Seen here in the band Family Affair, Dan Armstrong is playing lead guitar. It's hard to make out what kind of guitar he has slung on as the headstock looks to be like that from the acrylic Ampeg models, yet the body looks to be wooden.

Although this site is dedicated to Dan Armstrong I wish to take some space in this section to honor the life of a good friend and an amazing musician who's life was cut short. He was Mark Severn, seen above left playing a Stratocaster^® type guitar with a Telecaster^® neck. But as can be seen upper right, he loved Dan Armstrong instruments, though here he is playing an Electra^® copy which is also shown in the 'copies' section of this site.

Mark built guitars for 30 or so years, designed and wound his own pickups. In fact he originally contacted me in regard to how Dan Armstrong and Bill Lawrence had made the pickups for the Dan Armstrong guitars. Seen upper left is a photo of Mark playing an incredibly accurate copy of a Gibson 1959 Les Paul^® guitar that he made himself using original hardware, while at upper right he is seen playing an original Dan Armstrong · Ampeg guitar, though it sported an original Gibson PAF^® humbucking pickup in it.

Mark was greatly interested in the brown colored resin of the Dan Armstrong pickups. Specifically, he wanted to know what was used in the resin to give it the brown color for he had tried many things but always had to end up painting his pickups before they were complete, as can be seen above left.

In fact, he had already made several Dan Armstrong clone type pickups but he was looking for an easier way to do it, for although his methods of making a pickup worked well, it took a lot of time and "elbow grease" as he said in one letter. At upper right, original Dan Armstrong pickups can be seen at the far left and the far right with a Mark Severn pickup in the middle.

I emailed him back and informed him that I will ask Dan more about this. I served as middle-man between them for awhile when all of a sudden Dan said, "tell ya what - just give him my email address and I'll fix him up." I was pretty stunned, for given all the emails I had received since the site went up - this was the only time that Dan wished to have his email address given out. So I sent Mark his address and can only assume that he got the answers he needed. As seen at left, a Mark Severn homebrewed winding jig where Mark would wind many types of pickups. Seen here, are single-coil bobbins, one half of a humbucker bobbin, and a P90 bobbin. Mark would wind just about any type of pickup and he could then take any kind of pickup and turn it into a Dan Armstrong type pickup where it would fit into a Dan Armstrong · Ampeg guitar.