Hello friends and welcome to ask Zack today we're going to take a field trip down to danocaster HQ and uh this
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started out as kind of a simple kind of run through on this tea style build that
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uh that Dan did for me and it ended up being so much more than that it ended up
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being uh just a gold mine of really great information on things that help uh a Telecaster
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style guitar sound better and feel better we talk about stiffness and the things that affect that and uh just
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certain things that he does for tone and it really ended up being kind of a gold mine of wonderful information that Dan
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was kind enough to share with us so I need to thank Dan for doing that uh also
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as always I'm very grateful for my patreon supporters because they are what
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keeps the show going so thanks to Dan thanks to my patreon supporters and I
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hope you enjoy Also I did a little playing portion where I go through the
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three different pickup settings on this guitar just so you could hear it so I wouldn't get some complaints from guys
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that don't like it when I talk about tone and don't give an example which I completely get that so
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enjoy
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d
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the
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a
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number of years ago uh Dan strain here say hello
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hello he uh he found a 57 Esquire for me
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and I was wondering where I was going to get the money and he said well sell your Deno casters and I'll build you another
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one someday so the day finally arrived and uh yeah we're going to do a little
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walk through on on this tea style build that Dan did and uh we're going to talk
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about the uh the color and the pickups and everything on it and some of uh Dan's philosophies on uh on telecasters
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and builds and and hard yeah we're going to get all your secrets go yeah we're
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going to see how that goes and and and a note to your your nice shirt that says everything is terrible that's sometimes
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that's the way it is all right so over uh over this summer
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or the summer of 2023 uh we did an episode uh here here
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at Dan's lab and we looked at uh one of his favorite books and uh it was this
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galaxy of strats book and this specific picture right here really inspired me
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and uh this this kind of dark red here that's called Dakota red here but uh now
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that that's lighter but then here you can see this Dakota red which is darker and we're kind of
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calling that doco red because if we look in in the Telecaster this where I first
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saw it so if you look at the Telecaster book you know of course and you can tell on both these that uh Dan has worn them
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out because uh falling apart yes he uses those for uh for color references and
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stuff but uh yeah so those were uh those were kind of The Inspirations for this
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color so it's kind of a uh a a deep red not not Fiesta not not standard Dakota it's
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kind of a uh kind of a more primary red you know yeah Dakota's darker Fiesta's
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got some orange in it it's just sort of like red yeah stop sign not quite stop sign red but just fundamental
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red so let's let's talk about uh you know one thing you know what are your
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thoughts on the whole like and I don't mean from being period care correct but uh like talk about tuners and and and
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string trees and a lot of people especially years ago didn't really think
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as much about you know using clusen machine heads but I remember you buying like Old Maple cap Tellies that had been
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you know like shallow have been put on there and stuff and you would immediately you know get conversion bushings and I mean part of it's just
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the way they look I mean I'm kind of a vintage guy you know I just like the way the
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a standard clusen look um I don't know if they really sound any
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different well I'm not sure what you're asking really well I mean it it certainly affects the weight of the yeah
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I mean they're light they're good the you know Clen makes a Repro right now
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which is available out there these are actually uh made by all parts and they're a clusen style so there's
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there's no markings on them you know um but they're really reliable and they
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they've kind of been my favorite if I had if I was making my own you know I mean I use them on my own guitars all
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the time so that's like my favorite but they're clusin style they're light they're a higher ratio so uh you know
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it's easier to kind of fine-tune things they really hold their tuning good trees you know they're different I like
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this you know there's adding a second tree or this the placement of the
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tree uh you know can make a difference in how it feels like the tension of it and how tight it feels or how loose it
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feels and I like the butterfly Tree in this placement which is my favorite you
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know I think they did that in 55 is what when it started um and so it's
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appropriate for a guitar like this but that I just like the way it feels when you go up higher uh it maybe makes it a
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little bit slinkier this functions I think they did it for a function reason it's creates a
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little bit more tension so it keeps the string where it's supposed to be and I don't really care for double string trees I kind of like
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the the lack of a tree it makes it a little bit slinkier maybe you know so
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this is my this is absolutely my preference is a a 55 or later Style with clu and Tuners
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and a single butterfly tree placed you know right by the a there the a tuner and what about the use of the
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spacer um you know the a lot of people say they
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don't feel the difference of the of the guide that much of the string tree that
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much but the spacer I use uh a plastic one that I just kind of age I mean if
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you look at them they where are they here if you look at them they're all
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yellow you know I think that uh they often used metal ones I think metal is
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probably more correct I'm not really sure but but the the spacer changes the
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uh you know the down pressure yeah and so I I use a spacer and these little
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plastic ones I use are a little bit higher and they just create less pressure you know I like I like a
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slinkier feel I mean that was the whole reason I did a deeper neck pocket um so
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that's kind of what I do I I it's you can use no spacer and it makes it a little bit tighter and it does function
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the function of a tree you know it actually creates more downward pressure
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the lower it is so you know but haven't had a problem with this Higher One I like the way it feels so that's
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that get this out here yeah so one of the things you you told me when I was uh
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when we were talking about this guitar when you when you finished it you said that this was the second neck you'd put on the guitar so tell me tell me about
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swapping necks on guitars you know it's it's a bit of a hassle I don't do it a lot I probably used to do it more I've
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kind of figured out what goes better with what but when we first did this guitar we knew that
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you wanted this particular set of pickups and uh this is a body that I had
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painted for some time we let it cure for months uh so I didn't really want to
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swap bodies and I have found that really the tone often changes the tone really
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follows the neck probably more than anything um so I put a we put an original neck on here and it sounded and
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played good it was just dark you know you know terms are
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relative some people think it was fatter and Fuller but knowing that you were sort of a traditional country guy we
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were looking for twang we didn't want it thin but you were looking for liveliness
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and triangular springiness you know out of it um so I had made up three necks
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this is a 92 soft v which is based on I have a 88 v neck which has been one of
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my most popular necks um but when we did your Esquire you were like I wish it was
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a little bit bigger so we actually did a 92 at your request and now it's a neck that I just kind of have in my rotation
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uh and so I did a couple of them uh and so I tried another one and put it on and immediately you know it's a little bit
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of a hassle because you have to have you know you have to cut another nut and and uh you know get the tuners and get the
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whole thing set up but when you have those done you can swap a little bit you know it's and because the neck pockets
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are pretty precise it's often this is you could just stick it on there and pretty close you know right off the bat
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uh and the second neck was definitely immediately the guitar just sort of sprung to life in a new way it was uh
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like we said stringier and clearer and still kind of fat and full had this body
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to it that was really nice but definitely had a uh a added Twang and added sort of
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Stingy top end you know but with weight if that makes any sense and uh it was it's pretty surprising
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when nothing else has changed except for the neck and you're like that made a
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pretty substantial difference you know yeah I think someone else would have loved the guitar and had you not really
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heard a difference uh you never know it still sound it was still a good guitar
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but knowing what you were after the second neck no question was the one
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there's a there's a thing with the Telecaster where it can sound a little bit on the plinky side or it can sound
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clunky yeah and I love the fact that uh on this guitar even on the attack when
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you're hitting the note it has kind of a a weight to it instead of just sending like plink it has a plunk to it yeah and
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these pickups I don't know if you want to talk about the pickups but talk about the pickups these are made by Dave
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binsky at buds pickups and it's um I have a Dano 2.0 set which is probably my
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most popular set this set is based on sort of after we measured your 58 what
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what year's yours 57 57 and mine's mine's a 57 58 it's got a 57 seral
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number you know negative is yours have a negative Ser number yes it does
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um and so I just wanted to make a more accurate set like that um and so we did
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and I love it and you love it some guys have after they've gotten it have been
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like ah it's too much twang you know and Dave Dave's vintage guy and he likes it
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too but I think a lot of customers kind of were looking for a little bit more of a bigger ballsy type of I mean they they
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still want the jangle and the attack of a telli but they're not quite ready for
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vintage twang we'll say and uh but this is great and with the right uh
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combination of wood it's there's really something special to it um and so these
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pickups have that topend and it's a the pickup itself has got a nice soft top
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end but it it's it's a bit of top end you know and so that's where the neck just finding the right neck that uh
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that's not overly bright you know that's just got the right tone it balances it
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out really good and before and not going too light you know we you you had mentioned before that you want it as
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light as you could and I was like well it's not always it getting harder harder to find really light but I don't necessarily love really light and I
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think when you do go lighter and lighter you
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do miss some kind of bottom end you know and like I think when we hear our 257s
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which are pretty similar mine's much better no mine's
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mine's bigger and ballsier yes and yours is more twangy which is perfect for me
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and yours is perfect for you yeah you know and mine weighs well over a pound
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more I me mine's probably high I I should weigh it but maybe I'll go weigh it while we're doing something else but
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mine's like it's not 8 lb but it's it's over 7even and A2 for sure and yours is
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it's six and A2 yeah six and A2 so yeah you know so it it definitely impacts the
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weight and so I think the fact that this isn't a what do we say this is oh this is about 6 and a half though is it yeah
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6.4 yeah well I take back everything I just said but it the whole it doesn't feel
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like this featherweight guitar I'm really surprised I should we should double check my weight um but yeah but
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it just the balance of just a little bit of girth a bigger neck the right neck
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and sort of a brighter springier Bridge pickup is a lot of life you know and
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it's one wrong component and all of a sudden it's like it's kind of thin it's you know so it's really finding the
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right stuff and and I think we did it on this one and before people start
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contacting buds uh is is he you know yeah so he he's uh he's slowing down a
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little bit he's still making a lot of pickups but um you know you got guys
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like me and Mario Martin and he's got a couple builders that he does custom wines for and you know we're pretty easy
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I'll be like yeah I'll take eight of those and 10 of those and that keeps him busy whereas when you're whining for the
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general public you may spend an hour on the phone with someone talking about the difference between this set and that set
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and then maybe they'll call you back next week and order one set you know and as great as that is when you're building
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a business you know as he's kind of slowing down a little bit now he's still
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I don't think he has ideas to quit anytime soon but I mean we're keeping him about as busy as he can be and uh
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and you know big orders that are just easy I just it's a way easier thing for him to do his pickups are still out
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there we're all you know making a bunch of guitars with them and uh I think it's just a lot easier so he's making them
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but he's not really selling to the public and so mainly it's OEM at this point for for it's mostly OEM and the
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nice thing is because he's not overly worked with all these back orders he's got a guy in Japan he's got a couple
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dealers that uh oh no Builders not dealers you know um but the nice thing
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is is I can still tweak stuff like we're tweaking a version of this because this 58 like we said we always kind of worry
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that it's maybe a little bit too bright he's got an idea um he's got idea how he can make it
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you know still twang but a little bit bigger and Bolder and uh he's got a
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bunch of stuff he's got he's got a um pickup that he does for our buddy Bill
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crook who bill says is the closest to a Peter Florence Voodoo that he's ever heard and he's he tried a lot of things
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and that's so you know he's always looking for I think it keeps him uh it keeps him
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wanting to experiment he's not overwhelmed with you know single orders and stuff so um so there's probably new
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stuff coming out from from Dave too which is kind of cool and allows me to tweak stuff one of the things that uh
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I've been kind of ignorant about is the the importance of the twin pickup sound
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on a tell for me I've always been kind of like well I either play on the bridge or I play on the neck yeah I'm kind of
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the same way but you know you build guitars that have great dual pickup
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sounds and a lot of Tellies can have a good neck pickup sound and a good Bridge pickup but then what is the secret to a
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good dual pickup sound so they don't all have that I mean and I would say not even all
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mine it really depends on how you choose the pickups so if you want like a big
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sort of beefier Bridge pickup and a nice clear you know some people almost want
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like a strap like clear neck position that middle is usually not that great
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the the best the best way to get the middle is to have a pretty twangy bridge and to have a neck that has quite a bit
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of warmth like a round I mean you we obviously want Clarity and definitely
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some older ones are too warm for a lot of people you know but uh when you find
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that right combination was just warm enough and the bridge is pretty twangy that's where you get a middle position
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that's really kind of like I would use this and I think this set does that probably as good as anything that I have
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it's it's a great dual pickup s it's uh one of the best I've heard yeah uh the
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other thing of course you and interesting you know Leo at least at first didn't really even have the Dual
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pickup thing right it was you know which pickup do you want yes so and this
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uh this bridge pickup just like a a real uh you know 58 57 58 pickup it has the
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the rais D and the raise G on there has some nice aging on there really great uh
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great a great match for this guitar another thing we did was uh we uh we did
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a uh an eight an eight screw pick guard because I just kind of like the look of
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a single ply that has the uh the eight holes and maybe that's more I guess that's 58 59 somewhere around when it
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come comes along but I really like the uh and you don't get it pulling up and here's a tip for everybody a lot of guys
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say hey my uh my guard is pulling up in the middle and usually what it is just
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loosen the screws often times like I'll set it up and if you know part of it is just getting it perfect but as they are
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getting the placement perfect of the screws but as they shrink over time or yeah I don't know the original ones
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shrink a little bit Yeah but as they bow up over time or start flexing get that
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little rais in them uh often just by loosening those screws it lays flat again some guys use double side tape and
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other things to hold it down but often I can just say hey just loosen those screws up and everything kind of goes
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back down so if you got one of the things that's pulling up make sure your screws aren't overly tight and you may
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find the guard just lays flat again so interesting yeah and I love these uh you
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know there are a lot of little touches on this guitar that are really great and one of the nice touches besides of
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course you've got the uh you know the danocaster stamped you know ashtray you
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know of course bent Bridge uh I love these knobs yeah that's uh Mark rudder's
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knobs actually I've been getting a bunch of knobs from him and those look great because so many it seems seems like it's
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easier to find good Black Guard knobs to yeah it is the I mean there's different
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heights of The Black Guard knobs I just ordered a whole bunch of blackard knobs and had my wife who really spends a lot
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of time aging the stuff she went and aged probably 20 sets of Black Guard
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Dome knobs a shorter one and then I went to go grab one yesterday and put it on it's like H these only fit on split
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shaft knobs and we didn't find out until she did it all so all parts makes a short one that only fits on split shaft
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split shaft I didn't know that till we spent all this time so there's going to be a dozen Tellies that Black Guard
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Tellies of mine that probably I'll probably use split shot or a split shaft and put the little copper sleeve over it
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no that won't work cuz that makes it a solid shaft well you what you could do is you could put them on on strats you
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could have some strats that have some uh yeah I could I could but but anyway um
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yeah the part of it is the the how big the nurl is and then that top lip yes
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like almost everybody like a lot of people use the all parts you know and they they have almost no lip the neurl
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goes all the way to the top and uh they look fine I used to use them and they're cheap and they're you know they're fine
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but the nurs finer than Fender ever used and that top lip
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there's almost none um and so these are the standard 58 59 Mark ruers and Mark
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does really amazing work and he did some mid-60s ones and I'm like hey could
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we do another one where the neurl and I just showed him a picture and he's like yeah we could do that and so he just custom made some other knobs for me so
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he's he's a true machinist you know you can really do what you want but yeah I
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those are my favorite shape of the barrels you know yeah which is appropriate for like a 58 59 and these
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are compensated steel Saddles are these the the quarter or they the 516 those
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are the 516s yeah the quarter are a little more Slinky and
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they sound a little bit different they're a little bit more Steve Cropper you know a little bit a little bit
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twangier maybe uh I do use them sometime Guthrie trap had a uh an older Floyd
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guitar made by this guy Floyd who used to work at Joe glazers and it just had
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too much tension but the neck pocket was nice and deep and so I just did everything I could to sort of relieve
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the tension for him he had two string trees we got rid of one and one of the things we did is I got some quarter
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quarter inch Saddles as opposed to 516 and put those in and that helps too so I like them both but I mostly use 516
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almost all my guitars have 516 this this is something that we could do a whole episode on and that's just the uh the
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way that the neck pocket and How Deeply it sits down in there and then of course
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also how high which that corresponds to how high these Saddles
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have to be and The Brak angle that you end up getting it's like I even had a Telly that the holes were slightly off
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on how they were drilled for the bridge and the Saddles had to be so far back
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that the brake angle was so severe that it was so tight it it felt terrible and we ended up having to swap bodies on it
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yeah yeah yeah the the lower this goes the lower these Saddles can go to the
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base uh and so the angle that they come through the body uh really affects the
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steeper that angle is the tighter it is so mostly that comes into play if
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someone has sort of a shallow neck pocket you have to raise these up quite a bit to get the right angle and then
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it's it's a quite a sharp dive and that's where it just feels tight so often if you have a real tight
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feeling um tight feeling t one thing you can do if you want to go through all
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that is have the neck pocket lowered you know so you can drop these down a bit one thing that's kind of cool at least
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on all the more modern ones if you look at the back of this neck pocket it is a dual
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loading on the bridge on the bridge so if you wanted to see you could always
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instead of going down through the back you could always come out the back here which is they call a top loader and what
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some guys do is some guys will be like oh well I'm going to string these through these I'll topload you know so
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you could just have just the top strings where you're bending the most and you want the least amount of tension have them just come through the back and you
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can experiment with that yeah so so again if you want to on on this guitar at least or any Bridge that's drilled
26:42
for both if you want to lower the tension you could just use the you could topload it and uh and it's going to be
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EAS slinkier feel or a combination of like I said just the just the plane
26:53
strings could be topl loaded yeah some guys say there's a change in sustain you
26:59
know Fender did that around 1960 and didn't do it for very long I think 1959 is that right yeah and they didn't and
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they did it for like a year so yeah and I've seen a couple uh you know 6061
27:11
Tellies that that are uh that are drilled for both yeah for both yeah yeah where you have the where it goes through
27:17
the body but it has those holes on the back where they they were re you know using them up I used to do a top loader
27:22
every once in a while um just to do something different but this kind of fixes that if anybody wants to
27:29
experiment with it most all of the new Bridges have that so yeah I may do a video where I uh you know you should
27:35
have this guitar and and then I do it both ways yeah do it both ways and that way you can kind of hear the difference
27:41
do three strings and then do the other three like you know what I mean do it halfway first just for more work just
27:48
for just for more thanks Dan yeah uh any you know and then you kind of use Frets
27:54
that are a little bit uh a little bit smaller than 615s and yeah this is a
27:59
6125 I mean depending on who makes it J car the company is the only company that
28:04
makes it it's I think they call it a 9547 so it's 95 wide 47 high and it's
28:11
really like a I believe that Joe Glazer was one of the
28:18
ones who sort of requested that I think I think he's the one who got them to do that I'm not sure that's right but I
28:24
think that's right um but it's it kind of feels like a 6105 that has been dressed down a couple
28:32
times you know it used to be when you'd get a guitar refered with 615s that' be do you want us to take some height off
28:38
it you know cuz they feel kind of high railroad ties to a lot of guys you know
28:44
um and so this just kind of feels more worked in it feels like a a neck that's
28:49
been dressed once or twice and yeah and what radius do you tend to like um I
28:56
mean I all of my guitars are 9.5 yeah uh I was just thinking recently about maybe
29:02
doing a compound radius s and a quarter to 95 that's Keith Urban was one of the
29:08
last ones I did I actually made that guitar for me uh and then he wanted this was years ago um I
29:17
like a 7even and a quter radius for sort of cowboy cords and I'm used to it because if you're used to vintage guitar
29:23
7 and a quarter but it is a little bit weird when you're swapping out and grabbing and Gibson are doing different
29:29
things uh it's kind of more comfortable to have 95 and it allows for nicer bending so the combination 7 and A4 down
29:36
here and as you get up to about here it starts leveling out to 9 and a half uh it's kind of a cool combination but but
29:44
all of mine are 95 and it's it's kind of the most widely accepted it's what most people want you
29:50
know and just confirm this is 95 this is 95 yeah yeah yeah oh no you wanted 12
29:56
right I want yes I want I want Gibson radius no yeah uh yeah it's 9.5 all the way up all right well and
30:03
1.5 or 1.65 nut which you're pretty particular about wanting one in 58 so I
30:10
didn't realize so afterwards I'm like you know I love this one but I wonder if he's going to be like the neck is too
30:16
wide cuz it's a really subtle 1 and 5/8 versus 1.65 I mean it's a really small
30:22
difference uh but on certain necks they feel 1.65
30:28
just is it me or does this feel extra wide yeah you know and I run into that every once a while I do a guitar it's
30:33
like this SN feels extra wide and you measure like no that's 1.65 yeah um
30:38
sometimes on a bigger fatter deeper neck like that has a lot of shoulder yes it
30:43
feels wider cuz you've got the shoulder kind of you know on a v i don't it
30:49
doesn't really bother me at all but on like a big Clubby round back only on some but
30:56
everyone once while 1.65 just feels how wide is this thing you know I have a uh
31:03
an R9 Les Paul that it just and it was one that I got in 2008 and it just felt
31:10
gigantic yeah and I had our friend Jeff sin reshaped the neck and and one of the
31:16
big things he did was take off some of the shoulders and that made such a big difference it's like a soon as you start
31:21
rolling the edges and and it just makes a huge difference yeah so some of the older neck I have a an old
31:30
345 um that's a 1960 but it's a 59 it's all 59 spec and it's the perfect neck to
31:37
me and it's not that big so when you pick up some of the like you always hear about the 59 neck is like the shape you
31:43
know and I've had a bunch of old Gibson stuff um and a lot of those necks aren't
31:48
as big as some of the more modern right some of the the modern counterparts they feel pretty pretty Clubby compared to
31:56
some of the older ones interestingly yeah all right Dan well thank you so
32:02
much for uh letting letting us invade your uh your home and uh what a a nice
32:11
uh piece that you uh that you did glad you love it yes thank you so much yeah
32:18
peace
32:26
bye-bye