I already had the pleasure to show from these pages the earliest Excel  built by John D’Angelico in 1934. If not the very first, it was the lowest-numbered Excel ever found, and probably the second one ever built.

It was an extraordinary intrument in many respects, with a flashy but severe look a the same time, with a balanced mix of graceful shape and art-déco cosmetical appointments. The first Excel (or "Exel" as inlaid in the headstock) was a full-bodied archtop, built with carefully selected woods, conceived as an even more classy answer to the "advanced" L-5 introduced by Gibson. It shared shape and dimentions with the new L-5, but it was far more sophisticated in its decoration, from the straight-line art-déco f holes, and the D'A trademark headstock shape with "broken pediment and cupola", a memory of the Ciani mandolins from the '20s.

The earliest guitars were conceived as powerful rhythm intruments with all the cutting power needed to compete - unamplified - with the large horn sections of the swing band of the time, but with a beautiful and warm sound for solo work in small groups or duo (especially in a non-jazz context).

Beside this detail, the guitar conforms to the specifications of the Excels built in those years: the headstock is even bigger, and gets larger towards the upper end to create an even richer volute, which still can be considered almost an anabolyzed version of the Ciani mandolins' shape.  Grover Imperial tuners are an important part of the classic D'Angelico look, and they are perfectly in style with the shape of the headstock. The guitar had a very beautiful and clean binding job, and it's easy to recognize the hand and skills of the young James D'Aquisto, who took care of these works in the later years of D'Angelico career, adding a touch of cleanness and precision to this detail, which was often not so perfect in the earlier guitars. Woods are stunning… the spruce of the top has a tight grain which gets wider towards the body edges, while the flamed maple of the back and sides has a very even and tight quarter-sawn grain.

The picture of the two Excels shows many differences between the two guitars: not only the overall shape, but also the sunburst shading of the finish, more red in the ’59 than in the ’34, still inspired by the old L-5's Cremona Brown. Larger mother-of-pearl inlays, which were etched with geometrical figures in the ’34 guitar, decore the ebony fingerboard. The latter hasn't anymore the pointed end typical of the early Excel, but a squared-off shape which allowed a better and more elegant installation of the floating pickup. Another important difference is the adjustable truss-rod, introduced in D’Angelico guitars only after the Gibson patent had expired. The bridges are surprisingly similar, both are made of ebony and have a straight line saddle, so different from the "pre-compensated" saddle of Gibson archtops. D'Aquisto himself, many years later, would have recognized in this solution the best possible way to give his archtops an even and balanced intonation.

A heavily flamed one-piece maple neck completes the guitar's structure, and marks a radical departure from the earlier laminated construction, adding a touch of even higher elegance to the guitar, and showing the great trust that D'Angelico put in the stability and strength of his creations.

The braces that strengthen the top have the classic X scheme, and are a little overdimentioned to reduce feedback, as it is often the case for "electric" D'As. That does not affect the quality of the sound of the Excel. Yes, maybe the guitar has a lower acoustic volume compared to the all-acoustic full-bodied archtops, but the voice is always well balanced, with a slightly compressed dynamic response…. and we must always remember that acoustic volume wasn't anymore the main goal, unlike for the '30s archtop guitars.