Dan Armstrong - Man & Guitars

As seen above, and, at the time of writing & designing these pages, the fourth black Dan Armstrong guitar was owned by Mr. John Nelson who has since sold it on Ebay's online auction for over $6,000.00 and again, like any prototype is somewhat different than the ones shown prior to it. This one has several unique features & prior to selling it, John was kind enough to disassemble the instrument to highlight these features for us. All photos on this page are courtesy of Mr. John Nelson.

As seen at upper left, this particular prototype has a rubbery type foam that raises the height of the pickup on one side of the cavity. As stated earlier, the routing depth of the pickup channel appears to have been a common problem with all these prototypes for whatever reasons. At upper right the tooling marks can easily be seen as the various cavities on the guitar body was hand routed.

A close up of the rubber type foam that would seem to be holding the pickup not only up in height but also to the right, onto the banana plugs to make a better connection to the guitars electrical circuitry. Notice the straight headed screws holding down an un-sandblasted bridge & tailpiece as well as the smaller routing for the ball-end of the guitar strings. At the upper right the tooling marks for the neck are clearly seen. Notice the reflection near the lower left corner.

At left, the cavity for the volume and tone controls is routed out and one can see the extra depth that was routed for the guitars input jack.

At right, another theme common to these prototypes is the afterwards addition of a piece of butyrate that is screwed down onto the body and houses the banana type plugs that the pickup slides onto. The acrylic instruments already in production had no such terminal block as this for they simply did not route all they way through from the pickup cavity to the control cavity. Why it was done on these prototypes remains unknown but it may help explain the "extra machining and expense" that Dan had talked about.

Also, notice two small holes drilled into the body just between the banana plugs. Their existance remains a mystery, but the best guess is that they were a simple mistake, and all part of the construction of a prototype.

Fortunately, and as seen at the upper left, the backside of this instrument reveals that the holes were not drilled all the way through the body. At the upper right, tool markings for the pickup screw can be clearly seen in this photo. Again, notice the reflections of what appears to be a lamp, and even the digital camera itself as John took these photos.

Unique to this guitar is the fact that the neck has been painted black. Although it is a very professional job, and some have since argued that it is original, when I emailed Dan in regard to the serial numbers on these necks he replied that the black instruments "were fitted out with production line necks made at the time and bolted onto a black guitar instead of a clear one." In any case, it would appear that the presence of a black finished neck did not hurt the resale value too much, given what the instrument fetched on the ever-famous online auction site.

In these photos the painted neck is seen better. As stated earlier, it is a very professional and nice looking finish, as can be seen by the exactness of where the finish meets the rosewood fingerboard in the upper left photo.

Again in these photos the black finished neck can be seen where it meets the formica on the headstock. The smooth, unmatted formica, coupled with Schaller tuners are all consistent with the low serial number on the base of the neck, and appear proper for the time frame.