Look and Feel

The Mod -- which also comes in a 7-string version -- is a versatile and stylish piece of musical hardware. Like other Danos, the single cutaway, semi-hollow instrument looks as much like a piece of industrial design as a work of luthiery. The test unit, sporting a Black/Gold Pearl finish, with a wide cream-colored plastic binding and a white marble pickguard, reminded me of my grandmother's old kitchen table -- or at least how it might have appeared if Gran had been more of a hep cat. The trademark lipstick pickups, vintage-style rotary switch, and concentric volume and tone knobs complete the slick '50s look.

At around six pounds, the Mod felt comfortably light in my hands. The fit and finish were impressive for the price range, and was the best of any modern Danelectro I've played. The frets were cleanly dressed, with no jagged edges along the fingerboard. Intonation -- aided by the adjustable combination bridge/tailpiece -- held very true up and down the neck. The Gotoh tuners seemed lightly constructed, but worked smoothly and kept the guitar in tune.

The neck has the flat radius common on Asian imports. Players accustomed to the curve of more traditional American guitars may find it a little disorienting at first, but I found it very comfortable overall, especially for chord work and speedy runs. The speed factor was helped by the fact that the guitar arrived already set-up with a nice low action.

Because it has a relatively blocky and high neck joint -- and a shallow cutaway that begins at the 17th fret -- reaching the Mod's highest notes can be a bit of a chore. I have pretty long fingers, and I could not get to the 21st fret with my pinky, but instead had to extend my ring finger to hit the high D. As a point of comparison, a Fender Telecaster's cutaway begins at about the 20th fret; a Gibson Les Paul's at the around the 19th -- and both of these single-cutaway models offer easier upper-fret access than the Mod.

Tone

The Mod looks like it should deliver a wide array of tones, and -- thanks to a trio of pickups and a clever switching scheme -- it does just that. The pickups (single coils in the neck and middle positions, and a humbucker with split-coil capabilities at the bridge) can be used in eleven different combinations.

A six-way rotary switch -- which looks like it was lifted from a circa 1958 RCA hi-fi -- offers the following combinations:

Note: A separate toggle switch lets you turn on all three pickups at once. And each setting that includes the bridge pickup offers two tones, one for humbucking mode, the other for single coil operation.)

The volume and tone controls look cool in their concentric layout. The volume knob (the outside one) was easier to access than the tone control, which was just was well as I found the latter did little to improve the sound.

Also worth noting:

1] The Mod's pickups are wired in series, so you get a slightly different sound from combining them that you would with, say, a standard-equipped Telecaster, which has its pickups wired in parallel.

2] The Mod's humbucker looks like a pair of single-coils stuck together, and performs that way too -- something very noticeable when the coils are split. Most 'buckers sound feeble and in single-coil mode, but I found the Mod's split settings plenty beefy and funky enough for featured use.

My expectations that the Mod would succeed as a thunky deep twang machine proved well-founded. But what impressed me most was how easily the guitar crossed genres (tonally speaking, that is; it might look a tad out of place in, say, a '40s-style swing band). The Mod offered a robust unamplified sound, with excellent sustain. Just as impressive, its pickups handled clean and distorted tones with equal ease, working well on music ranging from hard rock to traditional jazz comping.

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