HEAD TO HEAD
Heading low down and deep with baritones...
Lined up on a rack next to each other, you’re reminded of how diverse the guitar world can be. On the one hand you have the classy, well-appointed stylings of the PRS SE and the Chapman, all high-quality hardware and professional sheen. At the other end sits the rather more rag-tag Danelectro, the odd uncle you only see at Christmas, and the glamorous Gretsch. It’s like two of them walked into the wrong party.
It’s not only visually that these guitars are at opposite ends of the spectrum. Where the Chapman and PRS have the necessary tools to make the most of the added low-end frequencies on offer, the Danelectro and Gretsch both struggle for clarity when employing any sort of gain. Yet flip it on its head and you’ll see it’s not so clear cut. The Danelectro, for example, makes excellent use of its semi-hollow body to allow clean, open chords to ring out superbly - the best of the bunch - while you can tease some quite wonderful, mildly-driven sounds from the Gretsch’s mini-humbuckers.
Naturally, each guitar has a tendency to overpower at the low-end if you use too much drive. You’ll find yourself reaching for the volume control on the guitar more than you perhaps would otherwise, and each suffers a bit here. On every model, the ‘sweet spot’ was annoyingly tricky to find, with each offering very little gradation between zero and full.
In terms of build quality though, the SE and the ML1 stand quite comfortably ahead of the Dano and the Gretsch. This is even more remarkable when you consider the SE is almost twice the RRP of the Chapman. Credit where it’s due, if this battle was scored pound for pound, the Chapman would have walked it quite comfortably. When you throw in the coil-splittable pickups and included gigbag - which the SE also features - you see quite a package building up.
THE RAG-TAG DANELECTRO IS THE ODD UNCLE YOU ONLY SEE AT CHRISTMAS...