Making Dano Controls Actually WORK

[Bongolation]

Honestly, in forty-five years of working on instruments, this is the biggest piece of junk I have ever seen with the possible exception of the self-destructing v1.0 Italia Mondial.

You guys who are working in shops that might have one of these up on the wall owe it to yourselves to take a look-see at it. It's an utterly atrocious instrument, so bad in so many ways it's actually interesting.

But...DON'T BUY ONE!

I'm now on my second one, the first one being hopeless and busted right out of the box.

First off, it's the noisiest instrument I've heard in a long while, which is interesting in that it is "TOTALLY SHIELDED" according to Dano hype and the legend on the trussrod cover.

Now, get this: THERE'S NOT ONE SQUARE CENTIMETER OF SHIELDING IN THE WHOLE INSTRUMENT! None, not any. No foil, no paint. Zero.

So...what's "totally shielded"? The lipstick covers on the pickups! That's it! They've run a lead from the covers to the back on one of the pots, along with a parallel lead from one end of the coil.

No, I'm not kidding. Marketing department engineering's crackhead concept of total shielding.

OK, so that's idiotic. The controls (a rat's nest mess) are unswitched stacked knob V/T & V/T. But the tone controls don't work.

The only way you can tell they are even in circuit is that there's a little "wah" bump in the bottom 5% of the rotation. That's it.

The values appear to be 1M/1M pots with .1mFd bleeder caps. Yes, I know, odd values.

Any thoughts on getting this to work? I may have to tear it all out and do a proper job of wiring. The stacked knobs and the factory wire-and-tape mess make figuring out the stock wiring layout impossible without removal. Not sure if the wiring's off, or the values impractical, or what.

Thanks for any help...and for your own sake, DON'T BUY DANOS!

 

[mellowgerman]

sounds like you might be best off cutting your losses, selling it, and buying something else....
i for one like danos. they have their flaws but it's kind of part of the package. i've never had a problem with excessive hum with the ones i've owned and/or played. they are single coil pickups though, so it's normal for them to have a little hum. fixing the tone pots shouldn't be hard; you can always get some new stacked pots and capacitors.

 

[RTL]

The most annoying thing about these basses (and the main reason I haven't bought one), is that when you go to move the volume knob, the stacked tone knob moves with it!!!

Since when was it "cool" or "hip" to need both hands to make volume/tone adjustments? :scowl:

I've always wanted a Dano Longhorn, I love the look, sound, and overall cool cheapie vintage vibe they have going on. But every time I put my hands on one, I die a little inside...

 

[Bongolation]

Do you think the actual problem is in the wiring being crossed or the odd component values?

Now that I'm looking for one, naturally I can't find a simple unswitched V/T & V/T wiring diagram and don't trust myself to do this from memory.

 

[Bongolation]

The most annoying thing about these basses (and the main reason I haven't bought one), is that when you go to move the volume knob, the stacked tone knob moves with it!!!

In this case, it wouldn't matter as the tone controls don't do anything anyway.

Actually, though, that's an easy fix -- just put a tiny piece of cardboard or other debris up inside the top knob's shaft recess to keep the volume knob from coming down far enough on its shaft to drag against the tone knob.

Anyhow, that's the one problem I haven't had with these.

 

[i_got_a_mohawk]

Why not just stick in some new pots and add some shielding. I'm yet to see a production instrument with anywhere near decent shielding.

And for wiring, you could always just copy the '62 Fender Jazz setup (stacked vol/tone, vol/tone).

 

[Bongolation]

Why not just stick in some new pots and add some shielding.

It's not that the pots are broken, they just don't accomplish anything.

I'm wondering if a 1M pot in a standard tone-cut application like this doesn't just need a higher-capacitance bleeder.

I'm yet to see a production instrument with anywhere near decent shielding.

Oh, I know.

I don't really care about shielding that much except in extreme cases (and this is one, come to that), it's just that I find their "TOTALLY SHIELDED" promotional concept an outrage in the manifest absence of ANY instrument shielding.

Don't you?

 

[i_got_a_mohawk]

It's not that the pots are broken, they just don't accomplish anything.

I'm wondering if a 1M pot in a standard tone-cut application like this doesn't just need a higher-capacitance bleeder.


Oh, I know.

I don't really care about shielding that much except in extreme cases (and this is one, come to that), it's just that I find their "TOTALLY SHIELDED" promotional concept an outrage in the manifest absence of ANY instrument shielding.

Don't you?

That's marketing jargon for you!

Sorry, I wasn't meaning replace the pots with similarly rated ones, I was meaning just to stick in some 500k/500k or 250k/250k pots

 

[FunkMetalBass]

Do you have an ohmmeter? I'd check the DC resistance of the pickups. I suspect they don't have enough to make use of the 1M pot and 250k (or less) pots are probably what you're needing.

When you say that the tone knobs don't work, is it like the tone is always wide open, or that the treble is always rolled off? 0.1uF is definitely enough to notice when the tone is and isn't wide open.

 

[sedan_dad]

Honestly, in forty-five years of working on instruments, this is the biggest piece of junk I have ever seen with the possible exception of the self-destructing v1.0 Italia Mondial.

You guys who are working in shops that might have one of these up on the wall owe it to yourselves to take a look-see at it. It's an utterly atrocious instrument, so bad in so many ways it's actually interesting.

But...DON'T BUY ONE!

I'm now on my second one, the first one being hopeless and busted right out of the box.

First off, it's the noisiest instrument I've heard in a long while, which is interesting in that it is "TOTALLY SHIELDED" according to Dano hype and the legend on the trussrod cover.

Now, get this: THERE'S NOT ONE SQUARE CENTIMETER OF SHIELDING IN THE WHOLE INSTRUMENT! None, not any. No foil, no paint. Zero.

So...what's "totally shielded"? The lipstick covers on the pickups! That's it! They've run a lead from the covers to the back on one of the pots, along with a parallel lead from one end of the coil.

No, I'm not kidding. Marketing department engineering's crackhead concept of total shielding.

OK, so that's idiotic. The controls (a rat's nest mess) are unswitched stacked knob V/T & V/T. But the tone controls don't work.

The only way you can tell they are even in circuit is that there's a little "wah" bump in the bottom 5% of the rotation. That's it.

The values appear to be 1M/1M pots with .1mFd bleeder caps. Yes, I know, odd values.

Any thoughts on getting this to work? I may have to tear it all out and do a proper job of wiring. The stacked knobs and the factory wire-and-tape mess make figuring out the stock wiring layout impossible without removal. Not sure if the wiring's off, or the values impractical, or what.

Thanks for any help...and for your own sake, DON'T BUY DANOS!

Yup, you're right!
I'll give you a hundred for it right now.

 

[SGD Lutherie]

Do you think the actual problem is in the wiring being crossed or the odd component values?

Now that I'm looking for one, naturally I can't find a simple unswitched V/T & V/T wiring diagram and don't trust myself to do this from memory.

They are wiring them up the way Nat Daniel had them wired up 50 years ago. That's the values they used.

The wiring is fine. The lipstick cover is grounded, and so is the pickup. They should be separate wires. There is no crossed wiring.

The pickups are fairly low impedance, so they need the large tone cap value, and still, it doesn't do much. But the tone people like from Dano basses is that twang. You hear it on the song Radar Love by Golden Earring. Entwistle used them too in the early days, but he couldn't get strings for them, so when he broke a string, he got a new bass!

The shielding they are talking about are the brass lipstick tubes. If you think about it, Jazz basses have less shielding, or actually none. Foil in the control cavity is fine, but it's only shielding the wires in the control cavity. They don't pick up much hum. The pickups are not shielded at all. That's where you get hum.

I used to try and get every instrument to get all the tones I might want, like making my Rick sound like a P bass, but now I feel the best way to look at it is to find the unique tones from that bass, and embrace them.

 

[Bongolation]

Do you have an ohmmeter? I'd check the DC resistance of the pickups. I suspect they don't have enough to make use of the 1M pot and 250k (or less) pots are probably what you're needing.

That's what I've been thinking -- but WHY are they in there OEM?

When you say that the tone knobs don't work, is it like the tone is always wide open, or that the treble is always rolled off? 0.1uF is definitely enough to notice when the tone is and isn't wide open.

The tone controls seem to be 100% wide open except at the bottom 5% or so of the rotation as you roll off, where there's a very quick sort of a "wah" too short to really analyze -- but it seems like there's a bit of treble cut there once it's completely off.

 

[Yakob]

I'm sorry yours have been lemons so far, man. That bites. I've played a lot of Danos, and I'd say 80% of them were great. My favorite so far has been the older, solid-body Dano basses made for Silvertone. They just look cool and sound great.

I'd say mod it up and make it your own. Chances are, you'll end up with a great playing, great sounding, and great looking instrument.

 

[FunkMetalBass]

That's what I've been thinking -- but WHY are they in there OEM?


The tone controls seem to be 100% wide open except at the bottom 5% or so of the rotation as you roll off, where there's a very quick sort of a "wah" too short to really analyze -- but it seems like there's a bit of treble cut there once it's completely off.

Go to the store and buy a couple of 1.0uF caps and wire them in series. That will effectively give you a 0.5uF capacitor.

 

[Bongolation]

They are wiring them up the way Nat Daniel had them wired up 50 years ago. That's the values they used.

The wrong ones, in other words?

WHY? Evets had a choice (and maybe Daniel didn't at the time, building his stuff from '50s job-lot scrap and surplus, as he did), why did they eff this up? Why didn't they leave out the trussrods while they were at it?

I totally don't get it. In 2010, they don't know what pot values to order to match the pickup impedance?

It's not like there's any upside to this, nor that anyone's going to go in and check the historically-incompetent purity of the pot values with a multimeter (the pots are unmarked).

What? So they're worried some fanatic's going to show up at Guitar Center screaming, "Hey! These tone controls work! I WANT MY MONEY BACK!"

It makes no sense at all.

I can accept that some overworked Chinese mill-toiler crossed a wire. I have a much harder time accepting that this defect is a conscious choice by Danelectro.

The wiring is fine. The lipstick cover is grounded, and so is the pickup. They should be separate wires. There is no crossed wiring.

I know how the pickups are wired, and the aftermarkets are that way, too. There's nothing different in that.

I was wondering about crossed wires in the controls.

The pickups are fairly low impedance, so they need the large tone cap value, and still, it doesn't do much. But the tone people like from Dano basses is that twang.

The shielding they are talking about are the brass lipstick tubes.

Sure, I figured that out, and that surely isn't "TOTALLY SHIELDED" as implied in their ad campaign (and I've seen their NAMM flack making a big deal about this on YouTube ), especially in that there's zero new about the "shielding" arrangement.

Foil in the control cavity is fine, but it's only shielding the wires in the control cavity. They don't pick up much hum. The pickups are not shielded at all. That's where you get hum.

You're talking about different hum sources, but if you don't think that ESI in the controls and wiring is an issue, you need to take it up with a few thousand people here who seem to be pretty invested in the problem of it and dealing with it. Bring a lunch.

I'm not a big fanatic about shielding, but in this case the deception sure bothers me.

I used to try and get every instrument to get all the tones I might want, like making my Rick sound like a P bass, but now I feel the best way to look at it is to find the unique tones from that bass, and embrace them.

Yeah, well, that's fine...but don't you expect your instruments to at least work? Anyhow, as far as tones go, both the examples I had had terrific (and different) overtone/cancellation problems that made them useless as players, but I think a lot of that could have been mitigated by different strings.

COLLECTOR/MASOCHIST ALERT! A quick look at Invalid Link Removed indicates that this abortion has been very recently dropped from the line. Expect blowout prices any day on remaining retailer stocks.

 

[SGD Lutherie]

That's what I've been thinking -- but WHY are they in there OEM?

That is a good question. They were the original values. maybe they should change them. 250K is all those pickups need.

 

[Bongolation]

That is a good question. They were the original values. maybe they should change them. 250K is all those pickups need.

Sure. The non-Dano lipstick instruments I have use them.

The reason in the original case was that was what was available and cheap, and to a large extent Daniel didn't know any better.

The original Danelectros were pretty iffy. I have an original guitar around here someplace from around '63 that had the fretslots cut too shallow, but they fretted it anyway -- giving the interesting effect of straight frets floating above a radiused fingerboard for its entire length.

It was shipped and sold like that.

 

[SGD Lutherie]

The wrong ones, in other words?

Wrong compared to what? You can say Fender is wrong compared to Gibson.

There must have been a reason for it originally. To use such high value pots with lower impedance pickups, they must have wanted a bright tone. Or they got them cheap, like with the lipstick tubes.

WHY? Evets had a choice (and maybe Daniel didn't at the time, building his stuff from '50s job-lot scrap and surplus, as he did), why did they eff this up? Why didn't they leave out the trussrods while they were at it?

What truss rods? The Dano I have doesn't have truss rods. It needs truss rods though.

They used to sell these guitars for like $20.

Evets is doing reissues. When they first started making Danos they modernized them and people complained.

It's like this with a lot of stuff. Companies either don't do accurate reissues (like Fender) or they stick to things that don't always work well (like Rickenbacker). But if they make changes, people complain. I guess people want them like they were, even if they really don't remember how they were.

But Danos were ultra cheap guitars that happened to have gotten popular for their quirkiness.

I totally don't get it. In 2010, they don't know what pot values to order to match the pickup impedance?

Then it wont be a reissue. Why stick to that wooden bridge and all? Why make them with poplar necks, and pine and masonite? Becaus that's how they were made.

It's not like there's any upside to this, nor that anyone's going to go in and check the historically-incompetent purity of the pot values with a multimeter (the pots are unmarked).

They get a certain tone.

What? So they're worried some fanatic's going to show up at Guitar Center screaming, "Hey! These tone controls work! I WANT MY MONEY BACK!"

It makes no sense at all.

You would be surprised! I can use Ampeg as an example.

I can accept that some overworked Chinese mill-toiler crossed a wire. I have a much harder time accepting that this defect is a conscious choice by Danelectro.

How are the wires crossed? You know I have seen Yamaha SGB-200 guitar with the humbucker coils wired out of phase. I don't know if it was a mistake, or they were all like that, but the guitar was thin sounding and it hummed.

I'm not defending them, I'm just pointing out why they do it.

Fender continues to do dumb wiring and electronics, but people complain when they change stuff. We are in the midsts of a "vintage" fad. I'll be happy when it's over!

 

[JimiLL]

Danelectro is the most worthless piece of crap instrument I have ever held in my hands.

Its a toy

 

[mongo2]

What truss rods? The Dano I have doesn't have truss rods. It needs truss rods though.

My 4 original Danos have a steel bar as neck reinforcement. They've never needed adjustment in about 50 years, not even the one that had it's frets yanked by a previous owner with no filler for the fret slots.