Danelectro 59X12 vintage cream

I owned a 12 string acoustic back in the early days of my guitar journey and now, playing mostly electrics, I had a hankering for another dose of those wonderful jangly harmonics such instruments produce. After copious research and unable to justify a Rickenbacker on grounds of cost and intended, mostly home, use I decided on the Danelectro.

Out of the box the build quality looked very good for the price point and it is certainly very attractive in vintage cream. The control knobs are a bit 'plasticky' though. Some have commented that the larger headstock of 12 string guitars can make then feel a bit neck heavy when playing but I'm not finding this to be the case. Perhaps this is due to the positioning of the strap buttons which, when a strap is attached, allow the weight distribution to be nicely balanced.

The label attached to a tuner proudly states "Every guitar set up in USA" (I believe they are actually built in Korea). The string tension had been slackened off 2 or 3 turns for transit and it was a simple job to bring the guitar up to tune, plug into a Marshall 2525C and make some music. Oh oh ..... hardly the epitome of playabiity for anything other than a few 'cowboy' chords??? The action was way, way too high.

A check of the neck relief revealed no issue there so it was on to the saddles and more work for my action ruler. Those of the 1st and 6th string pairs were set @ .080" at the 12th fret and the 4 remaining pairs considerably higher with the saddles all set at the same height. The profile of the 14" radius neck was certainly not being followed. Fortunately these are easily adjusted and the saddles were soon lowered to a measurement of .050" at the 6th string (low E) - which incidentally matches that of my PRS CE24 - is buzz free and gives massive improvement for playing barre chords up the neck and string bending (yes, it's occasionally useful on a 12 string too!)

So now I can look forward creating to a huge range of tone, made possible not just with the 12 strings but the humbucker / single coil pickup configuration combined with a coil tap. Very sweet!

Perhaps I was just unlucky but if what I received is a typical example of a standard setup for the average customer then someone at Danelectro needs to have a re-think. It's the only thing that prevents me giving it a 5 star rating for an otherwise 'no brainer' instrument.

I have always loved the sound of 12 string electrics, Beatles, Byrds, REM etc, and helped by Youtube and some of the reviews here on Thomann have finally taken the plunge.

I have the 59X12 vintage cream, which looks fantastic. Even if I never played it, it works as a piece of art hanging on the wall.

I noted that a previous reviewer had problems with the action. Mine was good to go straight out of the box. The action is low and very playable. When tuning it to pitch, the 2 G strings were sticking in the aluminium nut, but a little pencil lead sorted that out so the strings glide in the nut and stay in tune.

The build quality appears good.

The neck width seems fairly normal to me, and it doesn’t seem much of a greater effort to play this than a 6 string. There is a little more care required when fretting, because you are fretting pairs of strings, but its very playable.

A friend of mine has one of the “Beatles” Rickenbacker 12 strings and my memory of that is that you couldn’t get even through a song without it going out of tune. You were constantly tuning it. The Dano is good and stays in tune. When you pick it up after a few days, its still in tune. I suspect the material its made from helps in this respect. I think Masonite is a form of MDF which is strong and not particularly affected by changes in temperature and humidity. For this guitar, that’s a good thing as there is nothing more frustrating that having to constantly tune a guitar, especially one with 12 strings.

As a previous reviewer has said, the balance is good. Its very slightly neck heavy, but not enough to be a concern.

The Dano sounds great and the pickups give a fair range of different tones from bright and brittle from the bridge, to slightly darker from the neck. The most usable sound to me is the middle setting with the bridge pickup coil tapped. Although this is a solid body, its fairly loud unplugged which is great when you just want to pick it up and play.

A lot of reviewers say that its fun to play this, and that is absolutely true.
If you are looking for a 12 string, I don’t think you can go wrong with this. For the money, its great value.