1962 Danelectro 3412 Shorthorn Semihollow Electric Bass Guitar

My buddy Steve brought this bass up to liquidate in an "as-is" state and I'm snatching it from him. I have been in bass flux for a little bit after trading-back my Greco 4001-style to my buddy Kerry. I absolutely love that bass but I wanted to go a bit lighter on my shoulder and more compact because our sets last a couple hours and I like to wander around into the audience with my wireless setup now and then.

I had been looking at Shorthorn Danos like this around December but, as I had a different bass hanging-around for the moment, I let that quest slip as I've started to play a little more electric guitar and lap steel instead. When Steve rolled-up with this in a dilapidated original case I was sold right that moment. I'm a big Dano fan and the no-frills design of this, proper short scale (just under 30" scale length), and compact nature (it's even a hair shorter than a Mustang bass) made it perfect for the honky-tonk, boom-boom, simple playing I do.

Of course, I did have to add a Jake twist. Per the usual, I leveled/dressed the frets and fit some old tapewounds to it. I also fit a new wiring harness (with a 3-way switch and two volume controls), fit a rubber-bridge-style saddle on top of the old bridge base, and fit a pair of K&K acoustic pickup transducers under the rubber. This gives me three tone options -- lipstick mag pickup, both blended, or straight K&K "acoustic." The middle selection is the one I favor as it's fat but has a nice acoustic "clunk" to it, but having just the mag available for retro sounds or just the K&K available for "acoustic" sounds (it sounds remarkably like a double bass pickup in this capacity) all in one platform is ridiculously good.

The icing on the cake are some glow-in-the-dark side dots I fit because Dano never bothered to put side dots on this fella. Perhaps a 15-fret bass was something they thought would need no help...!