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.
But it can also be fuzzier than you expect. And calling it a distortion sells short its fine overdrive and boost qualities, as well as its responsiveness to guitar volume and tone variations, and picking dynamics. It interacts with amps spanning the Fender- and English-sound templates as though it has a very individual relationship with each. It rarely sounds generic. And its tone range makes it a potential problem-solver in backline situations or studio sessions where you’re looking for something predictable or altogether weird—which is reassuring if, like me, looking at 10 different gain devices gives you a nervous sense of decision fatigue. The Nichols 1966 may not always be precisely the gain unit you’re looking for, but can also produce scads of tones you may not have known you needed.
Exponential Possibilities, Many Personalities
When the knob count on a pedal goes up, that doesn’t always make the device more effective or complex-sounding. But when controls work as interactively as they do on the Nichols 1966, four knobs and a mid-cut switch can make for a very broad palette, indeed. You don’t often see fuzz and drive controls together on a pedal. Usually, the two terms are interchangeable. Here though, the fuzz and drive knobs have a very different effect on the Nichols 1966 output. They also react very differently to single-coils, humbuckers, and American- and British-style amps.
At its maximum, the drive control’s distortion can sound and feel comparatively midrange-y, not too saturated, and sometimes brittle—requiring careful attention from the tone control. In general, advanced drive settings (with low fuzz) favor slightly attenuated and bassier tone-control positions and the stock EQ toggle setting. At their best, these combinations evoke small vintage amps cranked to their nastiest or larger amps with more sag. Advanced drive control settings with toppier tone settings and/or a mid-cut EQ setting are much less flattering, particularly with single-coils and/or high-mid-focused, British-voiced amps. Introduce humbuckers though—especially neck PAFs with less aggressive tone profiles—and you can coax muscular, hazy gain with tough tenor-saxophone tonalities, which are fatty and delectable. The drive control can also help shape great clean-boost sounds and treble booster-stye distortion. There are discoveries aplenty you can make with the right guitar-and-amp recipe.
The fuzz control is the hotter of the two, in terms of gain. At maximum levels, it’s scorching and buzzy, and, if you like really burning fuzz, it’s actually quite forgiving of trebly settings and mid-gain scoops, even with single-coils. A great technique for creating nasty, mid-’60s fuzz colors is to set the fuzz tone to maximum, scoop the mids, add a fair bit of treble, and add drive to taste.
“It’s plenty loud, and with the volume, fuzz, and drive all the way up, it’s positively brutish.”
Danelectro may allude to the Nichols 1966 being something less than a full-on fuzz, but I just spent the weekend listening to Davie Allan and the Arrows Cycle-Delic Sounds, and if this isn’t fuzz—as in getting-jumped-by-a-gang-of-leather-clad-mace-wielding-wasps kind of fuzz—then I’m Tony Bennett. There may be fuzzes that are silkier, smoother, or sound more like classic fuzz X or guitar-hero Z. But if you regard fuzz as an attitude more than a sonic commandment etched in granite, you’ll be tickled by how unique the Nichols 1966 sounds in that capacity. It’s plenty loud, and with the volume fuzz and drive all the way up, it’s positively brutish.
But it’s the playful use of the interrelationship between fuzz, drive, and tone together that showcase the Nichols 1966’s real strengths. Used actively, intentionally, and with an attentive ear, you can fashion high-gain distortion and fuzz sounds as well as varied, unique overdrive colors that you can fit to single-coils or humbuckers and that summon unique textures from each. The pedal responds effectively to guitar tone and volume attenuation without sacrificing much in the way of dynamic sensitivity. And, at less trebly and cutting settings, it still works as a vehicle for funky David Hidalgo/Tchad Blake Latin Playboys fuzz or Stacy Sutherland’s 13th Floor Elevators drive sounds that are distinctive in a mix in spite of their low-midrange emphasis.
Fuzzy Finish
Though generally sturdy, the Nichols 1966 isn’t a flawlessly executed pedal. The three circuit boards—one for the I/O jacks and DC 9-volt jack, another for the footswitch and LED, and a third for the drive and tone circuitry—are affixed to the enclosure independently of each other, which conceivably makes the pedal less susceptible to cataclysmic failure and more conducive to repair. On the other hand, some of the finishing work around some solders looks less than pretty and irregular. I’m not sure this affects pedal longevity. I’ve seen decades-old fuzzes with solders light-years uglier than these that work perfectly. At $199, you do like to see slightly tidier finishing work. Then again, I suspect most of what looks sloppy here is only superficial. The pots and switches all feel sturdy and smooth.
The Verdict
If you’re non-dogmatic about how much your fuzz, overdrive, or distortion sound like a certain template—and if you have the time and presence of mind to tinker with the Nichols 1966’s interactive controls to learn how they work with each other and different guitar and amp pairings—you’ll find the Nichols 1966 a pedal of power, great utility, copious surprises, nuance, and happy weirdness.
Danelectro Nichols 1966 "Fuzzy Drive" Pedal Demo | First Look
Illustration courtesy Singlecoil
Let’s have a deep look into what can be done to get rid of single-coil hum, which can be very annoying, especially when playing live. I’m sure you all know the situation: Your band managed to get an important Friday night gig at, let’s say, Bob’s Country Bunker. You and your bandmates arrive in time to set up your equipment, naturally with everything plugged into the same circuit as Bob’s popcorn machine, dishwasher, and sandwich maker. You plug in your Strat, turn up your amp, and there’s a loud humming noise coming out of it.
A single-coil pickup has one coil with six magnet rods and two bobbins holding everything together. It not only picks up the strings, but also all kinds of external magnetic fields generated by transformers and other electromagnetic devices. But when two coils are wound in opposite directions and are working together, the hum will get canceled. This is an old principle dating back to the beginning of the 20th century, and it’s how a humbucker pickup works. In the past, guitarists had to struggle with radio stations, fluorescent tubes, transformers, and the like; today, it’s more digital fallout and, of course, digital power supplies of all kinds.
The pickup industry created all kinds of hum-canceling pickups in single-coil shape, most commonly stacked and double-rail-style pickups. So, a humbucker pickup can be the ticket out of such unpleasant live situations. But all of these options generate a different magnetic field compared to a single-coil pickup, resulting in a different tone. The resonant frequency is shifted downwards a little bit because the ohmic resistance and inductance of the two coils are added together. The tone gets milder and warmer, with more midrange—you all know this tone. Splitting such a humbucker will sound more single-coil-like, but it will pick up hum again. Connecting both coils in parallel rather than in series will also sound more single-coil-like and is hum-canceling, but it’s not a real single-coil tone.
Using a reverse wound, reverse polarity (RWRP) pickup such as a Strat’s middle pickup will get you at least two hum-free switching positions (bridge+middle and neck+middle), but even this sounds different. Going active is another way to fight humming noises, and these special pickups sound more or less like a real single-coil, too.
But what if you don’t want to compromise? Is pure single-coil tone with no hum possible? Yes and no! It is possible to come close, but one day, a digital gremlin may find a way to annoy you to a certain degree. And there are extreme situations where only a humbucker will work.
One step in the right direction is shielding the pickups and cavity of your guitar. Shielding the compartment of a guitar the right way is a challenge on its own, and I will cover this in a future installment of this column. But even if all the shielding is done the right way, the sound of the pickup will be altered to a certain degree, which is the nature of the beast. And the shielding is always there, so you can’t switch between pure single-coil and shielded single-coil tone.
So, what about switchable hum-canceling for your guitar? This way you could have both: pure single-coil tone and hum-free operation when needed. And if this could not only be made switchable but also controllable, you could balance your tone between the two.
Here is a solution based on principles from Bill Lawrence, which my dear friend Bernd C. Meiser from the BSM company has refined in order to make it more controllable: a variable dummy coil.
“But what if you don’t want to compromise? Is pure single-coil tone with no hum possible? Yes and no!”
In simple terms, a dummy coil is an additional pickup that is identical to the other pickups but without magnets. It has a phase, but no polarity. A dummy coil accepts the electric signal created by the magnetic single-coil pickup and reverses it, which will remove a large portion of the hum. In the process, a very small amount of the treble signal is lost as well. However, this treble loss is far less compared to stacked or dual-rail humbuckers.
The specs of the dummy coil need to be close to the pickup you are complementing. So, any universal dummy coils advertised to work with all single-coil pickups will only work to a certain degree but not perfectly. Instead, it’s best if you order a dummy coil that matches your pickup. The company who made your pickup will know the formula, and a dummy coil from them will be super effective. If that pickup is from a larger manufacturer, you’ll need to find out specific parameters—wire gauge, wire type, number of turns—so a custom pickup company can make a matching dummy coil for you.
The simplest way to set up a dummy coil would be to connect it permanently, so it’s 100 percent active all the time. For more flexibility, you can add a switch to turn the dummy coil on and off. But the most flexible way is to use a pot to control the dummy coil, so you can dial in pure single-coil tone, 100 percent dummy-coil hum-removing, and everything in between—in other words, so you can balance tone and hum-free-ness depending on the certain playing situation.
To do so, connect a 0.01 uF capacitor in parallel to the dummy coil. The high-end frequencies will no longer pass the dummy coil and its inductance; they will be drained low-resistance to ground. For the bass frequencies, the capacitor is still high-resistance so the dummy coil is active. This way you will have humbucking functionality for the bass frequencies, but pure single-coil tone in the high frequencies—what a perfect and clever solution from Bill Lawrence. If you now connect the capacitor and the dummy coil to a pot, you have a controllable dummy coil as described above.
You can experiment with the capacitor value for fine-tuning your system; 0.01 μF is a pretty good value to start. With a smaller cap, you shift the humbucking effect toward the high frequencies and vice versa. A smaller cap means more overall humbucking (bass and highs) and a larger cap means less overall humbucking, with the high and middle frequencies staying untouched.
A Stratocaster is perfect for this mod because it has two tone controls. One will be converted to a Telecaster-style master tone control, while the other will become the new dummy-coil controller.
For a Stratocaster with three vintage flavored single-coil pickups, I recommend the following pot configuration (all audio taper): 250k volume, 500k tone, 500k dummy-coil controller. This way, in humbucking mode, the two coils are connected in series rather than in parallel, so the resonance peak will be dampened. The two 500k pots will help compensate for this. The 250k volume is always the way to go in a passive guitar system to ensure the best and most even control. The 500k tone pot can be a little bit over the top in pure single-coil mode, but simply roll it down a little and you are in the 250k ballpark—problem solved!
Here we go for the wiring. It’s not hard to do and mostly uses the parts that are already there:
Illustration courtesy Singlecoil
That’s it! Next month, we will talk about some alternative ways to service a Stratocaster that can be real time savers, so stay tuned.
Until then ... keep on modding!