Danelectro Hodad bass

[neepheid]

I flirted with lipstick pickups before when I put one in a Squier Bronco I had at the time. I liked the tone but one on its own was always going to be a little low in the volume department. I've also toyed with the idea of trying out a Danelectro, but I'm not playing short scale basses any more, and their long scale ones always looked a bit meh to me. Until I stumbled upon this: the Hodad bass.



Now this is a different proposition altogether. A lot of the Danelectro basics are there - lipstick pickups, semi hollow construction (plywood frame, masonite top and back, "binding" tape round the sides to hide everything) and quirky styling but it's a long scale neck, it has a bridge with individual saddles for more accurate intonation and there's a flexibility here - all 7 combinations of 3 pickups are available.



The controls are as follows - there is a 6 way rotary switch (called a Select-O-Matic) which gives you the following settings - 1: neck/bridge, 2: neck, 3: neck/middle, 4: middle, 5: middle/bridge, 6: bridge. The switch next to it bypasses the rotary switch and gives you all three pickups. Finally there's a concentric volume/tone.



I'm going to reserve judgement on the sound, when I got it the concentric pot was bust and I replaced it with what I had to hand (a 250k/500k) but the bass actually needs a 100k/1M pot which I have procured and will be fitting shortly. This may or may not affect the tone of the bass. Suffice to say there is a good variety of tones from the various settings. I'll update this later, perhaps with some sound clips.



The finish is very hard to photograph, it changes colour from almost black to blue/purple sparkle. I've managed to get some blue out of it in this pic:

[ahpook]

lovely.

always liked the shape of the hodads.

[neepheid]

With the help of Rich I got the correct pot fitted and the licorice allsort knob back on. The 1Meg tone pot is an unusual choice, it's basically on/off, the only appreciable differences happen in the last quarter of travel. Oh well, that's what it's supposed to be, I might experiment with other caps and/or resistors to see if I can improve things.

I said I'd do some sound clips, so here they are. Usual apologies for the standard of playing and the boringness of the content. I'm not going to blow smoke up you and tell you this bass can ape a Precision or a Jazz or a whatever, I get really tired of all these proclamations. Listen and judge for yourself.

Tone at max
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Tone at min
[attachment=66192:Hodad_po...min_tone.mp3]
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