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Official Aqua Danelectro Dano 63 Club!

#21
Guys -
I just ordered one of these from GC and it just arrived.
The bass is going to need some tweaking on the neck, some adjustment on the pickups as well as the bridge. I'm not afraid to do the work, but I wanted to get some feedback before I dive into this. There's not much to these cool instruments, but I want to make sure it's worth the trouble.

The bass seems fairly fragile, so any specific feedback is welcome.
Thanks!
 
#22
unless yours has some serious mfg defects, just jump in and set it up to your likeing. Mine was pretty much dead on out of the box. I played it for both gigs I had this weekend, got lots and lots of positive feedback,

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#24
The new aqua 63 arrived. Straight out of the box, it seems pretty good. It will need a truss rod adjustment, and the nut seems a little high, and theres something buzzing or rattling inside it when I play low notes on the E string, but none of that stuff scares me. I'm looking forward to plugging it in tonight.
 
#25
I got mine, black baby! (if i had the cash id get another aqua one to :D). Neck dive- yup definitely. Body is so ****ing light what can you do? The strap position sucks - i wish it was on a horn too.

Everything feels pretty good, and I finally got a good punk sound. The tuners are pretty terrible though, mine refuses to stay in any shape or form for more than a little bit. Not sure if I'll go to the trouble with how cheap this was.
 
#28
nixdad said:
I had to return mine. Unfortunately, we got a bad one. Neck was badly back-bowed right out of the box; neck adjustment/set-up could not correct.

Bummer!
Click to expand...

That is no fun... I hope your second one is better!

Mine had kinda high action out of the box, but after I dialed in the relief and shimmed the neck, it played a million times better.

I hadn't bought a bass in about a year, and I got this and a used Pedulla fretless within a couple days of each other... sad to say, this gets a lot more play time than my beautiful new fretless! :)
 
#30
Hey Folks,

I got one of these aqua basses. Very fun in many ways! I quite like the sound, it looks cool and it’s really light. :)

I’m curious as to how you all think this bass plays relative to other basses. I’m a guitar guy and this is my first bass. The frets seem teeny to me- very short and much thinner than the strings. And when I play the lowers frets it buzzes a lot (I’ll get a setup to fix that). Are regular or fancier basses easier to play? Just curious.

Definitely glad I got one of these. It’s fun to now be able to play around with the low notes. :)
 
#31
Over the weekend I dove into trying to turn the Dano 63 into an affirmatively Good Playing Bass. Straight out of the box, the neck had insufficient relief, and the truss rod on these basses adjusts at the body end, requiring neck removal to adjust. (Okay, I know that's how vintage Fenders did it, but who, even then, thought that was a good idea?) Since surgery was going to be necessary, I decided to go all out on this thing. So, once the neck was off, I leveled, crowned and polished the frets. For that job, I really appreciate the screwed-on metal nut! It made that part of the job very easy.

I know that it's part of the whole Dano schtick, but damn, these things are cheap! As in, they just feel flimsy.

But I digress. I opened up the control cavity, just out of curiosity, and discovered that they have a cap and resistor wired across the lugs on the volume pot. I assume the capacitor is a treble bypass cap, but I'm not sure what the resistor does.

But the most interesting thing I discovered related to the bridge. I had decided to put flats on mine, so when I put it back together I strung it up with a set of D'Addario Chromes, gauges .045-.100. And, the lower strings would not fit down into the grooves in the bridge saddles! They sat on top, touching on the corners, which of course throws the action way off. I didn't measure the stock strings, but sheesh, the strings I put on it are not big bridge cables. I'm really surprised.

So, there's that to deal with, and then there will probably be several neck on/neck off sequences as I dial in the truss rod, but we'll see what it does then.
 
#32
Update: well, I got the Aqua 63 set up, and with the fret work, bridge saddles filed to actually accommodate "real" strings, and the neck and bridge adjusted, it is now actually a pleasure to play. It sounds pretty cool, too---nice and thumpy with the flats. It balances a little funny but I think that is due to the placement of the strap button; I'm mulling over options for that. But now that the action is good and I'm getting used to it, I like it. I was having some buyer's remorse ("Why did I get yet another bass?") but I'm not sorry about this one.
 
#33
I had an aqua blem from MF. I had to send it back because the G side bridge screw was uprooted from the wood. The G string wouldnt position in the saddle groove and sounded dead. For $200-300 I would have hoped it would be more durable. That plywood center block isnt quite like a hunk of alder or basswood or ash.
 
#35
Sprung for an aqua too...

$170 shipped from MF - what's a guy supposed to do?

Anyhow, used it last night in practice. Verdict? Fargin' cool! I had a longhorn RI, so I knew what neighborhood I was entering. It sounds better and plays better than that one - and I enjoyed the heck out of that longhorn.

I need to lower the action, but that's no biggie. :bassist:
 

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