Danelectro ’56 Barit one

Bass ’venturer

The Danelectro ’56 has a wonderful homemade feel. Its minimalist construction boasts two single-coil lipstick pickups, a three-way selector, a master volume, a tone knob that’s arguably superfluous, and a Masonite front and back, braced with poplar frames. Masonite is more commonly used to make the tables in your local diner and will never be the most sought-after tone wood, but it adds a Happy Days vibe to the Dano’s voice.

The ’56 is all attitude and all neck. At 756mm (29.75 inches), its scale is the longest of the group – it’s almost a bass – and has a clubby C-profile neck. Nobody sets up camp in the bass’s frequencies to map out solo ideas, but think of the ’56 as a guitar for lead rhythm playing.

Tonally, it has three distinct voices, all of which are a lot of fun. In the neck pickup, the cleans are all wooden rumble and feel instinctively ‘bass’. With the gain cracked up, the neck pickup rolls out a gutsy, crude tone, not as nasal as you’d get from a standard guitar but more of an elephantine, Serengeti mating call. Full-blown fuzz and hypergain bring out something truly bestial in the ’56 that its creator, Nathan Daniel, could never have dreamed of.

Switching to the neck pickup is a paradigm shifter; this is where the twang is kept, all rockabilly bite and clarity, just begging for a little slapback echo or tremolo to bring out the best in what could be considered the Dano’s Arthur Fonzarelli mode. Or you could take the nuclear option and engage both pickups for raucous, unruly gain, unleashing the rebel spirit that the ’56 Baritone epitomises.