D’Angelico debuts stunning signature semi-hollow Deluxe DC for neo-soul virtuoso Melanie Faye

Neo-soul star Melanie Faye has a new signature guitar, and it’s an exquisite Deluxe DC semi-hollow from D’Angelico, finished in a custom Metallic Surf Green. 

At first blush, this is classic D’Angelico, replete with old-school style, but it’s very much a bespoke instrument based off the electric guitar that helped Faye make her name. Faye admitted that it’s a little hard to process that she has a guitar with her name on it, and describes how she fell down the D’Angelico f-hole.

“This is pretty crazy,” says Faye. “Six years ago, I got my first D’Angelico, and it was an Excel DC in a Surf Green finish, and what I really liked about it was the sustain and the tone when I played with overdrive. 

“I used the Excel DC on my Jimi Hendrix and Mariah Carey tribute video at Summit, and I chose that guitar because it looks really good onstage, that Surf Green and the gold [hardware]. But also I just love the big, clean tone of a semi-hollow with boutique pickups. Yeah, I fell in love with the tone that day.”

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But this is a guitar that pays attention to the fundamentals, too. It has a semi-hollow laminated maple build, 3-ply binding to round things off. There’s a bone nut. It has a three-piece set neck, shaped in a C profile, a 24.75” scale, and a pair of Kent Armstrong 57 Icon humbuckers at the bridge and neck positions that offer “warm, round mids with articulate highs”. In other words, a vintage-style voicing. 

You can eke a lot of tones out of them, too, with a control loom that includes individual volume and tone controls, plus a push/pull function on the tone for split-coil action. A three-way toggle switch selects the pickup position.

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The Melanie Faye Deluxe DC is made in South Korea and ships in a deluxe hardshell guitar case. It’s priced $1,999 and is available now from selected dealers.

Once more, as with the recently released Deluxe Eric Krasno Brighton, they’re only making 50 of these, so you’d best be quick. For more details, head over to D’Angelico.