Danelectro '58 Longhorn Bass
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FEBRUARY 2016 GUITAR IST
DANELECTRO ’58 LONGHORN GUITAR & BASS
Feel & Sounds
The Longhorn body shape isn’t all about show.
The extended horns provide decent balance
when the instruments are hanging from a
strap, while the deep cutaways promote good
upper fret access, compromised only slightly
by the chunky union between the body and
neck. Playability is superb with the guitar and
bass sharing a shallow D neck profile and a
355mm (14-inch) fingerboard radius. The frets
are described as medium in the sales literature,
but in reality feel a mere junk-food binge away
from fat, which makes for fluid string bending,
particularly on the guitar.
Danelectro versatility was righteously
sealed when Jimmy Page used a double-cut
3021 model on Led Zep’s Kashmir. Digging
in, the brash bridge pickup works great
with vintage fuzz. Think Link, Stooges, Jack
White and Psychotic Reaction. As ever, it’s
the ‘in-series, both pickups engaged’ position
that unleashes a Dano guitar’s fattest tone;
imagine a humbucker with the clarity of a
single coil. It sounds superb with overdrive
for old-school hard-rock riffs like Jimmy’s yet
back off the filth and it sounds a bit like a fat
1. In typical Dano fashion,
the Longhorns have
concentric or ’stacked’
volume and tone
controls: the volume is
the bottom knob; the
tone is on top
2. Lipstick pickups are
more versatile than you
might think. Jimmy Page
famously employed
them on Led Zeppelin
tunes like
Kashmir
.
Dano don’t just do surf
3. Both of these
instruments are topped
with vintage-style tuners
on the iconic ‘Coke
Bottle’ headstock that
Danelectro fi rst unveiled
back in 1955
4. The short-scale
Longhorn bass shares
the same nut width,
shallow D profi le neck,
and fi ngerboard radius
as its six-string brother,
making it easy to play
5. These new models
add an extra neck
screw compared with
the 1958 original
6. The classic Dano
anchored bridge is
present on both models
7. The pointy tone and
volume controls
(pictured overleaf) are
eyecatching, but can
end up stuck together
VIDEO DEMO http://bit.ly/guitaristextra
GIT403.rev_dan.indd 25 21/12/2015 12:42