MusicRadar

If you've always been on the verge of giving a Blade guitar a try, the Dayton Standard might be the perfect model to sway you.

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• Review

We've looked at the Japanese-made Dayton Custom in the past and, as befitted its high-end spec sheet, wide range of terrific tones and custom shop conception, it came with a hefty four-figure price tag.

Christian Hatstatt is second-in-command at Blade/Levinson Guitars, and he also had a hand in the inception of the original Dayton, so we asked him to remind us of the concept behind this Chinese version of the design.

"The idea was to create a new guitar shape based on a single cutaway in order to bring in the Telecaster-type influences and, as we also wanted to make it a very versatile instrument, we wanted to install two [types of] pickup.

"These pickups are designed in-house and are the result of many months of hard toil."

"On the original Dayton Custom we used a neck singlecoil and bridge humbucker, because these were the two most evident choices. But, although this worked well, it did need a little more originality. So we created the Dayton Standard using a neck single-coil and a P-90-type bridge pickup."

The pickups are designed in-house by Gary Levinson himself and are the result of many months of hard toil, with the aim of producing units specifically for the new Daytons.

The bridge pickup on this model is a humbucker-sized Alnico II loaded P-90 that really looks the part under its nickel-silver cover. Then at the neck, we have a vintage-voiced single-coil that's based around Alnico V rod magnets. These are controlled by single volume and tone pots, as well as a standard three-position lever selector that boasts a Tele-style switch cap.

Current Blade guitars seem to sport a number of slightly different bridge designs. Here the unit in question is the M-54, a traditional Strat-inspired vibrato that comes out of the box set flush to the body, and one that's furnished with 'tone balance string spacing'… that's a new one on us.

"The M-54 vibrato has a width of 54mm, which keeps the strings centred on the fretboard," clarifies Hatstatt. "Furthermore, the saddles are slotted, which keeps the strings tight and ensures they remain in the same position on the saddles."

We'd describe the saddles as notched, but it's accurate to say that when bending any of their number, they don't slide across the metal to any degree.

The neck is made from a single piece of Canadian hard rock maple that's been subtly stained a vintage yellow, and the rosewood fingerboard demonstrates a distinctly modern 320mm (12.6-inches) radius: compare that to the 184mm (7.25-inches) radius of a '52 Telecaster, for example.