From DanGuitars.com
The History of Danelectro
The very first Danelectro guitars were built beginning in 1954. For many teen-agers, this was their first instrument. Brand new, the cheapest models cost as little as $69.00. Many were sold by Sears, under the label "Silvertone." The most popular models came in a case with a built-in amplifier.
Today, that $69.00 guitar, unmodified, and in excellent condition could cost you $500.00 or more. Because they were so cheap, many Danelectros were thrown away, damaged or altered along the way.
Constructed simply of wood, vinyl, masonite and Formica, Danelectros used "lipstick tube" metal pick-ups that were literally purchased from a lipstick-tube manufacturer. The guitars were made simply, with no pearl adornments or expensive wood.
Professional guitarists have driven up the value of authentic Danelectros because they cherish the instrument's unique sound and look. They have a bell-like tone and a very clean sound. But non-professionals, many of them nostalgic baby boomers, are also entranced. There's the show-off, cool aspect to owning one. And the rareness. They have a sound, look and color all their own.
Many of today's top rock guitarists own a "Danos." They play them on stage and use them in the studio. Joe Perry of Aerosmith once offered someone $30,000 for an entire Danelectro collection!
Guitars designed by Nathan Daniel (1912-1994) never reached the pantheon of instruments made by Fender, Gibson, and Martin. But in their own way they were no less influential, their low price tag making them readily available to the masses. Cost cutting was achieved through materials and construction. As with this 3012 "short horn" model in "bronze" finish, the top and back of many Danelectro instruments were made from one-eighth-inch Masonite glued over a poplar framework, and covered over with a painted finish (including trendy colors like fuchsia and peach).
Before Nathan Daniel started the Danelectro company in 1947, he made amplifiers for Epiphone from 1934 to 1946. Epiphone wanted Daniel to make amps for them exclusively, but he preferred to stay independent. Instead he founded the Danelectro company in 1947 and started making amplifiers for Montgomery Ward. By 1948 Daniel expanded and became the exclusive guitar amplifier producer for Sears & Roebuck. At the same time he was also supplying other jobbers such as Targ & Dinner of Chicago.
In the fall of 1954, Daniel started production of solidbody guitars for Sears, under the Silvertone name. He also produced the same guitars under the Danelectro name, sold to other jobbers. These early models didn't have truss rods but had a 3/4" square aluminum tube beginning at the peghead and through the body to the bridge. The bodies were constructed of solid Poplar wood. The Silvertone models were covered with a dark maroon vinyl covering, while the Danelectro models were covered in a whitish tweed material. Both lines came with either 1 or 2 pickups, concealed under a baked melamine pickguard. Concentric stacked tone and volume knobs were used on the two pickup models only. Notably, when both pickups were used together, the tone was much stronger. This was due to wiring the pickups in series, instead of parallel like most other maker's two pickup guitars.
1963 Danelectro catalog showing the Doubleneck and Longhorn Guitarlin.
By the fall of 1956, Daniel started making the Silvertone and Danelectro lines using the standard Dano materials: a Poplar wood frame (that comprised the sides, neck and bridge block of the guitar), stapled together and covered with 3/8" thick masonite. The top and back was painted, but the sides were covered in a vinyl material to hide the unpainted poplar wood frame. Also the now infamous "Lipstick tube" pickups were used. These pickups had an alnico bar magnet and coil measuring 4.75k ohms wrapped in brown vinyl tape. The pickup guts were placed inside surplus, chrome plated, lipstick tubes. These pickups were actually the same as previously used and hidden beneath the pickguard. Just now they were adorned in lipstick tubes and mounted in cutouts in the masonite body. Construction methods stayed this way for most models throughout Danelectro's history.
In 1966 Nathan Daniel sold the Danelectro company to MCA but remained with the company. Later in the 60's he moved to Hawaii to pursue another passion... building sailboats. For more about Nathan Daniel go to: www.pen4rent.com/pen4rent/tribute.aspx
In 1967 the Coral line of guitars was introduced. At the time, Danelectro sold about 85% of it's products to Sears so MCA started the Coral line to sell to other distributors. The difference was the Coral hollow bodies (only) were manufactured in Japan. All other Coral parts were made in the New Jersey Danelectro plant. All Silvertones and Danelectros were made entirely in the U.S
1959 Danelectro Acoustic/Electric Convertible
In 1969 MCA closed the Danelectro plant. This was blamed on MCA's shift to selling instruments to individual guitar stores instead of jobbers (such as Sears). At this time, Dan Armstrong bought most of the remaining parts, and continued manufacturing Danelectros through Ampeg. These instruments had single cutaway bodies with one humbucking pickup (not lipstick tube pickups), and no brand name on the peghead. Apparently Ampeg was having problems with the production of the see-thru Dan Armstrong guitars. In the interium, Armstrong sold the remaining Danelectros through Ampeg until the Dan Armstrong guitars were fully available.
All production instruments:
All Danelectro and Silvertone instruments are fitted with a screw mountedaluminum nut. All Coral instruments are fitted with a solid brass nut.
1964 Dano Deluxe Single Pickup
Necks
Pickups
What is a Lipstick Tube Pickup?
The Lipstick tube pickups were designed by Nathan Daniel. Nat designed a winding system using a photographic timer and winder that would rotate to the desired number of turns depending on the time that was pre-set. The magnets are wrapped with a black electrical cloth tape and after the coil is wound the hookup wire is put on and then rewrapped with electrical tape to protect the coil and to make it fit snugly in the 2 halves of the pickup covers (lipstick lids). The pickups are used on all Danelectro instruments from guitars, bass and longhorn basses. The chrome halves were pre-drilled for lead wires, mounting legs and springs.
All bridges had notches cut into the metal base to hold the string ends. A small piece of rosewood was used as the saddle.
Tuners
1963 Danelectro "Pro"
Volume & Tone Controls
2 separate volume and tone controls were used on all guitars from 1954 to 1956, regardless of the number of pickups.
Other Parts
The usual serial number location is in the neck pocket. But occassionally you'll find it hidden on other parts of the body along with other random scribbling.
Most Dano serial numbers are 3 or 4 digits, and decode like this:
For example, a serial number of 4286 would be the 42nd week of either 1956 or 1966. Check the model to see when it was produced to figure out which decade it is. A serial number of 576 would be the 5th week of 1956 or 1966.
Exceptions: in the latter part of 1967, new models used a 3 digit serial number where the first digit is the year, and the 2nd and 3rd digit was the week. This was for new (Coral) models only. Original Dano models like the Longhorns, Bellzouki, Guitarlin, Double-neck, and the Convertible retain the older 4 (or sometimes 3) digit system.
Another exception: in 1968 the Dano Convertible received the new Dane peghead and is offered in red, white, blue or natural. At this time the Convertible changed to the newer 3 digit serial number system.
Dano Longhorns
Bass and Guitarlin Models
Hawk
Informative link: How the Sitar Came To Be Heard in Western Pop Music
Coral
Vincent Bell Signature - Coral Sitar
Used by the Box Tops on "Cry Like A Baby."
Vincent Bell played an important role in the Danelectro legacy. Learn more about Vincent Bell.
Coral Hornet, Scorpion, Wasp models.
Coral Longhorn 1967-1969 (above). Hollowbody (made in Japan) body, thick body style, conventional hollowbody design, "F" holes.
Silvertone more info here
Model 1375 (1 pickup) & Model 1377 (2 pickup)
1963 Silvertone 1448 Amp-in-Case
Fall 1962: the famous red sunburst with white side "amp in case" model introduced. The amp is an amazing 3 watts with a 6" speaker. Easy to identify this model from just the case: the 1 pickup amp in case model does not have chrome trim around the speaker cut out in the outside of the case.
Click here for more information about Nathan Daniel
and the history of Danelectro.
Click here for more information about Nathan Daniel
and the history of Danelectro.
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From Pen for Rent
A lot of people know about Danelectro – especially the now-retro-looking electric guitars, which have become collector’s items and have even given rise to that sincerest form of flattery, a company of the same name as the 1940s, 50s and 60s Danelectro, which manufactures reproductions of the original instruments, and another company that also issues reproductions, albeit without the name.
Fewer people, however, know much about Nathan I. Daniel, my dad – and the genius behind Danelectro. Nor is my father’s contribution to the history of electric musical instruments widely known. He was devoid of interest in fame or publicity, and after Danelectro closed down in 1969, he simply got on with his life. As a result, most of what has been written about Danelectro has focused on the appearance of the guitars, right down to the shape of their heads and the style of knobs, pick guards and tuning pegs.
I hope that for the people who admire, collect and play original Danelectro guitars and amplifiers (or the Silvertone and Airline products my dad also created), this tribute will give a new appreciation for these old instruments, because the essence of the Danelectro story is Nat Daniel’s lifetime of innovation.
Nathan “Nat” Daniel was born in New York City in 1912, a year to the day after his young parents arrived in the United States, immigrants who had come to this country to escape the anti-Semitism of czarist Russia, which then ruled their Lithuanian birthplace. The younger of my father’s two kid sisters, my Aunt Ray, tells how one of their parents’ first words in English was “learn,” and how, when they were children, their parents would take all three of them around to New York’s many wonderful museums, urging them to “learn.”
Because my father could not yet speak English when he entered school, he had to repeat the first grade. At some point during his second time around, as he later told me, “it was as if someone turned the lights on one day, and suddenly I understood everything.” A bright, mischievous child, hardly a devoted student, he nonetheless went on to skip several grades and graduated from high school ahead of his contemporaries. (My dad often ignored homework assignments but aced exams, much to the irritation of certain teachers – most notably a high school math teacher who wanted to flunk him but couldn’t because of his near-perfect score on the New York State Regents Exam.)
My dad developed an early interest in radio, still in its infancy during his teenage years. He built the first crystal radio set in his neighborhood. During the Great Depression, he dropped out of City College of New York and began assembling and selling amplifiers of his own design. It was during this period, in the mid-1930s, that he designed and began manufacturing a push-pull amplifier circuit that eliminated the input transformer that had made it impossible to achieve good high-frequency response. His amp tested “flat” (i.e., provided equal response across the full range of sound frequencies) to the limit of then-existing equipment. He did not try to patent his invention because he could not afford the expense.
My father’s first “factory” was his bedroom in his parents’ New York apartment. Later he moved his small manufacturing operation – Daniel Electrical Laboratories – to a loft in Lower Manhattan. His first big customer was the well-known guitar maker Epiphone, second only to Gibson at the time.
During World War II, Nat Daniel served as a civilian designer for the U.S. Army Signal Corps at Fort Monmouth, N.J. Among the other problems he worked on at that time, he found a simple, economical way to equip military jeeps and motorcycles with shielding to prevent the electronic “noise” their engines generated from interfering with the reception of critical battlefield radio messages. Protected from the draft by the critical nature of his work, at one point he considered enlisting in the Marines. His boss – and my mother, Mollie – talked him out of it. As a kid, I once asked about his work during the war. His response: “I saved the government a million dollars.” Whatever the exact amount, clearly it was not a trivial sum.
At the end of the war, my father left the Signal Corps and reopened his amplifier manufacturing business in Red Bank, N.J., near Fort Monmouth. He called it the Danelectro Corporation (coined from “Daniel electric”) and over the next nearly two and a half decades produced what writers Jim Washburn and Steve Soest in the July 1983 issue of Guitar World called “an impressive number of electric instruments … distinguished in their design innovations [and] their quality at a budget price….”
After supplying Epiphone again for about a year, he won contracts to make amplifiers for two major national retail chains, Sears Roebuck and Montgomery Ward. These were sold under their respective brand names, Silvertone and Airline. For about two decades Danelectro was the sole supplier of Sears’ Silvertone amplifiers. Danelectro began making electric guitars, with their distinctive “lipstick tube” pickups, in 1954. By the time my father sold the business, in 1966, to MCA (Music Corporation of America), Danelectro – by then located in a much larger plant in Neptune City, N.J. – employed about 500 people and was shipping out an average of more than a full trailer-truckload of amplifiers and guitars every day.
The Danelectro years were marked by a series of innovations. Between 1949 and 1969, my dad secured a total of eight patents – on vibrato (tremolo, or, as he dubbed it, “Vibravox”) and reverberation (“reverb”) systems; a loudspeaker cabinet with inclined baffles (the “Acoustic Case,” designed to boost bass response by lengthening the sound wave path from the back to the front of the speaker); a combined bridge, tailpiece and manual vibrato for guitars; and the electric sitar, which faithfully reproduced the unique sound of the classic Indian instrument but could easily be played by any guitarist. (My dad shared the sitar patents with Vinnie Bell, New York’s busiest, and almost certainly most innovative, studio guitarist, with whom he enjoyed a warm, collaborative relationship.) He also patented – way back in 1953 – an electric organ that foreshadowed a basic principle of some of today’s synthesizers, but reproduced true tones of many instruments in analog rather than digital fashion. He never put it into production, however.
However, Nat Daniel did not patent most of his innovations, which also included:
• the first six-string electric bass (1956)
• the first 12-string electric guitar (1961 – the “Bellzouki,” developed in collaboration with Vinnie Bell and inspired by Greekbouzouki music from the film classic “Never on Sunday”)
• a 31-fret “Guitarlin” (1958) with a deeply cut-away “longhorn” body that enabled a guitarist to play an extra 10 frets into the mandolin range
• an amplifier and speaker built into a guitar carrying case (this was done for Sears, which sold the Silvertone “amp-in-case” and guitar for under $50 as a set for novice players)
• a “convertible” guitar that could be bought, inexpensively, for beginning students, as an acoustic, and later, with the purchase of a pickup kit, turned into a semi-hollow-body electric
• total shielding of guitar and amplifier circuits to protect against hum from neon signs, motors or other sources of electrical interference (he introduced this at a National Association of Music Merchants – NAMM – show, with Vinnie Bell demonstrating Danelectro guitars and amps while sitting right next to a glowing neon sign; the Danelectro products sounded crystal clear, while a specially assembled “Brand X” guitar, lacking the shielding, hummed noisily every time Vinnie plugged it in)
• guitar necks that never warped because they were reinforced with twin steel I-beams
• the use of inexpensive, yet strong and stable composite materials in both amplifier cabinets (Homasote, particle board) and guitar bodies (Masonite, Formica)
• a guitar neck-tilt adjustment system “nearly identical [as Washburn and Soest wrote in Guitar World] to the one Fender used – except that Danelectro did it a decade earlier and didn’t bother to patent it”
• a “master-slave” amp system with 300-plus watts of distortion-free power (back in 1956)
• a "hexaphonic" guitar, with each string having its own separate pickup, amplifier and speaker (1958 - but never manufactured)
• a capacitance pickup for classical guitar with a tube pre-amplifier built into the body; etching the nylon strings and coating them with graphite made it possible to pick up the signal (1959 - but never manufactured )
• a hybrid vacuum tube/solid-state amplifier (1968)
My father’s most fundamental innovation, however, may well have been the basic idea behind virtually everything he made – to produce amplifiers and guitars that were both high-quality AND affordable to ordinary people, especially the families of youngsters – beginners – who wanted to learn the guitar but didn’t have a lot of money to spend. In a recent note to me, Jim Washburn, co-author of the Guitar World article, wrote that the thing that really sticks in his memory from the interview for that article was that “when I asked your dad what he was proudest of, he didn’t cite any of his industry firsts but just the humble fact that he was able to make instruments a beginner could afford that were of a quality that wouldn't discourage them from progressing on the instrument.”
Legends like Jimi Hendrix, to name just one, learned to play on Danelectros or Danelectro-made Silvertones, so it can be argued that Nat Daniel played a significant role in getting some of the genre’s greats started on their careers. This may be somewhat ironic in light of the fact that he played no instrument himself and preferred music by composers like Mendelssohn and Rimsky-Korsakov – Rimsky-Of Course-Of Course, my dad liked to joke – to rock ’n’ roll.
By beginning the design process by first seeking to understand the qualities that were most important to musicians, my dad was able to figure out how to incorporate these characteristics in his products at low cost without compromising quality. That, to take just one example, is why he employed inexpensive materials like Masonite and Homasote, which some people derided at the time. But these materials did the job for which they were intended perfectly well, and they held costs down.
In his autobiography, Joseph N. “Joe” Fisher, Sears’ principal musical instrument buyer from 1959 to 1968, wrote that “Nat was an innovator who understood the principle of ‘rigid control of expense,’ an example of which was his innovative and inexpensive … magnetic pickups used in electric guitars. He made them from surplus [actually, they were not “surplus” at all] lipstick tubes, bought from a cosmetics manufacturer. He inserted the electronics in the tubes and produced the lowest cost guitar pickup in the industry.” Low-cost they may have been, but their innovative design makes them still highly sought-after by many guitarists today, who love their distinctive sound as well as their “cool” appearance. (Fisher admired my father for more than his innovativeness and ability to keep costs down. He also wrote, “I think the reason I respected people like Nat Daniel was because he disagreed when he thought my ideas were off base, even though I, representing Sears, was his economic lifeline.”)
Perhaps the best example of marrying high quality, low cost and innovative production methods was the Danelectro guitar neck. First, my father wanted a neck that would not warp or bow. He thought the traditional approach to this problem – an adjustable rod to counter the bowing effect of the strings – was a poor, “Band-Aid” solution. He wanted a neck that would simply NEVER bow. So first he aged the poplar wood used for the necks in a climate-controlled drying room. Then, in building the necks, he reinforced them with twin steel I-beams. These necks just would not bow – Danelectro hardly ever received an instrument back for repair or replacement because of a complaint about the neck. (And guitars that came back for other repairs, even after many years, never exhibited bowing problems.)
Rigid reinforcement achieved another objective – to make possible a neck that was slender, like those of high-priced competitors such as Fender. Why a slender neck? To make fingering easier, especially for the young beginners with small hands and tender fingers who comprised the bulk of his market. The I-beams meant less wood would be needed for rigidity, making possible a thinner neck.
In his recent correspondence with me, Jim Washburn pointed out that “while some of [my dad’s] designs were pure whimsy – he said [in the Guitar World interview, that] the longhorn originated as a doodle – most had a solid reason behind them. The lipstick tubes provided shielding, but with a gap in the middle that prevented the shorted-turn effect in which a typical pickup’s shielding acts as a transformer loop that diminishes the pickup’s high-frequency response. When he explained why he used the steel bars in his necks instead of a[n adjustable] truss rod, he went into the formula of Young’s Modulus of Elasticity, which he used to determine that even the cheapest steel rods provided the resistance the necks needed.”
In addition to designing all of Danelectro’s products, my father also came up with manufacturing equipment and processes that saved time and money. In the case of guitar necks, for example, he kept costs low and quality high by designing and building a unique, proprietary machine to finish the surface of the fingerboards (Brazilian rosewood, a handsome, durable material) to the exacting standards required. Like so many other elements of the manufacturing processes he designed and developed, this device made it possible for employees who were not craftsmen to produce craftsmanlike results.
The fingerboard-finishing machine was a horizontal, cylindrical frame, the length of a standard neck, with two large, circular wooden hoops forming either end. The outside rim of each hoop was fitted with clamps that allowed necks with unfinished, unfretted fingerboards to be laid lengthwise along the cylinder, fingerboards facing out, and secured at each end. The finishing was done automatically by a table saw. When the saw was turned on, a link to the cylinder started it slowly rotating along its axis while simultaneously drawing the saw almost imperceptibly along a finely threaded, revolving bolt running underneath the cylinder from one end to the other. After some time, the saw blade had passed along the entire length of each fingerboard, shaving it to precisely the right height and leaving a perfectly finished surface. The only manual work required was for an employee to clamp the unfinished necks in place, turn on the machine, and come back a couple of hours later to remove the necks and start another batch.
As ingenious as my dad’s many amplifier and guitar innovations were, the manufacturing processes he developed were an essential element in producing high-quality products at low cost.
MCA closed Danelectro in 1969, but my father never looked back. When, over a decade later, he learned, almost by chance, of the continuing interest in the major portion of his life’s work, he expressed surprise, gratification … and, characteristically, bemusement.
Following my mother’s death early in 1974, my dad left New Jersey for warmer, more hospitable climes. Late that year, he moved to Hawaii. Soon after arriving, he became intrigued by the seemingly inexplicable absence of passenger ferry service in this island state. After some investigation, he concluded the basic problem was that no vessel existed that combined the three qualities he deemed essential to any passenger service across Hawaii’s rough interisland channels – a smooth ride even in heavy seas, reasonably high speed, and operating costs low enough to permit fares to be set well under the price of airline tickets.
My father then began thinking about the physics of a vessel that would provide such a gentle, fast and inexpensive ride. In 1978 he came up with the SuperOutrigger, which (together with a 1981 variation on his original concept) he patented in the United States and 12 foreign countries. The vessel was a synthesis of a long, needle-like, fully enclosed main hull that rode low in the water; a passenger cabin held high above the hull, out of the reach of waves, by an open truss structure; and a smaller, stabilizing outrigger hull.
He built two working models of the SuperOutrigger on which tests were performed and demonstrations conducted. The testing of his first 28-foot model in 1979 showed that in 13-foot waves, rolling and pitching of a full-scale craft would be less than five degrees. In 1986, he launched a 58-foot demonstration model (with wooden hulls he built in his driveway) on which he gave rides to government officials, potential investors and journalists. One of those who rode the craft was the then-editor of the authoritative Jane’s High-Speed Marine Craft and Air Cushion Vehicles, Robert Trillo, who later wrote that the SuperOutrigger had “a substantial economic advantage over current fast craft such as hydrofoil and catamaran craft and especially when its potential seakeeping ability [stability in heavy seas] is taken into account, enabling operations to be extended into rougher seas….”
My dad spent years in a search for the investment or funding required to build the first commercially operating SuperOutrigger. He drew up plans for 300-foot-long versions of the craft that would travel at 35 knots (40 miles per hour) and cover the roughly 100-mile distance between Honolulu and either Maui or Kauai in under three hours for about half the price of flying. He attempted to interest officials in using SuperOutriggers for commuter ferry service between downtown Honolulu and various other points on the island of Oahu. He also explored the possibility of putting his vessel to use for other purposes and in other parts of the world. A number of investors indicated a willingness to back or operate a “second” SuperOutrigger, but my father never managed to locate a source of capital for a first commercially operating vessel.
My dad suffered a heart attack and died on Christmas Eve, 1994, at age 82. He was survived by his second wife, Connie; two grown stepchildren; three grandchildren; sisters Sally and Ray; and me.
Nathan Daniel was a conceptualizer, an innovator … an American original, just like the things he dreamed up, put together and gave the world. Growing up, I had thought of him as an engineer, not a businessman. (He was certainly no salesman. His idea of good sales technique was simply to offer a great product at an attractive price. Period. For profit, he relied entirely on high volume, not high markup.) However, as I grew older, it seemed to me that engineering was somehow too limited a description of what my dad did. In his later years he told me he felt as though what he did was basically to apply an understanding of physics to practical problems.
At bottom, THAT was his talent – problem solving. Nat Daniel believed that if you could manage to state a problem correctly, its solution would become apparent. He spent a lifetime doing just that … grasping the essence of the matter and coming up with solutions that, in the world of science, are called “elegant” because of their simplicity and originality. His ability to do this is only barely reflected in the U.S. patents he was granted – 10 that I know of, filed over a nearly three-and-a-half-decade span between 1947 and 1981.
In a recent note, Jim Washburn wrote that in his roughly quarter-century of journalism, “I've been lucky to have met and interviewed several of the major players in the history of the electric guitar – including Leo Fender and Gibson's Seth Lover – and even in that company I think your dad was a giant of inventiveness and achievement." In a subsequent message Washburn wrote that my dad "was no less inventive – as evidenced by how many of his innovations were later copied by Fender, Gibson and other firms, including the six-string bass, the 12-string electric and shielded electronics – and that, unlike those others, his leaps of creativity were accomplished within the self-imposed constraint of producing excellence on a budget. If a musician wanted Gibson’s version of Nat’s six-string bass, they had to find a Gibson dealer, special-order the thing, wait sometimes for months, and shell out $400 or more for it. With Nat’s, any American could walk into a Sears or Montgomery Ward, plunk down $90 and walk out with one. And, decades later, it is still the Danelectro that most musicians rely upon.”
A friend recently observed that my dad had the habit of “thinking outside the box” long before that expression was ever dreamed of. He was right. That was the way Nat Daniel always thought. That’s what made him the smartest, most original person I’ve ever known.
This tribute, in a very slightly adapted form, serves as the introduction to the book Neptune Bound, by Doug Tulloch. For more information, visit www.neptunebound.com . The book, in hardcover and softcover, is also available from Amazon.
Copyright © Howard E. Daniel, Pen-for-Rent, 2007-2010.
Thanks for posting this Ted. Glad i had the time to read it tonight.
I love Danelectros! Thanks for posting this Ted!
I'm lucky enough to own a 1957 Danelectro U1 that I got from a friend a few years ago. It was a little one owner that belonged to his Dad. Never done a thing to it except for using some contact cleaner on the pots and such. I did switch out the bridge for one of those All Parts replacement bridges that allow for intonation but still have the original tucked away in a drawer. The new bridge also adds a little mass which seemed to provide a little better sustain. Unfortunately I had to sell the asian Longhorn repro (shown in photo) a couple of years ago for some badly needed cash. It played and sounded great though. I plan on never selling the 1957 original though. It's just too sweet! Plays and sounds like a dream!
That was the most interesting read I have had in a long time.
Thanks guys.
Hogs.
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