1960s Silvertone 1451 (Danelectro Hornet) Electric Guitar

This extra-short-scale, single-pickup variant of the Danelectro Hornet was made for the Sears Silvertone brand by the firm and often sold as an "amp-in-case" model with a hard case that included a small tube amplifier within it.

It's an undeniably-cool guitar, with its high-contrast, sparkle finish and low-rent, Jaguar-like looks. The pickguard is masonite with some sort of peely veneer, even!

While this one is mostly original, I did rewire it with 500k pots, a treble bleed circuit, and better-quality 022 capacitor. The owner requested it to be setup with flatwounds and that's just what it's got and it's sound proud and lovely with them.

Jacobi gave this a level/dress of the frets, compensated the original rosewood saddle, and set it up to play like a champ.

Unlike the long-scale version of the Hornet, the short-scale Danelectro-made necks only have one non-adjustable truss rod and they're mounted off-center, so many of these student-size instruments tend to wind-up with warped necks as they age (while their two-rod, long-scale counterparts usually hold-up pretty well). This one, luckily, was in decent shape.