I was browsing Craigslist late last night when I came across this Danelectro 56 U-3 reissue from the 90s. It was a pretty good deal with a hard case thrown in so I felt the need to jump on it. She’s in terrific condition with the person I bought it from being the original owner. 3 lipstick pickups, aluminum nut, gotoh tuners, slim neck, and no dings. I can’t wait to plug her in later tonight!
It’s the same with some of their effects. Cheap plastic enclosures with the worst knobs ever? Oh wait they sound killer and don’t break the bank. I have a Spring King spring reverb pedal made by Danelectro and it’s just too cool. Yeah let’s make a simulated spring reverb tank into a stomp box and add a rubber pad so you can kick the hell out of it to make the springs crash.
Them and berringer make some of the best value effects. But the danelectros have more… Charm. They look goofy. They look like something you bought because you enjoyed it, not because of the value proposition. And I respect and appreciate it. Is it all marketing? I mean yeah. But so is music. Music is just taking your ideas and packaging them for someone else to intake them who wouldn’t have otherwise. Danelectro did that with sound effects. I think it’s okay for products to be designed with some whimsy just to move more units. Far better that then having them juiced by promoting them on bullshit peddling sites like The Wirecutter, Uncrate, or EverydayCarry, or worse having shit artificially promoted by AI that was trained on marketing material from those bullshit peddling sites, or even worse than that having them artificially promoted on the whitehouse lawn. Fucking just pay creative people, society! We the customers like them better, and will buy more products if we feel like it connects us to someone else. I’m not even saying commodifying this shit is better because capitalism corrupts all that it touches, I’m just fuckin’ saying making everything worse sucks and it’s shitty and stop doing it.