Danelectro 66BT

This beast will definitely inspire some cool riffs!

Guitar Interactive star rating: 4.5 Stars

MSRP (UK) £1099 (US) $799

PROS

Awesome Baritone Sound.

Excellent Playability.

Unique Design and Build Quality.

CONS

If you don’t want a Baritone, this is not for you.

SPECS

Adler Semi-hollow body with a centre block

Maple Neck

Rosewood Fretboard

Wilkinson bridge

Danelectro 66BT

Danelectro's new 66 Baritone could very well be the coolest instrument on the planet. With a large single coil in the neck, a lipstick humbucker pair in bridge, coil taped and complemented a Wilkinson tremolo, those low-end tones have never sounded better. Sam Bell tells us more.

Danelectro is perhaps best known for their quirky designs, sparkling sounds and overall unique take on the instrument. In this issue I was lucky enough to have a go on the Danelectro 66BT, this is a baritone guitar. Baritone guitars are longer than normal guitars, they have a much lower tuning which makes for some great sounding riffs and a resonant piano like chord shimmer. This guitar features a 29 inch scale length, getting into bass guitar territory with slightly thinner strings, this instrument is tuned low to high B, E, A, D, F#, B. The low B string is the unison of playing the 2nd fret A string ‘B’ Note on a standard bass guitar. Baritone guitars have been used on recordings for a long time, often used for doubling parts, layering textures or creating chunky surf rock riffs. Perhaps the most recent use of Baritone guitar that has been popular on Instagram is Snarky Puppy’s Mark Lettieri using it in some of his super funky riffing with Vulfpeck. The other advantage of having a longer scale length is that the strings resonate in a different way as they have much more length to vibrate, giving a chime-like quality to the notes. With that short talk on Baritone guitars and why they’re good for your health, let’s take a look at this specific instrument.

The Danelectro 66BT aside from featuring a monster neck sports a semi-hollow body, two lipstick style single coils in the bridge position and a fat single-coil in the neck for all your surf rock needs. These can be ‘split’ or made parallel using the push/pull tone knob. Giving the user a whole host of sounds, you can attain all kinds of grind and bloom from this guitars' tonal range with careful use of the volume and tone knob. The guitar is equipped with a Wilkinson tremolo bar which is fantastic for the surf chords and dives that are really accentuated with the Baritone scale length. It’s incredibly satisfying to play, I personally really want one! It’s a great price point and a very well built production model guitar. This beast will definitely inspire some cool riffs!