Dan Armstrong - Man & Guitars

Here's a rare bird. A Crestwood badge name copy of the Dan Armstrong · Ampeg guitar. It's extremely rare but is yet another badged name instrument built durig the MIJ golden-era.

The owner, Gene Bae stated "I acquired it in the early '00s. I am guessing it's an older Japanese guitar from the "lawsuit" era." At left, when he bought it, Gene stated "There was a cheap and terrible sounding thin Strat-style single coil pickup in the bridge position.I replaced the pickup with a nice new Seymour-Duncan 'hot' P90. It sounds amazing."

At right, and seen from the back, the Seymour-Duncan pickup is secured in place using the two Phillips screws that accompanied the pickup and are secured to the acrylic body. Circular cracks appear in the acrylic in this area, the cause of the cracks are unknown as Gene stated "the whole body has big crack on the back. I'm not exactly sure when that started as it did not crack in the same incident as the neck break."

In a larger view, an HTF bridge is employed. These bridges are also seen on many othe Japanese Dan Armstrong copy guitars as well as many other Japanese made instruments of the time. Being seen on so many other badged copy instruments, I can only speculate that HTF was a large hardware supplier to the Japanese guitar manufacturers of the time. Behind the bridge is a stop style tailpiece. To the left of all this and in the enlarged view - notice the lettering on what looks like an original Maxon volume pot.

As seen upper left, the original routing of the acrylic body leaves no doubt that this Crestwood model was made just like the Electra 2246, the Conrad 40223, the Shaftesbury 3402 and many other Dan Armstrong copy models that employ two humbucking (looking) pickups next one another with chrome plated metal covers. Along with a pickup change, the tone pot and pickup selector switch are removed from the guitars circuitry.

At right, a homemade scratchplate. The volume control gets kinda hidden without a knob. Gene goes on to say "I made my own scratchplate and used some cheap woodgrain patterned contact paper to make it look at least a little nicer."

At left, the front of the Crestwoods headstock. Immediately noticable is the badge name. Also notice that the truss rod cover is much like those on the original Dan Armstrong model, in that it's shaped the same and uses a matching piece of the faux-wood veneer used on the rest of the headstock. On the right, and from the rear, the headstock reveals that Gotoh tuners have replaced the factory tuners - the original tuners screw holes can be seen. Notice that the high E string tuner is missing its gear cover. At the bottom, notice the headstock-neck brake, Gene described it as follows "At some point, the neck broke at the headstock. I was on tour and I attempted to fix it with a few C-clamps, a generous amount of wood glue, and the luck of having a few days without shows. Somehow, it sorta worked."

He continues, stating "The intonation is off and the tuning stability isn't the best. But it's good enough for rock'n'roll. Despite all the issues, I continue to use. But I've always wanted to fix the neck. I've talked to a couple luthiers that have said that since it's been glued, rebreaking the neck to fix it to more exacting standards is more likely to completely ruin the neck rather than lead to a better fix."

At left, the 3 piece laminated neck on this Crestwood model is like many other copy type necks, with a darker central laminate. At right, a shorter neck tongue confirms what was already known - that this was a two humbucking style guitar.

Crestwood is a brand name of La Playa Distributing Co. originally of Detroit and later of Madison Heights, Michigan.