From Jimmy Page's session work to Alana Haim's baritone, Danelectro's masonite-bodied guitars have turned up in the hands of some of music's most beloved players.
Nathan Daniel founded Danelectro in Red Bank, New Jersey back in 1947. For the first few years, the company didn’t even put its own name on anything, but built amplifiers for Sears and Montgomery Ward instead. These amps were sold under Silvertone and Airline, badges that those department stores used for their own gear. When Danelectro moved into guitars, they applied the same kind of logic – to build something good enough, fast enough, and cheap enough to move through a catalogue rather than a music store.
That meant using masonite instead of solid wood. Masonite is a dense hardboard, originally made for things like flooring and furniture backing. Daniel used this because it was quick to work with and far cheaper than carving a body from mahogany or alder. The same instruments went out under two names, distinguished mostly by their covering: Silvertone in maroon vinyl for Sears, Danelectro in light tweed for everyone else. The pickups got the same budget treatment, housed in actual lipstick tube casings because they were cheap, available, and roughly the right shape.
By 1956, Danelectro built a six-string bass – at this time, an odd instrument, and one that never broke through commercially. It did, however, find a permanent home in Nashville and LA session work for “tic-tac” bass parts. A 1966 sale to MCA was supposed to take the company further upmarket, but the new owner’s push to sell through small guitar stores rather than department stores backfired, and Danelectro folded in 1969. The brand sat dormant until the late ’90s, when new ownership relaunched it with reissues of the old Silvertone and Danelectro designs, alongside a new line of effects pedals that’s kept the company going ever since.
Across Danelectro’s history, what has remained is the tone of the guitars. Masonite doesn’t resonate like solid timber, so Danelectros tend to sound thinner and brighter than a typical guitar, with less natural sustain. Plenty of serious players have leaned into that sound.
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Duane Eddy
Duane Eddy built a key part of his sound around a Danelectro baritone, using heavy tremolo and reverb to turn its low-tuned twang into something massive. Tracks like Because They’re Young and his 1960 album The Twang’s the Thang ran on that sound, and Eddy was among the first to show what a low-tuned guitar could actually do.
Jimmy Page
Page picked up a battered ’59 DC Danelectro early in his session career for around £30, and kept reaching for it through Led Zeppelin’s biggest moments. It’s the guitar behind the open-tuned slide work on Kashmir and In My Time of Dying, two songs that became fixtures of his live set with the band.
Eddie Van Halen
In a 1978 interview, Van Halen described one of his guitars as a Charvel Explorer-shaped body fitted with a Danelectro neck and an old Gibson PAF pickup. He used it as a backup during Van Halen’s early touring years before it was later carved into a dragon-and-snake design known among fans as the “Dragonsnake.”
Tom Petty
Petty played a Danelectro Longhorn bass in the Traveling Wilburys’ “End of the Line” video, the brand’s six-string-shaped bass model with a distinctive long, double-cutaway body.
Peter Buck
R.E.M.’s Peter Buck has long used Danelectro 12-strings, a key part of the jangly, layered guitar work that became one of the band’s defining traits.
Syd Barrett
Pink Floyd’s original frontman played a black Danelectro DC-59 during his time with the band, seen in footage of “Interstellar Overdrive” alongside his mirrored Fender Esquire. It gave early Floyd’s psychedelic textures a sharper, thinner edge than a typical guitar would have offered.
Beck
Beck has built a chunk of his catalogue around vintage Silvertone and Danelectro instruments, including the Dano Pro, which suits his genre-hopping, slightly lo-fi approach to recording.
Mark Oliver Everett (Eels)
Eels frontman E has used a handful of different Danelectro models over the years, including the Pro 56 and a black Danelectro baritone, giving the band’s recordings a warmer, darker low end.
Dan Auerbach
The Black Keys frontman has built a touring and recording rig out of off-brand guitars, with Danelectro sitting alongside Harmonys, Supros and Silvertones. He used a ’60s Danelectro on El Camino, recorded next to his ’53 Les Paul and ’58 Stratocaster, and runs vintage Danelectro Challenger combo amps live.
Phoebe Bridgers
Bridgers plays a Danelectro Black Metalflake 56 baritone. It’s prominent on her 2017 single Motion Sickness, and the opening notes of her album Punisher run on the same guitar.
Alana Haim
Haim’s main electric for several years has been a metal flake Danelectro ’56 baritone. She’s spoken about how the lower tuning changes what she writes on it, pulling songs away from straight Americana into darker territory.
