D'Angelico - Excel SS Soho Amber

New York, the Soho neighbourhood, a back room where jazz is still played without a stage microphone: this is the atmosphere embodied by the D’Angelico Excel SS Soho Amber. Born out of a collaboration with guitarist Mark Whitfield, it belongs to the lineage of fully hollow-body guitars, where air circulates and vibrates even before the strings are struck. Its Amber colour, beneath a gloss finish, catches the light like an old violin varnish.
The body features a laminated spruce top, paired with laminated flamed maple sides and back — a trio of woods that lends the bass a rich, enveloping warmth and the treble a clarity without harshness. The floating ebony bridge transmits every nuance of playing directly to the body of the instrument, for a response that follows the movement of the fingertips.
The three-piece neck, glued using the Set Neck method, features a C-shaped profile — 20 mm at the first fret, slightly wider at 22 mm on the twelfth. The ebony fingerboard, curved to a radius of 406.4 mm, features 22 Jescar 47/104 nickel-silver frets and a scale length of 635 mm, which allows the strings to span the instrument with ample room, right up to the 42.86 mm Tusq nut. The Grover 509 locking tuners keep the tuning stable, night after night.
The Kent Armstrong Jazzy Joe floating mini-humbucker, with an Alnico V magnet, is controlled by a simple volume and tone control, without any unnecessary frills. With a Scalini Macassar Ebony pickguard, Stairstep tailpiece and gold-plated strap buttons, every detail signals an instrument designed for the jazz stage. Made in Korea and supplied with a gig bag, it weighs 3.67 kg — a feather in your hands.