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Its a bit worrying when cheap guitars turn out to be nicer then expensive ones. :/

I have had many guitars ranging from Fender to Gibsons and others in between. in that time i have always fancied a Danelectro and recently picked one up for a super low price. after a full setup and a fret dress this thing plays and sounds better then my previous favorite guitar a 94 fender strat plus (worth about £750) i just dont get how Danelecto have made such high quality guitars for a fraction of the price of bigger brands.

For example i have had this Danelectro 2 weeks now and went to play on the fender today and i found the neck sticky the playability was not as smooth and the sound didn't ring to my ears as much as the Dano.

Now im not one of these people who goes on about cheap guitars being just as good as pricey ones, i know plenty enough about guitars and all the people who go on about Epiphones being better then Gibson for example are mostly just people who have not had enough time with a proper Gibson. i know for quality you have to pay a decent amount...and for quality with a famous brand name like Gibson you have to pay even more.

Am i mad? that i enjoy the feel and sound of these Danelectros over the multitude of Fenders i have had and loved?

anybody else had an experience like this??

No, you are not mad. They just work and do what they do well.

Danos are just great. Especially the 90's, early odd stuff...
They do kind of put other budget brands to shame in a way but the thing is that they're only really, really good at nailing that one sound, other budget brands offer a bit more versatile a selection, in terms of achievable tone.

laterallateral wrote:Danos are just great. Especially the 90's, early odd stuff...
They do kind of put other budget brands to shame in a way but the thing is that they're only really, really good at nailing that one sound, other budget brands offer a bit more versatile a selection, in terms of achievable tone.

Strange as i have found my 69 to be quite versatile so much so i am about to pick up a Dano dc59 modified for cheap in the next few days
really want a 12 string too

Uh yeah, I'm excluding vintage Danos from this appraisal as their asking price pretty much puts them in the "nicer" category.

laterallateral wrote:Uh yeah, I'm excluding vintage Danos from this appraisal as their asking price pretty much puts them in the "nicer" category.

69 model not actual year
its fairly new
i find the pickups are quite versatile
i have always made use of the vol/tone for diff sounds
and they work well with the dano

Gotcha.
I'm just saying it may be harder to get certain sounds out of those lipsticks.
Personally, I'm not particularly interested in those other sounds, so Danos suit me just fine but if I were, I might look somewhere else first.

... All I'm sayin'

Danos are great, great guitars for the money, no matter how you slicing it, though.

My DC 59 12 string plays 10 times better than the amount of dollhairs I put down on it. Stupid fucking deals, unbelievable really.

The first three guitars I owned, in order, were: Bitscaster cobbled together from cheapo strat parts, Danelectro U2, Squier Stagemaster. The Dano quickly became my main guitar. From that point on I owned a Squier Telecaster Custom II and a Burns Marquee. I now own a Fender Jaguar, a Burns Batwing, a Burns Nu-Sonic and an Alden hollowbody.

Of all these guitars the Dano is still my favourite guitar to play. It's not crazy. They're just great. The reissues are all pretty much the same in terms of playability and even sounds and it's almost guaranteed that if you pick up a Dano it's going to feel great. I love them.

I had a Dano U2 and it was shockingly bad but im quite eager to try one of the Pro's with proper bridge saddles.

That aside, no your not mad. I've found the same with various stuff. There will always be that extra special Gibson, Fender etc but it does'nt mean they are all better than lower price guitars, because they just are'nt.
To list a few i've had a Peavey, Yamaha and a Cort guitar better than some Fenders and Gibson models they were based around.

Dano pedals are possibly my favorites in terms of fun and value for money.

Steve! wrote:

laterallateral wrote:Danos are just great. Especially the 90's, early odd stuff...
They do kind of put other budget brands to shame in a way but the thing is that they're only really, really good at nailing that one sound, other budget brands offer a bit more versatile a selection, in terms of achievable tone.

Strange as i have found my 69 to be quite versatile so much so i am about to pick up a Dano dc59 modified for cheap in the next few days
really want a 12 string too

I agree they are versatile. May have been Medicine Melancholy asking if they can do anything else other than 'jangle', well i dug this out i did a few years ago..

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Fran wrote:I had a Dano U2 and it was shockingly bad but im quite eager to try one of the Pro's with proper bridge saddles.

I have the pro and it is nice came with the saddled bridge. My brothers u2 had the the rosewood bridge, but as I gift, I got him the saddled bridge and installed it for him. Cool thing was the saddles were already set to intonate. Did not have to turn a screw on the saddles. All I had to do was set the height (screws under bridge).

Highly recommend the Dano DC-12, I owned one (late 90s model) and gigged with it regularly for over a year. In fact once I thought about trading it for a Rickenbacker 330/12 but decided against it because the tone was so similar and I liked the feel of the Danelectro better. I eventually ended up falling in love with a vintage Vox Tempest XII and sold the DC-12 in the classifieds, solely for the reason of not having room for more than one 12 string.

I have loved pretty much every U2, U3, and DC-59 I've picked up. I think they get away with being cheap guitars moreso because they have very simple construction and electronics, that just happen to sound good. As nice and distinctive as they are it would seem silly for Dano to sell them for $1000, even if they were USA made.

cur wrote:

Fran wrote:I had a Dano U2 and it was shockingly bad but im quite eager to try one of the Pro's with proper bridge saddles.

I have the pro and it is nice came with the saddled bridge.

Yeah its not case of if but when... i'll be getting one or a DC59.
Cool mod on your bro's btw

cur, might have asked you this before but what is the story of that guitar? the painting looks like the same artist as the art for fun trick noisemaker.

Mages wrote:cur, might have asked you this before but what is the story of that guitar? the painting looks like the same artist as the art for fun trick noisemaker.

It is. Here is Rob Schneider of apples playing it on stage a couple months ago in Durham NC.



Crappy cell phone pic, so I shooped it into a water color poster and printed it for my Bro's music room.

Yeah man, you're definitely not mad, I have a Danelectro DC-59 (2010 RI) and it's probably my most favorite guitar I've ever owned.

Proggys DC-59 was really nice. Shoulda bought that thang when he was selling it.

I think a lot of the time you'll bond with a guitar and it'll become one of your favourites and it really doesn't matter what it is. The cheapest two guitars I own are my Jagmaster and my '51, they are probably close to the last ones I'd part with. Actually I wouldn't part with any of them.

Sometimes I think the brand recognition of "name" guitars is a disincentive to quality. Like, there's not a compelling reason to raise the quality of a Gibson beyond a certain point, because enough people will buy one just for the name and heritage. It would just cut into profits. Smaller, cheaper companies have incentive to make better stuff in order to lure players away from the "standards."

That's been my experience in trying classicals recently. You're Yamahas and LaPatries are at a fairly good quality level. Moving into the $1-2k Spanish student guitars, the quality actually seems to go down. Enough players will "only use a Spanish guitar" that they can sell just based on that. The quality doesn't really start to meet and exceed the Yamahas until you're at $3k+ - fully 10x a good Yamaha's price.

But Danelectro also, through design and happenstance, hit on a really naturally good-sounding formula using the cheapest materials.