El Degas brand -- anyone know it?
D Stewart
The brand on the headstock is "El Degas."
It is shaped like a Gibson SG. It has a fairly
short scale. Dark brown body, black pickguard.
Two pickups, vol and tone pots for each.
It has a bridge mute you can activate by pulling
a tab under the bridge toward the strap button.
No idea how old. It plays nicely (though it needs
a setup).
I just wonder if anyone knows anything about
"El Degas" as a brand.
Joe Boughner
one of their guitars, it was a piece of shit. But hey, if it plays nice
and sounds good, who cares what's on the headstock, eh?
Play it 'til it dies.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
"Hockey, better than any other thing, expresses Canada. It is, perhaps,
our only truly national expression which cuts across language, race, age,
and distance."
-Bruce Hutchison
MacLean's Magazine (1950)
Joe Boughner
Carleton University
Email address: jbou...@chat.carleton.ca
M Hamilton
> I have a bass given to me by a friend.
> The brand on the headstock is "El Degas."
i have one. Mine's a 3/4 size though (yes. that sucks).
> I just wonder if anyone knows anything about
> "El Degas" as a brand.
My friend has two Degas guitars and they play pretty well. My bass is
pretty good (hasn't given me any problems, really. except the connection
to the output died once).
Like the other response said, it's a starter brand. i'm looking at
getting a new one soon... but by all means, get used to it, make sure you
like it before you invest much more.
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78jazz
shorter scale, and made from some of the finest plywood available in
the Pacific Rim in the early eighties. Still got it somewhere..
According to a luthier who worked on mine, el Degas (or in English
"The Degas") were (are?) a company that jobbed their stuff out to a
buncha different factories in Japan. So yours might have been made in
a number of places. Mine is apparently marked inside as being a "Don
Diego", which was another brand of the same quality.
What the others have said is true - they are definitely starter
quality, but this thing came with a very nice DiMarzio PU with a coil
tap and more solid electronics than a lot of basses I have owned
since.I may have lucked out. My secret shame is this: that pickup is
now in my fretless - I stuck it in there when I was building the thing
and it sounds too good to replace.
Fit and finish on my Degas was surprisingly good for the money (moreso
if you're getting it free). It stayed in tune really well, the neck
was pretty stable, and nothing broke when I dropped it. I've seen
some that were just crap, and others that weren't bad. From what I
have seen, their basses are generally better quality than their
guitars.
I actually used this thing for about six years, including about 40
gigs. I bought one of the very first Warwicks, once I was convinced
that I was going to be a rawk stah, and as a result ended up using
the Degas whenever I could get away with it, if you take my meaning.
If you stay on top of the setup these things can serve you pretty
well. My Degas could sound like a grownup bass, but only for about
the first three hours of a new set of very specific strings (Starfire
Super Wraps of an embarassingly light gauge - they don't make 'em any
more) for about the first three hours. After that - DOINK!
Hope this was useful. Have fun
- Bill