Danelectro Longhorn

[chromium]

I've looked and I can't find these sold anywhere.  Does anyone know where one might be found?

I see them on Ebay regularly, usually selling in the $3-400 USD range. 

Theres a nice-looking cream-colored one up there now:

   http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&rd=1&item=180208003596&ssPageName=STRK:MEWA:IT&ih=008

[Max Soren]

Thanks.  I try to avoid EBAY, but it's beginning to look like that's going to change.  It seems 99% of the basses I'm interested in are either vintage or discontinued.  This is no exaggeration and it's getting very frustrating.  I also seem to have an uncanny ability to try to find a bass just after it has been discontinued. 

[gweimer]

I should have known better than to pop back in here.  I told myself I wasn't buying anything else.   

[Bart!]

I had a copperburst RI, and it was very good. I just can`t get used to short scale basses.
The RI`s also came in black, in redburst and blueburst.
I don`t think it`s worth the money to get yourself a vintage one. The RI`s are probably better in the way that they don`t have so much wear that they fall apart.
Ther is a Hondo copy now available on Evilbay, but it has a Pbass style pickup, you should go for the lipstick pickup imo.

[gweimer]

That cream one went pretty high - $500?

[Dave W]

$555 for a Korean reissue Dano? Wow.

[gweimer]

Well, at least we now know where the money is to be made in a down economy!   

[eb2]

I had a shorthorn years ago, and have played a few long horns, and Corals.  And one Dan Armstrong Modified.  They are great giggable guitars and basses.  They sound unique.  They were great for a beginner, and also if you had chops. Masonite glued up to a pine-stock frame, and the edges finished off with wallpaper.  Kind of like a VW bug for musicians.  I used to see them typically in the $100-250 range, so I only bothered with the one.  I actually miss it.

They are starting to make them again, so I don't understand people forking over $500 for the ones from 5 years ago.  But I never get people.   

You can still get old parts/freak versions from Fat Dog.

Entwistle, Jack Bruce, Paul Samwell Smith - lots of your favorite Brit bassists have gigged with the dang things.

[gweimer]

When I first started playing, I got the catalog for Coral/Danelectro.  That's where I first saw them.  I think The Who used to buy crates of Coral guitars to bust up.

[leftybass]

My Jerry Jones Longhorn Basses 6 and 4-string:

[bostonguitarrepair]

Having gone to high school about a dozen miles from the old Dano factory, I have been a longtime fan of the instruments - and I've wanted a Longhorn since around 1979 when I first heard about the Entwistle connection - though never found one I could afford - they were always a bit high priced in the Jersey area due to the local lore.

So some facts on the construction:
- scale length is the same as the Shorthorn Dano bass - a tad over 30 inches (same scale length is also used on Dan Armstrongs)
- fretboard is longer to accomodate 24 frets
- came in both a 6 string and 4 string bass version
- same circuitry with two pickups and concentric controls as on the two-pickup amp in case & doubleneck danos.
- as stated above, pine-block frame with masonite front and back, poplar neck with two fixed truss-bars and rosewood board
- cheap kluson open backed tuners, same as on Shorthorn bass and Harmony H-22 bass

Another player was the Welsh guy in the Jimi Hendrix experience - I think he used the 6 string bass version.  Also, the Boston band The Lyres played matching longhorn basses and guitars back in the early 80s - though I believe they were actually copies labeled as Dynelectron - maybe Italian ??

I actually prefer the Korean reissues to the Jerry Jones models - and not just because of price !  I think the "improved bridge" on the reissues is a major mistake - the old Dano bridge with a rosewood saddle is a key element of its sorta non-sustaining sound. I also think that the old necks are VERY stiff - which contributes to the overall feel and sound - not sure the reissues with adjustable truss rods capture the same feel.

My two cents.

Krishna

[Barklessdog]

Thanks for the specs. I always wanted to try one.

[MattK]

My Jerry Jones Longhorn Basses 6 and 4-string:

Man, those are pretty basses!

[Dave W]

...  I think the "improved bridge" on the reissues is a major mistake - the old Dano bridge with a rosewood saddle is a key element of its sorta non-sustaining sound. I also think that the old necks are VERY stiff - which contributes to the overall feel and sound - not sure the reissues with adjustable truss rods capture the same feel.

My two cents.

Krishna

I don't think there's anything wrong with either the new style bridge or the adjustable truss rods, but I do agree with you that they both make the reissues and JJ basses feel and sound different. Not bad at all, but not the same as the originals.

Stiffness on a short scale neck is critical to me, because it makes the strings feel stiffer even though the actual tension doesn't change. Most of those old Danos and Silvertones were very good about this.

[bostonguitarrepair]

Re the neck stiffness on Dano's - most of the models have two steel bars that aren't quite parallel. 

I also seem to recall looking at an x-ray of a neck once, and seeing that the two bars were of unequal length - maybe to prevent the neck from having one dominanting resonant frequency - if you think of the two bars as acting as big tuning forks, they would tend to dampen each other out at their respective resonant frequencies ( similar idea to breaking step on a bridge).

I think that even though Nathan Daniels was primarily trained as an electrical engineer, he was a good all around engineer - having actually built a sorta-longhorn from scratch, it becomes really apparent why certain features of the instruments were important from an industrial design point of view: these guitars were fast and easy to build, yet stable and consistent in playability and sound.  Even the way the copper-finished bodies are painted ensured that little or no masking was required during the painting process and very little skill operating a spray gun - yielding a big savings in time and labor costs.

So I think the stiff yet non-resonant neck on Danelectros is not simply a happy mistake - pretty sure that was the attribute Daniels was going for - and part of the reason the old ones play and sound the way they do.  Out of the dozen or so Danos I've owned, I've never had one with a bowed or warped neck - not even the 12-string Bellzouki model !!