Deep twang is the thang in this accessibly priced, smooth playing, and well-built baritone.
Excellent playability. Lower register tones and lipstick pickups are a great match. Well built. Beautiful and stylish.
Tone might benefit from lower output pickups.
$569
Danelectro Longhorn Baritone
danelectro.com
Long-scale, 6-string Danelectros are among the great unheralded instruments in popular music. Consider Glen Campbell’s “Wichita Lineman.” It’s pretty close to a perfect song—a Jimmy Webb melody for the ages, a string arrangement that tugs at the heart almost from the start. But what really stands out for a lot of listeners is the loping, economical guitar solo that is a strange personification of the humble, devoted narrator of the song. The solo, played by Glen Campbell himself, derived its unique tonality from a Danelectro 6-string bass—one borrowed from Carol Kaye no less. And in a tune brimming with highlights, that solo is one of the most memorable.
Danelectro’s new Longhorn Baritone, which comes from the factory tuned B to B, is not a 6-string bass, which is tuned E to E. But it’s almost impossible to not think of those low-down Glen Campbell tones when you play the Longhorn, which mates the clear, bell-like signal from a Danelectro lipstick pickup with the rubbery bottom end from a 29.75" scale. It’s a combination that’s very much in vogue these days, thanks to Phoebe Bridgers’ adoption of the similar Danelectro ’56 Baritone. And in this very stylish incarnation, it is still an instrument uniquely capable of evoking haunted, dusty, and mysterious musical moods with a single low and twangy note.
Stylishly, Sneakily Huge
Like their long-scale Danelectro forebears, Danelectro baritones have a way of sneaking up on unsuspecting artists in search of something different. Bridgers happened upon the instrument during a session, bought one of her own for $500, and made it a sonic centerpiece of her first LP. And I’ve watched incredulous rockers receive a humble Dano’ baritone from an engineer with a sarcastic smirk, plug it into a Big Muff and a Sunn Model T, and then burst into a lunatic grin as they summon the sound of doom.
One of the coolest things about Danelectro is that, since the company’s resurrection, they’ve consistently made baritones a fixture of the line. But while Danelectro maintains the company’s legendary, lyre-like Longhorn shape in a 4-string bass configuration—and occasionally in the shape of the awesome, mutant Guitarlin—this is the first Longhorn Baritone we’ve seen in a while. Its return, purely from an aesthetic standpoint, is welcome. The elongated neck, capped by Dano’s signature Coke-bottle headstock, gracefully accents the fluid lines of the body. Baritones often look like gawky, ungainly versions of shorter scale guitars—almost like afterthoughts. The Longhorn, however, makes the inherent length of the instrument a design asset, and part of a harmonious whole.
Ergonomically speaking, there are advantages, too. The deep cutaways enable access to every fret, and the combination of light weight, a slender profile, and the long horns, which sit naturally on the thigh and against the ribs, make it comfortable to play over extended periods while seated. Surprisingly, given the long neck and super-light, semi-hollow, wood-composite body, the Longhorn isn’t too prone to neck dive, though I’d be sure to use your least slippery strap.
The Longhorn Baritone is built in Danelectro’s Korean manufacturing facility. Most of the recent guitars we’ve seen from that shop are very well made, and that goes for the Longhorn, too. Obvious construction flaws are non-existent. And the fretwork, in particular, is very nice for an instrument in this price range.
Early guitars from the new Danelectro company were often vintage-correct to a fault. Few players I know love the wood bridge that appeared on original Danos and ’90s incarnations. But the Longhorn, like other current Danelectros, makes smart concessions to modernity. The adjustable bridge is stable and easy to intonate. The Kluson-style tuners are reliably solid. And unlike long-scale Danelectros of old, this one features a truss rod you can access from the headstock—an especially handy feature on a baritone, which has a fair bit of neck-straining string pull.
The tone and volume knobs, too, are a slight deviation from vintage spec (originals had no tone control). But the teardrop tone controls here are a pleasure to use, and the concentric volume/tone knobs are a bit of minor design genius. The copperburst finish is not quite as copper as some finishes you see on vintage Danos—it has just a touch of ruby or pink in places. But it is lovely nonetheless, particularly on this body style, and it’s flawlessly applied. The aluminum nut, by the way, is a very cool vintage-inspired touch that contributes to the instrument’s sense of solidity.
Down Low Done Right
The sense of quality and wholeness that you perceive when giving the Longhorn Baritone a once-over translates to an exceptional playing experience, too. When you tune up and give the guitar a strum, you feel it in your ribs. The semi-hollow body is extremely resonant and the sustain is superb. And when you plug the guitar in (it really pays to have a nice 12" speaker or bigger on the receiving end of the signal), that resonance and sustain is rendered large in a lovely way. Not every player will approach a baritone in the same way, but I was moved to, as Donovan would say, dig the slowness. Taking a languid approach to fingerpicking chords allowed notes to bloom hypnotically. And the guitar’s smooth playability invites that type of approach. The Longhorn also highlights the inherently pianistic nature of baritone guitars, and the guitar’s clarity and organic resonance make playing a high-chord arpeggio against a deep open-string thumb bass accompaniment feel like you’re stretching the boundaries of conventional guitar and entering expressive regions associated with an 88-key keyboard.
The Verdict
Because baritone guitars are just as much the domain of doom metal practitioners as pop arrangers and next-wave indie guitarists, the Longhorn Baritone won’t please every possible customer. The Longhorn’s pickups, which are hotter than the alnico 6 units in Danelectro’s more vintage-oriented 6-strings, are perhaps a compromise made for the heavy music set (and they sound truly huge with fuzz), but I’d prefer a little less output and a little more contoured sweetness. Still, for less than 600 bucks, the Longhorn Baritone is a high-quality, super-playable, and relatively inexpensive instrument that can transform the way you compose and play. It’s hard to put a cost on creative potential like that.
Danelectro Longhorn Baritone Demo | First Look
The country virtuoso closes out this season of Wong Notes with a fascinating, career-spanning interview.
We’ve saved one of the best for last: Brad Paisley.The celebrated shredder and seasoned fisherman joins host Cory Wong for one of this season’s most interesting episodes. Paisley talks his earliest guitar-playing influences, which came from his grandfather’s love of country music, and his first days in Nashville—as a student at Belmont University, studying the music industry.
The behind-the-curtain knowledge he picked up at Belmont made him a good match for industry suits trying to force bad contracts on him.
Wong and Paisley swap notes on fishing and a mutual love of Phish—Paisley envies the jam-band scene, which he thinks has more leeway in live contexts than country. And with a new signature Fender Telecaster hitting the market in a rare blue paisley finish, Paisley discusses his iconic namesake pattern—which some might describe as “hippie puke”—and its surprising origin with Elvis’ guitarist James Burton.
Plus, hear how Paisley assembled his rig over the years, the state of shredding on mainstream radio, when it might be good to hallucinogenic drugs in a set, and the only negative thing about country-music audiences.
Tom Bedell in the Relic Music acoustic room, holding a custom Seed to Song Parlor with a stunning ocean sinker redwood top and milagro Brazilian rosewood back and sides.
As head of Breedlove and Bedell Guitars, he’s championed sustainability and environmental causes—and he wants to tell you about it.
As the owner of the Breedlove and Bedell guitar companies, Tom Bedell has been a passionate advocate for sustainable practices in acoustic guitar manufacturing. Listening to him talk, it’s clear that the preservation of the Earth’s forests are just as important to Bedell as the sound of his guitars. You’ll know just how big of a statement that is if you’ve ever had the opportunity to spend time with one of his excellently crafted high-end acoustics, which are among the finest you’ll find. Over the course of his career, Bedell has championed the use of alternative tonewoods and traveled the world to get a firsthand look at his wood sources and their harvesting practices. When you buy a Bedell, you can rest assured that no clear-cut woods were used.
A born storyteller, Bedell doesn’t keep his passion to himself. On Friday, May 12, at New Jersey boutique guitar outpost Relic Music, Bedell shared some of the stories he’s collected during his life and travels as part of a three-city clinic trip. At Relic—and stops at Crossroads Guitar and Art in Gilbertsville, Pennsylvania, and Chuck Levin’s Washington Music Center in Wheaton, Maryland—he discussed his guitars and what makes them so special, why sustainability is such an important cause, and how he’s putting it into practice.
Before his talk, we sat in Relic’s cozy, plush acoustic room, surrounded by a host of high-end instruments. We took a look at a few of the store’s house-spec’d Bedell parlors while we chatted.
“The story of this guitar is the story of the world,” Bedell explained to me, holding a Seed to Song Parlor. He painted a picture of a milagro tree growing on a hillside in northeastern Brazil some 500 years ago, deprived of water and growing in stressful conditions during its early life. That tree was eventually harvested, and in the 1950s, it was shipped to Spain by a company that specialized in church ornaments. They recognized this unique specimen and set it aside until it was imported to the U.S. and reached Oregon. Now, it makes the back and sides of this unique guitar.
A Bedell Fireside Parlor with a buckskin redwood top and cocobolo back and sides.
As for the ocean sinker redwood top, “I’m gonna make up the story,” Bedell said, as he approximated the life cycle of the tree, which floated in the ocean, soaking up minerals for years and years, and washed ashore on northern Oregon’s Manzanita Beach. The two woods were paired and built into a small run of exquisitely outfitted guitars using the Bedell/Breedlove Sound Optimization process—in which the building team fine-tunes each instrument’s voice by hand-shaping individual braces to target resonant frequencies using acoustic analysis—and Bedell and his team fell in love.
Playing it while we spoke, I was smitten by this guitar’s warm, responsive tone and even articulation and attack across the fretboard; it strikes a perfect tonal balance between a tight low-end and bright top, with a wide dynamic range that made it sympathetic to anything I offered. And as I swapped guitars, whether picking up a Fireside Parlor with a buckskin redwood top and cocobolo back and sides or one with an Adirondack spruce top and Brazilian rosewood back and sides, the character and the elements of each instrument changed, but that perfect balance remained. Each of these acoustics—and of any Bedell I’ve had the pleasure to play—delivers their own experiential thumbprint.
Rosette and inlay detail on an Adirondack spruce top.
Ultimately, that’s what brought Bedell out to the East Coast on this short tour. “We have a totally different philosophy about how we approach guitar-building,” Bedell effused. “There are a lot of individuals who build maybe 12 guitars a year, who do some of the things that we do, but there’s nobody on a production level.” And he wants to spread that gospel.
“We want to reach people who really want something special,” he continued, pointing out that for the Bedell line, the company specifically wants to work with shops like Relic and the other stores he’s visited, “who have a clientele that says I want the best guitar I can possibly have, and they carry enough variety that we can give them that.”
A Fireside Parlor with a Western red cedar top and Brazilian rosewood back and sides.
A beautifully realized mashup of two iconic guitars.
Reader: Ward Powell
Hometown: Ontario, Canada
Guitar: ES-339 Junior
I’ve always liked unusual guitars. I think it started when I got my first guitar way back in 1976. I bought a '73 Telecaster Deluxe for $200 with money I saved from delivering newspapers.
I really got serious about playing in 1978, the same year the first Van Halen album was released. Eddie Van Halen was a huge influence on me, including how he built and modded guitars. Inspired by Eddie, I basically butchered that Tele. But keep in mind, there was once a time when every vintage guitar was just a used guitar—I still have that Tele, by the way.
I never lost that spirit of wanting guitars that were unique, and have built and modded a few dozen guitars since. When I started G.A.S.-ing simultaneously for a Les Paul Junior and a Casino, I came up with this concept. I found an Epiphone ES-339 locally at a great price. It already had upgraded CTS pots, Kluson tuners, and the frets had been PLEK’d. It even came with a hardshell case. It was cheap because it was a right-handed guitar that had been converted to left handed and all the controls had been moved to the opposite side, so it had five additional holes in the top.
Fortunately, I found a Duesenberg wraparound bridge that used the same post spacing as a Tune-o-matic. I used plug cutters to cut plugs out of baltic birch plywood to fill the 12 holes in the laminated top. I also reshaped the old-style Epiphone headstock. Then, I sanded off the original finish, taped the fretboard, and sprayed the finish using cans of nitro lacquer from Oxford Guitar Supply. Lots of wet sanding and buffing later, the finish was done.
I installed threaded insert bushings for the bridge, so it will never pull out. The pickup is a Mojotone Quiet Coil P-90 and I fabricated a shim from a DIY mold and tinted epoxy to raise the P-90 up closer to the strings. The shim also covers the original humbucker opening. I cut a pickguard out of a blank and heated it slightly to bend it to follow the curvature of the top.
All in all, I'm pretty happy how it turned out! It plays great and sounds even better. And I have something that is unique: an ES-339 Junior.
ENGL, renowned for its high-performance amplifiers, proudly introduces the EP635 Fireball IR Pedal, a revolutionary 2-channel preamp pedal designed to deliver the legendary Fireball tone in a compact and feature-rich format.
The EP635 Fireball IR Pedal brings the raw power and precision of the ENGL Fireball amplifier into a pedalboard-friendly enclosure, offering unmatched flexibility and tonal control for guitarists of all styles. This cutting-edge pedal is equipped with advanced features, making it a must-have for players seeking high-gain perfection with modern digital convenience.
Key Features:
- Authentic Fireball Tone – Designed after the renowned ENGL Fireball amplifier, the EP635 delivers the unmistakable high-gain aggression and clarity that ENGL fans love.
- Two Independent Channels – Easily switch between two distinct channels, with each channel’s knob settings saved independently, allowing for seamless transitions between tones.
- Built-in Midboost Function – Enhance your tone with the integrated Midboost switch, perfect for cutting through the mix with extra punch.
- Advanced Noise Gate – Eliminate unwanted noise and maintain articulate clarity, even with high-gain settings.
- IR (Impulse Response) Loading via USB-C – Customize your sound with user-loadable IRs using the included software, bringing studio-quality cab simulations to your pedalboard.
- Headphone Output – Silent practice has never been easier, with a dedicated headphone output for direct monitoring.
- Premium Build and Intuitive Controls – Featuring a rugged chassis and responsive controls for Volume, Gain, Bass, Middle, Treble, and Presence, ensuring precise tonal shaping.
SPECS:
- Input 1/4” (6,35mm) Jack
- Output 1/4” (6,35mm) Jack
- Headphone Output 1/8”(3,5mm) Jack
- 9V DC / 300mA (center negativ) / power supply, sold separately
- USB C