Danelectro One-Pickup Reissue

The beauty of this guitar is its lack of features - it has one lipstick tube pickup, a non-intonatable rosewood bridge, and a stacked volume/tone knob, and that's about it. The body and neck are the same as the U2 reissue - a hollow, masonite/poplar ply sandwich for the body and a neck that appears to be made of wood - I'd guess maple - with a rosewood fretboard. The tuners and electronics are cheap, the strap buttons are plastic plugs that are pushed rather than screwed into the body, and I could go on with other stuff, but the overwhelming character of this guitar renders the litany of features almost irrelevant. You either love this guitar or hate it, and if you love it, you either put up with the cheapness or upgrade specific parts.

This guitar gets high marks for character, but it's pretty much a one-sound guitar, and that sound is unusual to say the least. Acoustically, the guitar has very little sustain and a lot of top end slice and midrange bark, and the electronics don't obscure that voice. The placement of the pickup seems to be between the standard Strat neck and middle positions, so the guitar has an idiosyncratic mix of neck pickup roundness, middle pickup clarity, and the rubbery shimmer of a Strat's neck/middle combo that works well for early rock and roll lead and rhythm, soul rhythm, Beatlesque pop, and blues (provided your definition of a "blues tone" is roughly thirty years pre-Stevie Vaughan). The pickup has low output, and the guitar shines best when used with a natural tube amp that's just on the breakup threshold - too much distortion muddies the low end and amplifies the hum, and besides, the guitar doesn't sustain nearly well enough to do the modern lead guitar thing. Might sound great with really trashy fuzz, though - I haven't tried it yet.

Surprisingly good for an under-$200 Korean guitar. The action was as comfortable as it ever will be, the intonation was shockingly close to perfect, and the deep metallic purple finish was almost flawless. The nut, however, is metal with stupid V-shaped slots, so the strings go "ping" and tuning is shot whenever a string is bent or a tuning peg is moved. Graphite lubricant in the slots helps a lot.

I just got it this afternoon, but I give this guitar a couple of months before the output jack becomes loose, the tuners need replacing, the pots need cleaning, and the strap buttons fall out permanently. All of these things are easy to fix, though.

I have no idea.

This guitar was an impulse buy - I picked it up and it was too cool not to own. I wouldn't use it as my main guitar, but I don't have any other guitars that make the sound that it does, and I'm sure that it'll see the stage and studio enough times to justify its purchase. It won't make me put down my Les Paul reissue, Strat, or 335 for any great length of time, but it's a hell of a fun guitar to own and mess around with, and its signature sound might be a cool thing to add to your repertoire, and besides, for the price of a good Les Paul, you could get fifteen of these.