Danelectros are go-to instruments for guitarists and bassists out to evoke the effortless, lo-fi cool of the 1960s. And for years, Danelectro’s unconventional styling, inexpensive Masonite-and-poplar body construction, and abundance in secondhand shops made them a favorite of garage musicians—or just those with little cash to spare. As a bonus, the unmistakable twang and clarity of Danelectro’s lipstick pickups made them sound fantastic. But as adventurous-looking as they could be, no Danelectro made as much visual impact, or had a signature sound, quite like the original Longhorn.
The compact, lyre-like body with its long, thin horns and slim headstock were a marked departure from Fenders and the big hollowbody basses that were popular during the 1960s. Not surprisingly, the Longhorn’s cool, punchy, concise tones made it popular among many pros. My first bass hero, Garry Tallent of the E Street Band, to name one, famously played one often during Springsteen’s Born to Run era in the mid 70’s. And no less than Jack Bruce and John Entwistle had turns with Longhorn basses in the mid ’60s.
Though the modern Danelectro company produces vintage-looking and sounding instruments that stick with those familiar, winning formulas, they aren’t afraid to tinker with well-established concepts either. The new Red Hot Longhorn bass isn’t exactly a radical departure from the original Longhorn, but Danelectro uses the shape as a Trojan horse of sorts for exploring a few new twists on the traditional Danelectro design and tone recipe.
"If a Longhorn bass was going to make the scene at the Rainbow Club on Sunset Boulevard, this would be it."
Lipstick Traces
If you’re used to the handsome copper-burst finish that’s synonymous with Longhorns, you’ll be knocked flat by the finish that gives the bass its name. Danelectro has dabbled with flashy finishes in the past, like the sparkle jobs from the ’90s and early 2000s, but this deeper, darker red along with the glossy black looks distinctly ’80s. If a Longhorn bass was going to make the scene at the Rainbow Club on Sunset Boulevard, this would be it. A cream-white binding highlights the contrast between the black and red, and in person, it looks pretty stunning. A single F-hole helps justify Dano’s claim that this is the first semi-hollow Longhorn, though technically, vintage Longhorns with their Masonite-on-pine-frame construction were semi-hollows without soundholes. Danelectro says that the F-hole configuration has a positive effect on the Red Hot’s sustain. That might also be helped by the updated lipstick pickups. Like those on the Longhorn baritone, these otherwise traditional-looking lipsticks are wound for hotter output.
Featherweight Flash
It would be fair to assume that a bass with a body this light would be top heavy. In fact, the Red Hot is well-balanced, and the weight—or lack thereof—astonishes at times. I can see how some of my friends that pull eight-hour shifts on Broadway in Nashville benefit greatly from its feather-like feel. On our review Red Hot, the action was pretty high. And as much as high action is conducive to replicating the feel of a vintage bass, most players will probably prefer less space between the strings and frets. In old-school Dano style, the Longhorn has a rosewood saddle for all four strings, so lowering the entire bridge was the only option for an action fix. Yet as primitive as that solution is, it worked like a charm. The aluminum nut slots (which is obviously much more challenging to alter without the help of a pro) also seemed a little high relative to the fretboard, but did not detract from playability much once I adjusted the bridge.
Bumpin’ and Burpin’
I was impressed with the “burp” and aggressiveness of the Red Hot with both pickups engaged and the tone all the way up. The bass comes from the factory equipped with roundwounds and the zing of those strings registers loud and clear in combined pickup and advanced tone settings. Even fret and hand noises sounded musical, inspiring and fun. That bark and presence isn’t lacking at other settings, though. The growl I heard from the bridge pickup was more toothsome than that from many solidbody basses, and I turned down the tone control frequently in order to tame the bite. Extra bass from an amplifier’s tone stack can be a great balancing factor if you like the basic sound of the bridge pickup alone. But the single pickup still leaves lots of room for nuance. The note volume along the whole length of the fretboard is surprisingly full and even, which compelled me to try out a walking jazz bassline. That’s not generally something I would try with a bridge pickup alone, but it sounded full and even here.
By itself, the neck pickup’s tone is thick and buttery. And it’s in this mode that you perceive the virtues of the semi-hollow construction most. There’s a woody essence in the lower midrange without the unpleasant byproduct of muddiness in the sub-low frequencies that often occurs in basses with the neck pickup located this far forward. When I played the neck pickup with a pick and muted with my palm, I heard the most pleasing, and in some respects, the biggest tones from the Red Hot.
The Verdict
The Red Hot Longhorn is an attractive bass that produces a greater variety of tones than its style suggests. The block at the neck/body joint and the relatively high string height at the nut might take time to get used to if a player’s experience with Dano basses is limited. But the playing experience and tones the Red Hot delivers are often quite unique. Combined with the eye-catching style, it’s a bass that can point a player in fresh creative directions.
- Vintage Vault: 1958 Danelectro Guitarlin ›
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![Whores Rig Rundown [2024]](https://www.premierguitar.com/media-library/youtube.jpg?id=55366029&width=1245&height=700&quality=85&coordinates=0%2C0%2C0%2C0)
Since forming in 2010, Atlanta noise rockers Whores had only released one LP, 2016’s Gold.—until this year. Eight long years later, their new full-length, WAR., dropped in April, and Whores celebrated by tearing across the country and blasting audiences with their maelstrom of massive, sledge-hammering rock ’n’ roll.
The day after their gig at Cobra Nashville, Whores frontman Christian Lembach, dressed in his Nashville best, met up with PG’s Chris Kies at Eastside Music Supply to run through his brutal road rig.
Brought to you by D’Addario.Earthy Esquire
When vocalist and guitarist Christian Lembach got sober over 20 years ago, he bought a Fender Telecaster off of a friend, then picked up an Esquire shortly after. That original Esquire stays home, but he brings this pine-body Earth Guitars Esquire out on the road. (It’s the lightest he’s ever played.) It’s loaded with a German-made reproduction of Schecter’s F520T pickup—aka the “Walk of Life” pickup intended to reproduce Mark Knopfler’s sound. (Lembach buys them in batches of five at a time to make sure he’s got plenty of backups.)
It’s equipped with a 3-way selector switch. At right, it bypasses the tone circuit; in the middle position, it’s a regular bridge-pickup configuration, with volume and tone activated; and at left, the tone is bypassed again, but an extra capacitor adds a bass boost.
Lembach installed six brass saddles in lieu of the traditional 3-saddle bridge. He often plays barre chords higher up the neck, and the six saddles allow for more accurate intonation.
All of Lembach’s guitars are tuned to drop C, and he plays with D’Addario Duralin .70 mm picks. They’re strung with heavy D’Addario NYXL sets, .013–.056 with a wound G. The 30-foot Bullet Cable coil cable attenuates some of the guitar’s top end.
Tuned-Up Tele
Lembach had this black Fender Telecaster—the one he bought from his friend—modified to his preferred Esquire specs, with a single bridge pickup and the same 3-way selector configuration as his other weapon. He prefers the 6-saddle bridge to this rusty 3-saddle version, but this one holds a special place in his heart all the same.
Favor From Furlan
When John Furlan of Furlan Guitars reached out to Lembach about building him a custom guitar, it was an easy sell. The two worked together on this beauty, based on a non-reverse Gibson Firebird body with a Fender-style scale length, roasted maple neck, and rosewood fretboard.
It’s got a bridge and locking tuners from Hipshot, and it’s loaded with Greenville Beauty Parlor P-90s. A typical Gibson-style toggle switches between neck, bridge, and both configurations, while another Esquire-style 3-way switch on the lower bout handles Lembach’s preferred bridge-pickup wirings: no tone, tone and volume, or bass boost.
No Logo
Lembach stays loyal to his twin Marshall Super Leads, with taped-over logos—an aesthetic Lembach picked up from Nirvana. A tech in Atlanta figured out that the one on the left is a 1973, which runs at eight ohms, or half power (Lembach removed two of the power tubes), into a 16-ohm cabinet. The power drop allows Lembach to coax feedback at lower volumes. The original preamp tubes from Yugoslavia—no longer a country, mind you—are still working in the amp.
The one on the right is a reissue 1959SLP from 2002 or 2003, which Lembach finds brighter than his vintage model. He goes into the lower-input second channel to dampen the edge.
Both amps run through Marshall JCM800 cabinets with Celestion G12T-75s.
Christian Lembach's Board
A Loop-Master Pedals Clean/Dirty Effects Switcher manages Lembach’s signal. Its A loop is used for verses, bridges, intros, and outros, and has the majority of the pedals in it. The first thing in the A loop is the ZVEX Fuzz Factory made specially for the band, followed by a Devi Ever Soda Meiser, Beetronics Swarm, Keeley Nova Wah, Spiral Electric FX Yellow Spiral, Boss NF-1, and Alexander Pedals Radical II Delay.
The B loop has a clone of the Electro-Harmonix Green Russian Big Muff, an EHX POG, and a ZVEX Super Hard On. The A loop is already pretty loud; B somehow gets even louder. An EHX Superego+ is a new addition that Lembach’s planning to integrate.
A CIOKS DC10 powers the board, and a Lehle device under the board cleans up unwanted hum and noise.
Bluegrass music is bigger than a genre. It’s become an entire world of ideas and feelings in the popular American imagination. And musician Jerry Douglas has been a key part of its celebration and revival over the past 30 years. “It's an old form of music that came from people in the south playing on the porch and became this juggernaut of a genre,” says Douglas. “It’s a character. It's a physical music.”
Douglas has racked up an impressive cabinet of accolades, including Grammys, American Music Association Awards, and International Bluegrass Music Association Awards. He’s been dubbed the CMA Awards’ Musician of the Year three times, and played with everyone from Allison Krauss and Elvis Costello to Bela Fleck and John Fogerty. He’s an encyclopedic guide to contemporary American roots music, and on this episode of Wong Notes, he walks Cory Wong through the most important moments in his 50-year career.
Tune in to hear Douglas’ assessment of bluegrass’ demanding nature (“Honestly, there's not so many genres nowadays that require as much technical facility as something like bluegrass”), what’s required of roots players (“Get it right, get it fast, make it hook”), and why the O Brother, Where Are Thou? soundtrack connected with so many listeners. Wondering how to get involved with session work? Douglas says there’s no one-size-fits-all answer, and what worked for him might not work today. The key is to be dynamic—and know when to keep your mouth shut.
There are plenty of gems in this interview, like Douglas’ thoughts on what makes a good solo, but the most significant might be Douglas’ big takeaway from decades of sitting in on communal roots-music sessions. “We can play in all genres,” says Douglas. “We just have to listen.”
In some respects, the newestLes Paul Studio adheres to that philosophy and shares many trademark elements with its Studio forebears. There’s no body binding and a silkscreened, rather than inlaid mother-of-pearl headstock logo, for instance. But Gibson also carefully and cleverly threaded the needle between economy and luxury with this release, including several desirable Les Paul features that have occasionally been excluded from the budget model over the years.
Classic Contours
Most readers with a cursory knowledge of the Les Paul format will know this guitar’s basic specs already: mahogany body with maple top, mahogany set neck, 24.75" scale length, 12" fingerboard radius, and dual humbuckers. The Les Paul Studio hasn’t always followed the Standard’s, um, standard quite so religiously. Studios from the first few years of the model’s existence, for example, were made with alder bodies and slightly thinner than the usual Les Paul depth. The newest version, too, veers from formula a bit by using Gibson’s Ultra Modern weight relief scheme, which slims the guitar’s weight to about 8 1/2 pounds. The carved maple top, however, is plain and not heavily figured, which keeps costs down. Even so, it looks good under the bright-red gloss nitrocellulose lacquer finish on our cherry sunburst example. (Wine red, ebony, and the striking blueberry burst are also available).
While the binding-free body and less-heavily figured top hint at the Studio’s “affordable” status, Gibson didn’t skimp on dressing up the neck. It has a bound rosewood fretboard with trapezoidal pearloid inlays rather than the dots many early versions featured. For many players, though, the fretboard binding is more than cosmetic—the ever-so-slight extra width also lends a more vintage-like feel, so it’s really nice to have it here. The neck itself is carved to Gibson’s familiar and ubiquitous Slim Taper profile, a shape inspired by early-’60s necks that were generally thinner and flatter than the ’50s profiles.
“Gibson carefully and cleverly threaded the needle between economy and luxury with this release.”
Hardware largely adheres to contemporary norms for all but vintage reissue-style Les Pauls: tune-o-matic bridge, aluminum stopbar tailpiece, Kluson-style Vintage Deluxe tuners with Keystone buttons, and larger strap buttons (yay!). Another feature here that some past Studio models lack is the cream pickguard, which contributes to the ’50s-era aura. There’s also a matching cream toggle switch washer in the included gig bag if you want to add another vintage touch.
Studio Play Date
Under the chrome pickup covers live two wax-potted, alnico 5 Gibson Burstbucker Pros, which are calibrated for their respective positions. The DC resistance for the Burstbucker Pro Rhythm is 7.8k and the Burstbucker Pro Treble 8.3k-ohms. They’re wired with a traditional Gibson four-knob complement and 3-way switch, but the volume knobs are push-pull controls that enable coil tapping, which broadens the tone palette considerably.
Playability is a high point. The fine setup, smooth fret work, and well-executed binding nibs lend a very visible sense of quality, but you can hear the payoff in the form of the well-balanced, resonant ring when you strum the guitar unplugged. When you turn it up, though, it’s classic Les Paul. Whether I paired it with a Vox-style head and 1x12, a Fender Bassman with a 2x12 cab, or numerous presets on a Fractal FM9, the Studio didn’t yield any negative surprises, but plenty of positive ones.
The Burstbucker Pros have plenty of bite. But most impressive for a Les Paul at this price, is the excellent clarity and articulation you hear along with strong hints of PAF-descendent grit and swirling overtones that lend heft and personality in cleaner amp settings. There’s none of the mud or mid-heavy boominess that you hear in some Les Pauls, even though the characteristically beefy Les Paul overdrive is present in abundance, helped, no doubt, by the slightly hotter-than-vintage-spec Burstbucker Pros. The Studio matches up well with a cranked amp or an overdrive. And while to some ears the Studio might not sound as creamy-complex or lush as high-end, vintage-leaning re-creations of a ’59 Standard, it will crunch, wail, and sing with aggression and civilized authority.
As for the coil-tapped tones, they don’t sound quite like genuine single-coil pickups, even though Gibson employs the nifty trick of wiring a capacitor in series with the coil tap—which is voiced to provide a fatter tapped-coil voice and balanced output with full-humbucking operation. It also provides hum-reducing operation when tapped and full-hum canceling operation when both are combined as they are reverse wind/reverse polarity. But generally, they will deliver the lighter jangle and chime that some humbuckers struggle with and lend a lot of versatility.The Verdict
From fit and finish, to playability, to sonic virtue and versatility, the new Les Paul Studio is a genuine Gibson USA-made Les Paul that offers a lot of value. It does just about everything a player working within this price range could want from a Les Paul Standard with a load of style to boot.
Gibson Les Paul Studio Electric Guitar - Cherry Sunburst
