Lick of the Week by Christos Fragias
When to pluck and when to pull-off.
In this lick Christos provides a breakdown of LEGATO. A free-flowing sequence of notes without using machine gun picking.
His insightful tutorial provides a best practice for maximizing pick oscillation and getting the most emotion from each note. Do not attempt with cold fingers :-).
Danelectro originally produced amplifiers for Sears and Montgomery Ward under the Silvertone and Airline brands. Nat Daniel started the company in 1947 after a 10-plus year stint making amps for Epiphone.
Budget guitars were added to the mix in 1954 for Silvertone and the first one was a single cutaway “Model C”.
The same bodystyle with a slightly different “coke bottle” headstock labeled for Danelectro came out the next year. Those were the U1, U2, and U3 with the number progression referring to the number of lipstick pickups.
Here is an awesome link to the Silvertone world of Danelectro made guitars.
The lipstick pickups were a single alnico bar magnet housed in an actual chrome-plated lipstick tube, think cost savings.
Costs were also kept low as the body was constructed from a poplar or pine frame and covered in Masonite. At least that became the signature build method. However, the first few years the body was made from a single piece of poplar reinforced with a square aluminum tube running from the headstock to the bridge.
The poplar frame versions were technically semi-hollow and the combination of “unusual” materials and the pickups wired in series helped produce a unique sound.
The next iteration of Danelectro’s was the Shorthorn introduced in 1958 which is the most recognizable body style.
A 1961 model 3021 Shorthorn was used by Jimmy Page in DADGAD (Celtic) tuning to record When the Levee Breaks, In My Time of Dying, Kashmir, and Black Mountain Side.
Next up, the genius mind of Nat Daniel came up with the concept and produced the “Amp In Case” models for the Sears Silvertone label beginning in 1962.
Aimed at the entry-level guitar player the first model (1448) was a 3/4 sized semi-hollow electric with one lipstick pickup and a 3-watt amp in case. The package deal came with chord charts, a 45 rpm record tutorial, and picks with an MSRP of approximately $70.
In 1964 a full sized version came out. This one had two (lipstick) pickups and toted a 5-watt amp (model 1449).
