D’Angelico has given its Premier semi-hollows a makeover for 2023 – and they look absolutely stunning

D’Angelico has announced an eye-catching refresh of its mid-priced Premier series, offering the DC, Mini DC and SS semi-hollow electric guitars in a trio of new but old-school finishes.

Arriving in Black Flake, Dark Iced Tear Burst and Brown Burst, with a lick of high-gloss poly making those colors pop, the Premier semi-hollows are are all electric guitars under $1,000 that will do a pro-quality job, and have a certain class and refinement about them that belies the price tag. 

A lot of that is down to the Art Deco styling and aesthetically pleasing design features that make a D’Angelico guitar a D’Angelico guitar. We’ll get to them in a moment, but there are a host of new features for this refreshed series to differentiate them for their predecessors – which, incidentally, are available from some retailers heavily discounted. 

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Yes, the finishes are new. But so too are the pickups. The Premier DC and Mini DC ship with a pair of nickel-covered Supro Bolt Bucker A5 humbucker pickups, which are custom-voiced to sound like the legendary PAF, i.e. the Holy Grail of any vintage ‘bucker. The Premier SS, meanwhile, has a pair of Supro Bolt Bucker A2 humbuckers.

Eagle-eyed readers might notice another cosmetic change, with D’Angelico swapping out the black ‘speed-style’ control knobs in favor of ebony pots. Pretty neat.

And there have been some upgrades to the hardware, too, with Grover ‘stair-step’ Super Rotomatic tuners and Graph Tech NuBone XL nuts as standard. 

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This handsome trio share a lot of tonal characteristics, with each of them offering a versatile platform for players operating in the blues guitar, jazz guitar or rock spaces.

They share some specs, too – most notably the aluminum skyscraper truss rod cover and ornate MOP brand inlays on the headstock, and the pearloid block inlays on the ebony fingerboard. 

But more significantly, they all have the same playable C profile set maple necks and the center-block construction that helps put the squeeze on feedback when you are playing through a dimed guitar amp.

The DC has a 16” wide body, the Mini DC is 14” across, and both are composed of laminated figured maple on the burst finishes and laminated maple on the solid-color Black flake. There’s five-ply bending on the body, and on the pickguards, with three-ply on the headstock.

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The Premier SS shares a similar build, with a similar binding pattern tying the model together, but is 15” wide and has a single-cut body shape. 

Other features shared by the nwe Premier semi-hollows include nickel tune-o-matic style bridges and stop-bar tailpieces, 22 medium nickel-silver frets, a 25” scale length and 14” fingerboard radius, and all bodies are 1.75” deep.

Best of all, these smart-looking semi-hollow electrics do not cost the earth. Priced $899, the new Premier DC, Premier Mini DC and Premier SS models are available now.

Head over to D'Angelico for more details and pics.