Risk, we hear this very often, everywhere we go its always about risk. Buying house with loan, Investment, Job, Business, theres always that word tied to it. But buying guitars? well thats probably the safest thing to go about……………unless its a custom order.

Despite what is said about customs, everyone i asked (who knows custom guitars) gave me the same feedback, its a huge risk- you never know if a guitar will be good or bad. If its boutique then the risk goes exponentially higher, folks run away with deposit, guitar comes out really bad, über long wait times, etc,etc, for every good story you probably have a few horror ones.

Then comes Danocaster; custom boutique with low deposit for an AVRI price? why not. Everything went smoothly until few months down the road, Dan (which is the guy doing the guitars) had a slip disk and he cant use one of his hands as a result the guitar was delayed a 1-2 months. Thank god its not one of the horror stories to be (and even if it were at 200 usd deposit its relatively tame) and things went ahead shortly. Dan however is still suffering.

Finally the guitar arrived safe, and incurred i the full wrath of malaysian custom tax. Dan was kind enough to declare it slightly lower so the damage is not that bad, we did try to classify it as repair but that failed, so tip there, relics dont make the customs go “these arent the guitars we are looking for”.

The risk and wait has stopped, now to the guitar.

the guitar i ordered is a 50’s relic telecaster in butterscotch blonde, i told Dan to replicate a vintage tele (cause he has one) the specs are as follows:

- 2 pc Ash Body
- P.Florence Voodoo TE50
- Medium C full maple Neck

or





Let me start of by saying im not a relic fan so the review wont go about talking about how beautiful and accurate teh relic’s are.

Picking it up the guitar is quite light similar to an Fender CS, which depending on some people might be a point to be happy about. The finish is hard to comment on cause its all beaten up, i do however still prefer the lightly relic’ed fender CS where you get more nitro checking.

Hands on the neck, one does understand why theres a certain love for relic’ed guitars, the slightly stripped finish does make a comfortable playing experience. I think Dano shines very well here, being able to choose your neck profile means that the neck would fit rather nicely in your hands, pair that with the relic’ed neck it does make a very nice feel. It doesnt really have the overly sticky feel you get from some new fenders which can be a turn off. The other thing about expensive guitars i noticed is how the strings react to the guitar, some guitars you put a .10 on it and it feels like a .09 irregardless of scale length. the dano’ has this, using .10s the guitar feels very easy to play and there's little fightback from the strings. In short i think this is one of the more comfortable guitars I've played, the choice of neck, finish and action is beautiful to the touch.

Tone wise the dano’ id say is like a fender tele on drugs but there is a bit of sacrifice to it. the neck pickup is well balanced, clear and bright however its not wired to the tone control knob. hence one cannot round off the highs to give a bassy/jazzy tone. It does limit ones options when playing cause if you want something warmer, you need to go to the amp or your pedals.

Pushing the pup selector to the middle we get both neck and bridge pickups and here one can roll off the highs to make a fatter sound, it does sound like a neck pup but theres a slight difference to it. Even then, the tone is sill quite bright compared to a no caster i tried at bents not long ago, when you do an upstroke theres still some sparkle and twang.

On the bridge the pup is hotter and has more twang, but it has a certain warmth to it that makes the trebly highs sound pleasant; unlike some teles that can sound a bit too harsh. On an overall the guitar sounds like a full on tele, as if its created to just do tele things, its bright and very twangy. Its has very good note definition, balance and clarity. each time you pick it up, you feel like wearing a straw hat ,chewing some weed and start chicken picking. While teles are renown for their versatility, slapping some high gain or some indie wall of sound stuff does feel a bit aloof in a way. Dont get me wrong tho, i’m not saying that the tele can't perform such things well but because of its clarity and twang, you’d probably play sweet home Alabama all the time.

So, Is this a perfect guitar that is the second coming? after all everything seems rather positive, its cheap”er”, has teh CS feel, good neck and sound…….the answer sadly is no.

There are some issues which comes with a custom guitar, the guitar can range from amazingly great with perfect everything to downright terrible that you even wonder how it left the door. The dano sits right between that 2, it feels great, good sound but the built quality can be a tad bit sloppy.


Take the above neck joint for example, the logic behind this is the joint is soo tight that the builder has to remove some wood to push it in. but then i start to wonder, why soo many guitars out there dont have this issue? are we then suggesting that for majority of the neck joints out there most of them are not tight enough? Is it because of Dan’s condition hence why is like this? whatever it is, it does look rather sloppy and while it doesnt affect tone, i’d think it would bug some folks and at the price you pay (you dont really see this on squires even) it does bug quite a bit.

The other part is the controls, the volume knob goes like “cant hear shit”, “cant hear shit”, “the line in to the computer does pickup something, but i still cant hear shit’, half way through vol is prob at 5 you hear a whisper. then suddenly at 7-8 the guitar goes berserk and shouts its lungs out, if you are sitting beside a 100watter at full volume its bye bye hearing, hello permanent deafness. It feels like a proton, no power, no power, no power, wtfBBQSAUCE…….unlike a nice well tuned car, which has a gradual smooth increase that is very comfortable and predictable.

I guess the accurate term is the guitar is just not refined, while the drawbacks doesnt stop it from feeling great and having good tone, it does feel like you met this girl, great personality, good looks, f***s great but walks around with a limp. sure on an overall basis the girl is wonderful but you always feel that “what if” she doesnt have that limp? what if Dan didn't have his medical condition?

While i have decided to stay off buying guitars for a while (i hope it works), I still feel that given the choice and options out there, one might prefer a safer and simpler option. For the same price one can get a used custom suhr, a new Suhr pro series, a finished nash from another country, or a new AVRI 52 during bents xmas discounts. Unfortunately of the lot none of them allows you to customise your neck, choose your colour and pickups. but the risk is far far lower and you might be able to hop on a plane south to try it out. they wont however sound and feel like a danocaster or each other despite all of them being teles.

To conclude, id say the dano gets a mixed review, it works but its not perfect but that seems to be the theme of all the custom shops (boutique or not). And on that note, i would repeat the wisdom told by my peers while looking for custom orders, “its a huge risk- you never know if a guitar will be good or bad.”

Sound Clips (was posted in guitar freaks)

Clean Test

Gain Test




This post has been edited by +3kk!: Oct 6 2014, 07:15 PM

DA-YUM I freakin love that discoloration behind the neck.

And that beautifully aged black plastic pickguard nails it.

Worth the risk mate.

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How much for the damage? Inclusing shipping and tax etc.. PM me thx!

yes, care to elaborate more on the costing?

damage is a bit messy,

guitar total cost is about 2,100 usd, you have to pay a deposit of about 200 usd, so that is about 650-700 depending on forex rates.

so that aside you are paying about 1,900 usd for the guitar, shipping was 212 usd (shipping rates can vary, dan managed to get 73% off fedex, which you might not get), so in total was about 2112usd which i paid about RM7100.

during shipping the declared about was about 800 usd so tax was about 300 rm

in total, 700 + 7100 + 300 = RM 8100.

i would recommend to have a budget allocated to it, around RM8-9k give and take.

The price isn't too bad.. just noticed.. at 6.6lbs its super light!

Happy NGD bro

in relative sense its quite good price, a custom shop made for you normally hits about 14k give and take, fender orders is about 12k depending on spec. most of them also require 50% deposit upfront.

one of the reasons i went for dan is cause its cheap, i checked its prb one of the cheapest custom shops out there and prb th only one that ask for 20% deposit

thanks

does he make his own necks and bodies etc or just take some off the shelf parts like warmoth and then modify them?

is the neck pocket gap intended?... doesnt look like highend job

necks are sourced from USCG then he modifies them to his specs

bodies are his own


its intended but i dont see much good logic for it, i.e. if its not soo important to get a good fit, then why shave off the end?

yea it doesnt reflect a high end guitar, it does feel and sound like one.



This post has been edited by +3kk!: Oct 7 2014, 04:28 PM

made my nose bleeds..

Anyone wanna buy my Ibanez Prestige???

Modified ETA , non in house

and that may be the reason why body neck pocket isnt perfect.
i also notice an overhang on the body neck at the cutaway side... a good custom job would have it nice and flush.

This post has been edited by Everdying: Oct 8 2014, 08:58 AM

maybe, its really anyones guess, only thing for sure is that is deliberate la

its a bit sloppy id say, if i compare to a FCS nocaster i played last time, the workmanship on that is quite impressive on the minor details. then again that guitar also died on me hence why i didnt get a nocaster

This post has been edited by +3kk!: Oct 8 2014, 09:07 AM

if he did make his own necks, then could say deliberate la.
but since he doesn't, and unless neck supplier can custom make to his specs, then he has to make the neck somehow fit into his body pocket... and which of cos can result in misalignments like not being flush.
then again, are u sure he makes his own bodies?
if so, he can always wait for neck then custom fit the body pocket to neck...

ok, seems after 2012 he picks his own wood... and the bodies are CNC but he stops short of saying the CNC is his...
he says the CNC are based on real guitars, but that doesn't justify why he couldn't mod the routing program to cut a pocket that fits the outsource neck.
sounds to me like most of the cost of the guitar is in his relic process.

i agree, its a bit hard to find a logical explanation for it. what i do suspect is that because of his issues, he had a backlog and is rushing to clear his orders, so when one neck was CNC'ed rather inaccurately he had to make do with it.