Dan Armstrong - The Man and his Guitars

The last of the most common type searches come from players of the Dan Armstrong bass. It seems at one time or another almost every bass has had the thumb rest removed, even if for only awhile. Unfortunately for many, often times the thumb rest, as well as its two mounting screws, get lost in the shuffle.

Fortunately all is not lost - thanks to Guy at Classic Guitar Boxes, who can custom make any type of thumb rest for any bass guitar, so long as you can supply him with the measurements. As seen upper left, a rosewood thumb rest sports two gold plated screws, while at upper right, an ebony rest is shown with two chrome plated screws. As long as he has the dimensions, Guy can produce a thumb rest in a wide variety of materials and colors.

At upper left, an enlarged view of one of the two screws that secure the thumb rest to the body of the bass guitar. At upper right, the rosewood thumb rest. The measurements included in these photos are given in inches as well as millimeters and are next to a letter. The letter, then, corresponds to the particular part of the screw (or thumb rest) that the measurement was taken from. They are as follows

A is the diameter of the screw head.

B is the diameter of the smooth portion of the shaft directly under the screw head.

C is the length of the smooth portion of the shaft.

D is the diameter of the smooth portion of the shaft just before the threads begin.

E is the diameter of the threaded portion of the shaft where the threads begin

F is the length of the threaded portion of the shaft.

G is the diameter of the threaded portion of the shaft where the threads end.

H is the overall length of the screw from top to bottom.

I is the width of the rosewood thumb rest.

J is the distance from the end of the thumb rest to the center of the screw holes.

K is the height of the rosewood thumb rest.

L is the overall length of the rosewood thumb rest.

M is the distance from one screw hole to another on center.

Above left and right are traced out drawings of the thumb rest from my 1970 Dan Armstrong · Ampeg bass, showing the shape of the thumb rest as well as the placing of the screw mounting screws. Both of these drawings have been scanned to the actual scale size of the thumb rest and are available as a download. If you choose to print it out, and if you are a Windows^® user resist the urge to print from within Windows Picture & Fax Viewer as it automatically resizes everything. What you want instead, is to use a program that will print out a hard copy at exactly the same size. You can get the file here.

These are the most common requests that have come across my desk over the years, though they are by no means the only ones. I also get Email regarding the remainder of the parts for the Dan Armstrong · Ampeg instruments, and even a few for the Dan Armstrong London instruments. Items ranging from replacement necks, nuts, scratchplates, electronics, knobs and more are sought after and my best advice is to check in with the larger music stores to see if they have anything. Better yet, the best place to find such parts is the online auctions on the Internet as from time to time original parts for Dan Armstrong instruments turn up and are put up for auction.