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While living in England in the mid 1970s, Dan designed a series of special effects devices that plugged into the guitar directly,
and then a cable was attached to the amplifier.
These devices were small boxes of circuitry and were color coded modules included the Red Ranger (EQ), Blue Clipper
(distortion), Purple Peaker (EQ), Green Ringer (ring modulator), Yellow Humper (EQ) and the widely acclaimed
compression unit, the Orange Squeezer ®
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While designed by Dan, these units were manufactured and marketed by the Musitronics Company, which had already enjoyed great
success with their Mutron effects devices. Ironically, Dan was also involved in devising the Mutron Octave divider, Volume Wah,
and Gizmo.
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Throughout the 1980's Dan made limited quantities of custom made guitars and pickups like the one seen here. The pickups were often sold
through St Louis Music.
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He again enjoyed great success through his unique and innovative wiring designs for the Fender Stratocaster guitars which
quickly became tagged the Dan Armstrong Super Strat in the music industry. His designs and articles graced many
music publications like this August 1987 issue of Guitar Player Magazine. Dan wrote many such articles for Guitar Player.
As far as the actual design goes, Dan verified what I had already suspected. That, while there are minor differences, in essence he took
the same basic
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design that he used on the Dan Armstrong bass guitar, expanded on it, and applied it to the three pickups on the
Stratocaster guitars. By selecting a pair of pickups and using the tone control, one can get a wide variety of sounds by blending
any two by using the tone control, just like what one does with the clear bass to achieve a particular sound.
Dan also built some guitar prototypes for the Westone product line in the late 1980s.
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