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Early publications depict a somewhat different instrument than what was to be eventually produced. This 1969 brochure shows a fair
number of them. Although minor, such differences are apparent to the musician with a trained eye.
To begin with, there appears to be a different shaped truss rod cover on the headstock and the cover itself only features two screws to
secure it to the headstock. The production models had a somewhat different shape and used three screws to secure it to the headstock.
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The pickup shown here is a much brighter color, and appears to be a metal covering or something similar to it. The shape of the pickup
itself is different. It appears to be wider and thinner than what was produced. There is no sliding pickup design, thus no cavity, or
channel on the body. Although the brochure does mention interchangable pickups, it also mentions that one had to loosen the strings,
and snap out the current pickup, then snap in the next pickup, re-tighten the strings and bring the instrument back up to pitch.
Also different is a thin strip of the scratchplate which can be seen lying between the pickup and the combination bridge/tailpiece.
On the scratchplate, near the output jack, there appears to be no selector switch for the tonal quality of the pickups. The volume &
tone potentiometers are trimmed with different looking knobs which are adorned with the Ampeg logo on them.
On the bottom of the lucite body, there is only one guitar strap pin shown. While this is normal for most guitars, the Dan Armstrong
guitars employed two such strap pins on the bottom. The string saddle appears to be made out of metal (perhaps brass) in the brochure,
but by the time they were in production, this had changed to wood, specifically, rosewood. The bridge/tailpiece combination shown only
utilizes three screws that attach it to the lucite body, whereas the production models had 4 such screws.
Lastly, the lower cut-away of the lucite body is seen identical to the upper cut-away. By production time this had been re-designed
and re-shaped to accomodate for comfort for players who wanted to reach the very top frets.
But overall the literature served to give a curious public a brief look at what Dan was designing, and what was 'cookin' at Ampeg.
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