THE DANELECTRO STORY

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Here’s a great story written by a couple truly knowledgeable writers, guitar guys, guitarists, etc., etc., etc…the list could fill a page about these two.

Special thanks to Jim Washburn, Steve Soest, and Guitar World Magazine, via Bob Mytkowicz for this Fab Dano Tale.

Jim and Steve’s story ran in Guitar World Magazine some years ago and Jackaboutguitars has received permission from both the authors, as well as Guitar World Magazine, to run this GREAT story about DANELECTRO.

Jackaboutguitars has also been given permission to excerpt a fabulous tribute by Howard E. Daniel, to his father, Nathan “Nat” Daniel, Founder of THE DANELECTRO CORPORATION.  For a great read be sure to check out the complete tribute by Howard E. Daniel on his blog at: Pen4Rent.com

 

Dano Convertible

THE DANELECTRO STORY…GUITAR WEIRDNESS AT A PRICE by JIM WASHBURN and STEVE SOEST

Dano main title shot

Jimi-Danelectro

HOW INNOVATIVE ELECTRONICS AND QUALITY-AT-A BUDGET PRODUCED A LINE OF AXES COLLECTORS GO GA-GA OVER TODAY.

A  gangly, young Jimi  Hendrix strikes a rock star pose on his front  lawn with his first electric guitar.  ln a London studio John Entwistle records a bass solo on the Who’s “My Generation” that explodes in a twanging  bluster.  Tommy Tedesco  drones through a soundtrack session on electric  sitar.  ln a solo spotlight, Jimmy Page takes an arena full of fans on a twenty-minute modal excursion with “Black  Mountain Side.”  In a West Coast bar David Lindley plays chunk chords on a department store guitar and somewhere behind all that hair, he’s smiling.

Linking these vignettes is an instrument made with beaverboard and lipstick
covers, called Danelectro.  Before its demise in 1969, the Danelectro Corporation manufactured an impressive number of electric instruments that are distinguished in their design innovations, their quality at a budget price and their unparalleled weirdness.

Danelectro’s founder, Nathan “Nat” Daniel was born in New York City in 1912.  An electronics  and audio fidelity buff since childhood, Daniel designed a new push-pull amp circuit in the thirties which eliminated the problematical transformer that had limited amp response to 5,000 cycles.  Daniel recalls,  “My new amp’s output was tested as flat up to 20,000 cycles, which was as high as available test equipment would go.”  He soon made a deal with Thor’s Bargain Basement on New York’s Radio Row, which supplied him with the parts to construct his amplifiers, and paid him two dollars for labor and royalty on each one they sold.

“The Epiphone company was looking to get into electric guitars, and needed amplifiers.  They found me through Thor’s and ordered a few dozen.  So with two hundred dollars I rented a loft in Manhattan, bought a desk, built a workbench and started the Daniel Electrical Laboratories.”

Daniel made all of Epiphone’s amps until after Pearl Harbor, when the war made it impossible to get materials.  He worked in Fort Marmouth with the Signal Corps during the war, and afterward started in business again in nearby Red Bank.  He built amps for Epiphone for one more year, and then in 1946 decided to market his products himself under the Danelectro name.

“l came up with a full line of amplifiers, and drove samples around to every distributor in the East.  I was going to be rich, right?  I came back with not one order.  Zero.  So I put ads in the trades, selling directly to stores, and a few months later the distributors were contacting me.”

In 1947 and 1948 he picked up Montgomery Ward’s  and Sears’ accounts, and Danelectro was soon the largest amp producer in the business.  In 1947 Daniel made the first tremolo amplifier, securing patents  on two different systems.
1950 saw his introduction of the first reverb device for guitar.  Danelectro continued to originate new amp concepts over the years, including a hybrid tube/solid-state amp in 1968,  and a master-slave amp system in 1956 that advertised “practically limitless power…30 to 300 watts, or even more.”  In 1956!

The event that has collectors haunting garage sales today, though, was Nat Daniel’s decision in 1954 to make electric guitars.  Like Leo Fender, Daniel doesn’t play guitar.   “l just analyzed what an electric guitar needed to be from an engineering point of view, then built it,” he says.

“The thing that hampered companies like Epiphone was their desire to make an electric guitar sound like an acoustic instead of accepting the electric as a new instrument that is only similar to the acoustic guitar.   The Fenders  and Les
Pauls had come out, but the field was still wide open.”

Daniel was fortunate to have John D’Angelico, the late master luthier, as a friend.  Vinnie Bell, later to become Danelectro associate, recalls, “John was
a very benevolent man.  Here was the finest guitar maker in the world.  You could ask him the dumbest questions, and he’d always take time  to answer them.”  He helped Daniel in determining string length, fret spacing, and intonation for his guitars.

The first Danelectro guitars were built around a 3/4-inch square aluminum alloy tube that ran the length of the neck, and well into the body.  ” That metal tube really was the guitar,” Daniel says.  “We just added enough wood to shape the neck comfortably, and hollow wings for the body shape.”

There were problems in binding the wood to  the tube, so Danelectro only made the aluminum necks for a year before replacing them with poplar necks reinforced with two non-adjustable steel bars.  “An adjustable truss rod is unnecessary if you’re just willing to use enough steel,” Daniel maintains. The necks had an aluminum nut, twenty-one large frets (some five years before Gibson discovered them) and a thick Brazilian rosewood fingerboard cut in a nearly flat 17-inch radius.  Kluson gears were standard until Danelectro began making their own in the mid-sixties.

The  most obvious feature on any Danelectro is the pickup. The same chrome tube pickups were used on every model, be it guitar, bass, twelve-string or lap steel.  Long referred to by musicians as “those lipstick tube things,” few suspected that the units were indeed cased in lipstick covers purchased from a cosmetics packing firm on Long lsland.  The pickup’s coils were wound about an alnico five-bar magnet on machines operated rather imprecisely by workers cued by a photographic timer.  They were then wrapped in electrical tape and stuffed into two pre-drilled lipstick covers.  The resulting “split shell” pickup was so designed by Daniel to shield the unit while avoiding the shorted turn effect, in which the shielding acts as a separate transformer loop, inducing a current that interferes with the high frequency response of the coil.  It also looks pretty cool.

The single-cutaway standard body made until 1958 (1961  on their Sears models) had a front and back of 1/8-inch tempered masonite with  pine center block and frame.  A pulp composite most frequently used for pegboard and the
backs of cheap motel furniture, masonite hardly lends itself to legend as readily as birds-eye maple.  “Well,  it was consistent, it was stable, it worked and it was awfully damn cheap,” laughs Daniel.  The savings were reflected in the retail price: the model  that Randy California used with Spirit sold for $37.95, new.

Nathan Daniel

The guitars were offered in a variety of custom car finishes until 1958, when bronze and black became standard.  A four-digit number can usually be found stamped in the control cavity and on the neck’s mounting surface.  The first two digits indicate the week of manufacture, the third digit is anybody’s guess and the last gives the year.  Thus 2647 would read: twenty-sixth week of-bonus mystery digit – 1957.

ln1956 Danelectro made the first six string electric bass, a 29-1/2-inch scale instrument tuned an octave lower than a guitar.  “l was sure  we had something there,” Daniel recalls.  “It would appeal to guitarists, and to bass players; we were saying, look, here’s two extra strings for free.”   It was finally conceded that the four-string would be around for a while, and models were made available in 1958.

In 1958 Danelectro issued one of the most twisted guitars ever made, the Longhorn.  With squat body and exaggerated cutaway horns, it looked  like an Aeolian lyre imported from the Twilight Zone.  Daniel drew the design while doodling one day and found that it was well balanced and made all the frets accessible.  Three models were offered, a six-string bass, a four-string and the Guitarlin, a 31-fret guitar.  All models came with a cream-to-bronze “appliance burst” finish.

The company began using a double cutaway body for their standard line in 1958.  Shortly thereafter, in 1959, Danelectro moved to larger facilities in nearby Neptune City, New Jersey.  In 1960 the formerly rear-mounted controls were attached to a masonite pickguard, and use of the center block between the neck and bridge block was discontinued.

In the late fifties Danelectro began to shield the instruments from electric interference.  At only a few cents cost, the controls were boxed in a copper paper used for building insulation.  Daniel remembers, “A lot of industry people weren’t too bright back then.  Shielding was such an obvious step to take.  Our booth at the National Association of Music Manufacturers show that year had our guitar and a Brand X plugged in next to a large neon sign.  The Brand  X hummed like crazy.  Actually, that neon sign had guitars humming all over the hall.”  It was an in-house joke at Danelectro that their “T.S.” (totally shielded)  logo also stood for another childish metaphor.

In 1958 Vincent Bell – then and now a very busy New York studio guitarist – met Daniel at the NAMM show.  He had a number  of guitar design ideas that he wanted to discuss with manufacturers but, “l couldn’t even find one willing to
talk to me until I met Nat.  He was very encouraging and invited me to come by the plant and work on my ideas.  I’d usually be in the studio all week, so he’d open the plant on weekends, and the two of us would work on new models.  It was a dream world working with him.  That man is a genius.”

They introduced the Bellzouki, a twelve-string electric with an octave G string, in 1961.  To get the high G they had to make strings out of .008 inch piano wire, making them the first to offer extra light gauged strings.  The single-pickup Bellzouki was also the first guitar to have the teardrop body later popularized by Vox.

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Another project yielded the case-amp models marketed by Sears in 1962. Currently favored by David Lindley but designed for students, the guitars came with a case that had a built-in amplifier and were shipped with an instruction book and record, a ten-foot cord and a pick.  The one-pickup model  sold for $67.95, and the two-pickup, which had a better amp with tremolo, sold for $99.95.

Several designs never made it to the public.  In the late fifties Danelectro made a hexaphonic guitar, in which each string had its own pickup running to a unit housing six separate amplifiers and speakers.  “The Jersey Bounce” recorded by Bell in the fifties, featured a wah-wah pedal he’d made himself.  The “water guitar” effect on “Midnight Cowboy” was also of his own device, and is still seeing session use on soda pop commercials.

A capacitance pickup for classical guitar was designed for Mario Maccaferri, the noted guitar maker whose career spanned crafting Django Reinhardt’s guitars and the ill-fated introduction of the plastic guitar.  A portion of the classical’s nylon strings was etched with a solvent, then coated with graphite, thus enabling a charged metal plate under the strings to respond to them.  The resulting signal was run through a tube pre-amp in the body and out to the amp.  However “unclassical” this may  sound, Daniel was with Maccaferri when Segovia came to try out the guitar.  He says that Segovia was quite pleased with the sound “until he and Mario began to argue about whether  a guitarist should sit or stand when performing. The argument boiled over into three languages,  with Mario finally yelling that Segovia looked like a monkey scratching his belly when he played.  So much for that guitar.”

In 1963 Danelectro  began using a neck-tilt adjustment system which is nearly identical to the one Fender used – except that Danelectro did it a decade earlier and didn’t bother to patent it. Daniel says, “It was such a simple thing, I don’t see why anyone should patent it, unless they have a lot of extra attorneys on the payroll.”

Danelectro peaked in the early sixties; the company employed some five hundred people and had sales of nearly six million dollars in 1964.  No production figures could be located but Daniel explains, “Every day a forty-foot trailer was dropped off and every night it was pulled away full, with the overflow leaving by truck.”

Daniel sold  his company to MCA in l966 for an amount which was “less than Fender got for  his” but he stayed on as head of the company.  He and Bell designed a new line of guitars and amps that MCA marketed under the Coral brand, the name of one of their record company holdings.  Even though it wasn’t anticipated that the world’s supply of masonite would dry up, the new bodies were made of wood.  The hollow body models were  made of plys of English maple at the same Japanese factory that produces Kawai pianos.  The poplar solid-bodies were made in Neptune.  Things somehow weren’t the same.

The guitar industry entered a three-year slump in 1966, which hit Danelectro particularly hard when Sears stopped carrying the company’s instruments two years later.  MCA became embroiled in antitrust actions which led them to close
Danelectro in 1969.

The company did manage one last gasp of unconventional brilliance.  Late 1967 saw the advent of the electric sitar, something Vinnie and Nat had worked out in 1964.  The instrument’s unique sound came from the wide, curved surface of the bridge, which didn’t allow a clear take-off point for the strings, resulting in a twanging nasal tone similar to that of the Eastern sitar.

It was offered in two models: the single-pickup Danelectro sitar and  the Coral model with an additional thirteen chromatically tuned drone strings, and three pickups.  Though both models are highly sought after today, neither sold well at the time of their introduction.

After MCA closed down the factory, a good deal  of the remaining stock was acquired by Dan Armstrong, who assembled it and marketed the results through Ampeg.

Nat Daniel retired from the musical instrument business and moved to Hawaii. When contacted, he expressed amusement at the renewed interest in his instruments.  He is now engaged in the development and marketing of the “Super Outrigger,” a radical concept in ship construction he has designed and patented, which may be to the marine world what Danelectros were to music.

We asked Daniel in which of his achievements he took the most pride.  Rather  than list any of  his numerous innovations, he declared: “What pleased me most was making a quality guitar a beginner could both afford and play.  I’d like to think that encouraged a lot of players to stick with the instrument.”

 

Authors Washburn and Soest are compiling information and anecdotes for a book on Danelectro.  Please send any information you wish to submit to Steve Soest, Main Street Music, 621 W. Lincoln, Anaheim, California 92805.
(Editor’s Note: As this is a reprint of an older article, Steve Soest can now be reached by e-mail at: [email protected] and not through the Main Street Music address listed.)

As many people know, Steve Soest is the man behind the “getting it right” huge reverse engineering project for the new Danelectro Company reissue guitars.

Here’s a little bit about that from a previous post on Jackaboutguitars (see: https://www.jackaboutguitars.com/soest-guitar-celebrating-40-years for the complete story)

JAG:  And you played such a key role in the new Danelectro Company. I remember just how much you loved Danelectros way back when. It seems the Danelectro thing was always what you were supposed to do.

SOEST: Never imagined it, or even planned for it.  Just lucky I guess.  Being in the right place at the right time and being able to say “yes” right away without thinking about it is very important.  The Danelectro project has been a very positive and important part of my life.  I always recognized them as a fabulous, inexpensive instrument, and it was important to me that we carried that philosophy into the new company.  The 1998 56-U-2 was a lot of bang for your buck! ($299.00 list) A lot of love went into that recipe!Hodad-Prototype4-743x1024

THE FOLLOWING IS AN EXCERPT FROM THE TRIBUTE TO DANELECTRO FOUNDER NATHAN I. DANIEL WRITTEN BY HIS SON HOWARD FROM HIS BLOG PEN4RENT  http://www.pen4rent.com/pen4rent/tribute.aspx.

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.

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 Greek bouzouki 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).

Each excerpt in red above is copyrighted © by Howard E. Daniel and may not be reproduced in whole or in part without the author’s express written permission.  Howard Daniel may be reached at [email protected]

These are just a few short excerpts with a bunch of great information from this really cool tribute to his Dad, Nathan Daniel, by Howard E. Daniel at Pen4Rent.

Don’t forget to checkout the whole tribute.  It’s way COOL and well worth your time!

Also midway up/down the page in the right hand column, check out the book:

Neptune Bound: The Ultimate Danelectro Guitar Guide by Doug Tulloch

                                                                                                                         –  Jack

Raymond eyanson

Nothing to do with playing it .But my wife helped put together the guitar and amplifier for sears in 1966 but had to quit the job she liked doing.because I went to Vietnam .Her name was BunSun Eyanson

Tom Clift

Hey Jack,
I’m wondering where is the rest of the article. It stops mid-sentence, and when I click next, assuming that it will lead to the next page, instead it goes to a different article. Where’s the rest? Inquiring minds want to know.

Jack

Hi Gail, thanks for your question. I put it out to Steve Soest who is one of the most knowledgeable ‘guys on the planet concerning anything and everything remotely related to Danelectro and Vinnie Bell. Here’s Steve’s reply:
“The only thing I’ve seen that came close to that is the old Fender Dimension IV unit. It was a free standing box as well as part of the Fender Super Showman solid state amp. With the thousands of pedals out there these days , someone MUST make one. Let”s put this one out to the pedal geeks out there!”

ian bray

i have recently found a series e model 299 twin twelve amp with the model 9100 reverb unit mounted on top. it was mfg in neptune city and the serial nmber is 00143…i can not find any info at all on this amp. please help me find out a little bit more about this.
thanks
ian

Tiki Steve

Growing up in Neptune City NJ I would rummage through the dumpsters at Danelectro and try to build my own guitars.
I d0 have a coral firefly from around 1970 still in mint condition.
Good times back then. thanks for the story.

Jack

https://www.jackaboutguitars.com/wp-admin/edit-comments.php?comment_status=moderated#Hi Steve,

Thanks for your comment. Pretty cool getting parts like that and building your own guitars! I really appreciate hearing from you. If you like the site and haven’t signed up for the email newsletter, you can do that at the Les Paul at the top of the page. I usually only send them out when a new story is coming or when there’s some pretty cool information. Best, Jack

Wayne

Hmmm. My cousin Steve lived in Neptune City back in the day and when we would visit I remember a time we would’ve also rummaged through their dumpsters. Danelectro was within walking distance. I remember him pulling out a speaker and saying it was a good find.

Wayne

I have a silvertone dolphin head single pickup guitar. I need a three way tone switch and I cant find one. Can anyone help me out with where to look? It was re-worked 15 years ago and they put a 2 way tone switch. It was not original. I have had this guitar in the shop for a year with no luck. Does anyone have a schematic? Thanks

Jack

Wayne,

I finally received the Danelectro Schematic from Author Jim Washburn!!!
Here’s the info & I’ll email the schematic to you.

Here you go:
Danelectro one-pickup wiring harness

The pots are 100 k

The Carling switch is center position both poles off

The pickup shield and ground wire typically ground to the back of the tone pot. Danelectro designated the pickup’s nominal ground wire by tying a small knot in it.

The tone pot in this circuit is next to the switch while the volume is next to the jack: the opposite of most other circuits.

The capacitor nearest the switch is a Pyramid .1 MFD 200 volt

The capacitor nearest the pot is a Sangamo .01 MFD 600 volt

The hot wire from the pickup is soldered between the two caps.

The resistor is 27 K ohms, 10%, I think. The color scheme is red, violet, orange, silver.

In the center position, the tone pot does nothing. To one side, it acts like a typical tone control, rolling off the highs. To the other side, it masks the lower frequencies, accentuating the treble.

It’s a clever circuit, but I’ve never liked it much. One the guitars I play, I usually remove the switch, etc, and just run a straight volume and tone.

—Jim

David Robinson

I have a mint Danelectro Bellzouki model 7021 double pickups with the coral sitar body and a pearl pick guard. It still has the Fully Shielded sticker on the back and the screws have never been removed. All stock. No case. No damage. One very small chip on the head stock paint un repaired. It was there when I bought it new in 1966. It has been stored with the string tension relaxed for 47 years in an air conditioned house.I am willing to sell but not desperate. I would like to get a couple thousand dollars. They are rare as hensteeth.Let me know if you have interest. Thank You

Jack

Sounds way cool David! Your comment will be posted right here on he site for people to see. I’ll pass the word on to Steve Soest who writes the “Keepin’ It Real” column too as he knows people that might be interested. Thanks for writing! – Jack

jim parker

NO MENTION OF DUANE EDDY WHO OWNED DANOS AND RECORDED SOME OF HIS BIGGERST HITS ON THEM[ BECAUSE THERE YOUNG ETC ] HE MUST BE THE FIRST IMPORTANT GUITARIST TO USE ONE IN ANGER, HE OFTEN SAYS THE BARITONE WAS INVENTED OR INSPIRED BY HIS SOUND.
JOHN ENTWISTLE WAS A MASSIVE DUANE EDDY FAN AND PROBABLY WAS INFLUENCED BY HIM.
HE USED ONE ON TWO TRACKS ON HIS LATEST ALBUM ROAD TRIP LAST YEAR !!!!

Jack

Thanks Jim for sharing the comment on Duane Eddy. I came up a little later on so I wasn’t real familiar with Duane Eddy until I finally heard Rebel Rouser way later on in 1964, when I started learning to play guitar at age 9. Jim Washburn and Steve Soest did such a great job on this article so many years ago. It was an honor to be able to get permission to have this article reprinted for many more people to enjoy. With space limitations for magazine articles way back when this cool article was first written, the main concern was probably the focus on ‘Nat’ Daniel and The Danelectro Corporation. – Jack

Damien Hutchinson

I am longing for the day that these wonderful guitars are manufactured at a new plant in Neptune. I have a Korean made Danelectro Longhorn Baritone (tuned B-b) which is probably the most amazing guitar I own (out of 30 or so) I have also recently purchased a Danelectro Hawk (also Korean) finished in Alligator Orange. Its just amazing.
However the ONLY thing missing from these guitars is the ‘Made in USA’ pedigree. If only the Everts Corporation would relocate manufacture back to the States and concentrate on a quality body that retains the sound and feel of the Dano’s that we all love. Danelectro is a great story….I hope the story continues…

Jack

Hey Damien, thanks for the cool comment! Jim Washburn & Steve Soest did such a great job on this story. Long live Danelectro. Check out some other things going on at Jackaboutguitars.com and tell your friends. – Jack

Jack

Thanks so much Howard for allowing me to excerpt your wonderful tribute to your Dad. He did so many great things for the guitar world! Best, Jack

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