The brushed aluminum knobs nicely set off the difficult combination of clear acrylic, wood patterned Formica®, and chrome hardware. Earlier brochures reveal a different set of knobs than these and Dan points out, "Ampeg had planned to build mixers for P.A. systems, and as a result, had acquired thousands of these knobs - the same kind that matched their amplifier line."

Dan continues, adding "but the mixers had problems and the systems never made it into production and were eventually discontinued altogether. Being left with so many knobs, Ampeg approached me and asked if I could make use of them - I said sure!" The instruments would never use a different style knob after that.

The Dan Armstrong guitars featured a combination bridge & tailpiece assembly that was styled after the Danelectro^® line of instruments. As seen above, the early models were equipped with a fully chrome tailpiece that employed a wooden bridge that could be slid back and forth on the tailpiece in order to get the best overall intonation that the instrument was capable of. These saddles came in three different sizes. Low, for the lowest possible string action, medium for average string height, and high, for the highest possible action. Many bottleneck slide players chose the latter as it is ideal for bottleneck playing styles where one does not want any buzzing to occur as a result of the slide bumping against the frets. For other adjustments, inserting or removing shims from under the saddle allows for minor changes in string height.

As seen upper left, the bridge saddle itself is comprised of a strip of rosewood that resides on top of the chrome tailpiece. Strings leave the tailpiece and travel over this saddle making their way to the nut on the headstock. The entire saddle can be slid forward or back or - if warranted - one can slant the saddle, thus making one side of it forward on the tailpiece, while the other half of it swings to the back for intonation purposes.

As seen upper right - the saddle is equipped with a brass pin that protrudes from the bottom. This pin was made to glide back and forth in a channel on the tailpiece that can be seen in the photos above. Although this channel allows for the forward & backward travel of the saddle for intonation, Dan always maintained that "the real purpose of the pin and the channel was to help keep the saddle from any side to side slippage."

While the pin & channel would prevent any side to side slippage it couldn't solve the one major issue that many players were experiencing, and that was the unwanted forward and reverse travel of the wooden saddlepiece as it slipped on the smooth surface of the chrome tailpiece - even with the strings tuned to pitch. While some of this was truly slippage - due to the fact that some players just have a hard & aggressive playing style, much more of it was due not to 'slippage' but rather 'movement'.

Movement occurred when players changed their guitar strings. Like today, many players of the time removed all of the strings before installing a new set. Basically because it gives a person an opportunity to clean the instrument in areas that are otherwise inaccessible when the strings are on. While this practice is fine on many instruments, it was, and still is, not advisable on a Dan Armstrong guitar or any guitar that employs a combination bridge & tailpiece like this.

Instead, it is suggested to change strings one at a time, due to the fact that when one removes all of the strings the rosewood saddle can move out of position and even fall off the guitar. While repositioning the saddle is a relatively painless process today, few players of the time had the knowledge or equipment to help them in this endeavor.

Worse yet, many players, even professionals - didn't even know what intonation was - let alone how to set it. All that they knew was that once they put the saddle back on and strung the guitar back up in tune, it didn't sound the same when played as it did before. According to Dan "This is one reason the guitar models were used so much for slide guitar. Slide players never really needed the intonation to be so exact. Couple this with a two octave neck, double cutaways for reaching the upper registers, and the tremendous sustain these instruments were capable of and you have a slide players dream guitar."

Both Dan and Ampeg tried in vain to educate not only players, but even their product dealers. They wanted to get the word out to as many as they could in order to advise players to change their strings one at a time so as not to mess up the intonation. Furthermore, they schooled most, if not all of their dealers on how to set the bridge saddle piece in the event it ever got moved or removed in any way. Essentially it's an easy setup - all ones does is use a strobe tuner to get the two outside E strings intonated and the rest falls inbetween. "It's not perfect by any means" Dan once told me, adding "I know it's the guitars achilles heel - I had planned a better type of bridge/tailpiece unit but I was running out of time as my contract with Ampeg was about to expire for turning in the prototype, and so I had to make a tough decision." Even then, some players argue that this type of bridge/tailpiece was the correct decision as in their opinion, it's the rosewood bridge saddle that gives these instruments the warmth they need.

Despite that, later model Dan Armstrongs were equipped with a newer style bridge saddle. As can be seen upper left, the rosewood saddle was now adorned with a fret across it. When I asked Dan about it he mentioned that "the fret serves two purposes actually. First off, it helps a little bit with the intonation, it gets it on a little better - but what I love about the fret is that it gives the instrument more zing which I felt was needed." I remember asking him "ummmm......zing??" to which he replied "more treble - more high end." We went on to discuss how some players liked the all wood saddle over the saddle with the fret and Dan was correct to point out that at the time both saddles with, & without a fret were available - and in all 3 heights.

In addition to the new style saddles, Dan made a design change to the tailpiece to help players who were experiencing the slippage problems mentioned above. As seen upper right, later model Armstrongs had a section of the tailpiece sandblasted which roughed-up the chrome surface just enough to keep the rosewood saddle securely in place, even for the hardiest of players.

The tailpiece was secured to the top of the acrylic body using four screws. It was too time consuming to both drill and tap threads so Dan decided to use self-tapping screws. As seen upper left, the screws used on the earliest tailpiece were straight head screwdriver screws, while later models - as seen upper right - were fitted with the more familiar 'phillips' type screws in late 1969 or early 1970. According to Dan the switch was due to the fact that there was simply too much slippage occuring on the production floor when inserting & self-tapping the straight head screws. This sometimes resulted in marred, or even scarred up bodies that had to be either polished out or thrown out altogether, all depending on how badly the damage was. The phillips screws worked better, with less problems and were thus used throughout the remainder of the production of the Dan Armstrong instruments.

Notice the shallow cut string slots used on the earlier earlier tailpiece over that of the later model which is cut much deeper. This change occured as a result of customer complaints. More about it can be read in the guitar section.