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The lipstick pickup was a similar innovation, easily assembled and greatly reducing electrical noise. He also cut costs and eased construction by using metal nuts, and he pioneered the neck micro–tilt adjustment before Fender came up with his own design.
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Howard says that his father considered trussrods, “temporary solutions,” leading Nathan Daniel to experiment with metal neck reinforcement. Similar to Les Paul, Daniel constantly tinkered to build better, more affordable electric guitars. He was given the mathematical formula and headed to the bank to borrow an adding machine. Howard Daniel remembers, “Dad asked a friend-I can’t remember if it was D’Angelico or Maccaferri-how to space frets. Since Daniel's initial business building amps made him more of an electrical engineer than a luthier, building guitars came with a learning curve. In 1954, Daniel decided to introduce a line of electric guitars that, like Leo Fender’s designs, avoided any resemblance to their acoustic counterparts. While this resurgence in Silvertone amps is a recent occurrence, Danelectro guitars have sustained popularity for a surprisingly long time. Yet these early amps have aged surprisingly well, and have become cult classics since being adopted by players like Jack White and Dan Auerbach. Nathan Daniel was at the forefront of amplifier innovation, and experimented with tremolo, reverb, and hybrid power systems at very early stages.ĭuring our conversation, Howard noted that his father was disappointed that these amps were considered inferior to the competition's at the time of their introduction. Soon after, he developed the first ever large–scale amplifier manufacturing plant, supplying Sears and Montgomery Ward with amplifiers for their house brands. Daniel had been making amps independently in New York, creating the first push–pull circuit, which made the amps far more reliable than others at the time.ĭaniel worked with Epiphone for a few years until he set off on his own in 1946 and marketed the amps under his own brand name, Danelectro. The history of Danelectro starts at the dawn of the electric guitar in the early 1940s. I followed up with Howard to set the record straight, drawing from his memories of working at the Danelectro factory. The response to the piece-including commentary from Nathan’s son, Howard Daniel-highlighted several inconsistencies in the accepted history of Danelectro. In November 2016, I published a piece on those idiosyncratic pickups invented by Nathan Daniel. Take the brand’s signature lipstick pickups. With their unique and quirky sets of features, nothing was built like Daniel’s guitars and nothing sounds like them either. The impresario of affordable instruments, Daniel sold his designs to music stores under the Danelectro name, to Sears under the Silvertone badge, and to Montgomery Ward under the Airline badge.ĭaniel did his boldest work during the infancy of the electric guitar, when innovations on the form were coming from every maker at every price point. But Daniel’s guitars and amplifiers were generally one–fourth the price of the standard Fender or Gibson, making them more appealing to parents investing in their budding rockstars. Putting Nathan Daniel’s face on the Mount Rushmore of guitar designers alongside Leo Fender’s or Ted McCarty’s may not seem like a given.