly the last guitar you’d want to take out on a long covers or function gig, the Danelectro sound shoots for character, which frankly both of these models have in abundance. We discuss the new Vintage 50s single-coil pickups elsewhere in this feature (see the Lip Gloss box, over the page) but our first impressions are that the output is low and bass is light. The ’57 sounds a little thicker at the bridge, more clouded at the neck, and there’s quite an open midrange. In the mixed pickup position, due to the series wiring, the volume leaps, thickening