Dan Armstrong - Man & Guitars

What was no doubt a special order bass. Over the years I've been asked to look over and authenticate this particular instrument as it looks like nothing else seen before or since. At left, and immediately recognizable is a fretless ebony fingerboard with position markers on the bass side of it. At right, a stock maple neck attaches to the acrylic body with carriage bolts and carries the serial number D2603A.

At left, another 'attention grabber' is the pickup. Unlike all other Dan Armstrong instruments this bass features a pickup lacking the usual brown colored resin that engulfs most other pickups in the Dan Armstrong line - guitar or bass. Also notice an unusual shaped thumb rest which has a section cut out of it where ones thumb would reside. It's hard to say whether it came this way from the factory or not, but given all the customizing of this bass I guess it wouldn't surprise me if it was.

At right, a later made tailpiece that is sandblasted, along with a rosewood saddle that has a fret secured to it to provide what Dan called "more zing". Pressed to particularize what he meant by that - he replied "more treble." Stock volume & tone knobs are employed as well as a later day pickup selector switch. The usual output jack completes the list.

At left, as if the lack of the brown resin were not strange enough this pickup also reveals a bar pole piece that is equally, if not more strange. As seen better in enlarged view the full length pole piece has been notched, leaving the pieces under the strings untouched while severing off pieces between the strings. It is unknown why one would want to do this, as I naturally assumed it was done by a former owner but Kent Armstrong informed me that this, and likely more, were done at the factory - for whatever reasons. If so, I can only guess that it was most likely done at customers requests.

Notice too the white plastic bobbin and how you can see the windings of wire through it. These wires make up the top coil of the bass pickup. Off to the right side of the coil, notice too the hard wiring - the heavier wires that appear to have solder on them and how they connect to pools of solder below. The pools are residing on a flat piece of plastic - which separates the top coil from the botton coil. These wires, and pools, serve to connect/disconnect the top and bottom coils when activated by the pickup switch &/or the tone control for a wide variety of tones. Also notice the metal base of the pickup.

But the real eye opener, to me - and what ultimately helped me authenticate this instrument to those who requested it can be seen at the back of the neck, on the tongue, just before the pickup. Stamped into the maple, and seen upside down is what appears to be the letter 'G' lying between the D and G strings in this photo. Other appearances of this stamped-in letter, as well as other letters, can be seen in the necks section of this site.

At right, and seen from this angle, both the lower and upper coil bobbins can be seen, as can a black scratchplate with the white etched in lettering of Dan Armstrong · Ampeg. Notice too the grounding wire from the control cavity to the tailpiece. Normally this is hidden behind the scratchplate which, normally, butts up against the tailpiece. However, this scratchplate seems more narrow in this area. I can only speculate that due to an 'open-coil' pickup design they wanted a bit more clearance, so they narrowed this portion of the scratchplate.

Above left & right, views of the fretless ebony fingerboard. One can barely make out where the fingerboard ends and the scratchplate begins. Especially noticable in the photo on the right.

Above left, the headstock is trimmed out with a faux-wood veneer that matches the scratchplate. Equally trimmed out is the truss rod cover. Immediately obvious is that this particular headstock has had its tuners changed out to a set of Grover^® USA PAT Pending Wavy Bass Tuners. At right, the tuners as seen from the backside. Notice how the tuners for the D & G strings barely fit on the headstock.

At left & right, full sized images of this bass from the front and back. The combination of black wood and other trimmings, along with a white pickup and chrome plated parts - all on an acrylic body has led me to refer to this instrument as the Dan Armstrong 'Tuxedo' bass.