Rickresource Rickenbacker Forum

Anyone have any experiences, stories or advice regarding the late sixties, early seventies Dan Armstrong Lucite basses?

I owned one a long time ago. Bought it for the "cool" factor,but i couldn't really get the sound i wanted out of it . It was one of a few short scale basses i've tried out over the years,which i finally realized is not my thang. I Still think they're cool looking.....
They had different pickups,the one in mine was a rather murky sounding humbucker.

Can't speak for the bass, but I've owned a handful of the original Ampeg Dan Amstrong guitars.

Heavy as they come and built like a tank! Cool guitars, I wish I still owned one..

collin wrote:Can't speak for the bass, but I've owned a handful of the original Ampeg Dan Amstrong guitars.

Heavy as they come and built like a tank! Cool guitars, I wish I still owned one..

Oh,yeah,i had forgotten about the weight! How could such a small bodied instrument be so heavy? And i was a young man whrn i had mine...

Would love to get one of the guitars for dedicated open tuning slide.

I have not played one of the basses, but I did get to hear one last August when I saw Ian McLagan (RIP) and the Bump Band in Texas. The bass had the single coil pickup in it and what sounded like roundwounds on it. It sounded pretty good, but then again, I'm sure nearly anything sounds good through an Ampeg fliptop amp.

I had one on a trial basis for about six weeks back in 1971 I think.This one was fretless,with 2 interchangeable pickups.It sounded ok, but I didn't like the bridge or the tuners.I wish I had kept it as there were only about 100 Dan Armstrong fretless basses made. That thing would be worth decent money now! I was just starting to get used to it when I returned it. I got a 66 Precision instead.

I have a '70 See Through. Great bass, lots of tones, sustains for days. Heavy as hell. One interesting feature on these is that the pickup is actually two pickups sandwiched together, one being more bassy, one with more of a treble voicing, and the tone knob actually pans between them. Later examples in the run also had a switch to bring a capacitor into the circuit.

Weak points of the original versions is that there's no real bridge adjustment for intonation and action height. The original purchaser was given two or three of the one-piece rosewood bridges (quite like Danelectro bridges of the same era; no surprise there since Armstrong had a connection) of differing height. Of course they picked the one they liked and lost the rest. This is why you'll find some that have high action and others with low. Mine plays like butter. (Mine is the one that was photographed for the book Ampeg: The Story Behind the Sound by Hopkins and Moore.) Other weak points are the rubbery covering on the pickups, which often gets brittle and peels (many owners have trimmed them neatly), and the wood tone pick guards get brittle and break around the output jack, which is why you see so many of them reinforced there with fender washers.

Bottom line, I think it's a great bass if the action is where you want it, it can be fatiguing as hell to wear on stage because of its weight. You're not going to get any sort of a woody tone out of it, but will get lots of sustain. This bass proved to me that a short-scale bass can play and sound well, my previous experience having been a Fender Mucusmaster, which was a horrid instrument. It might not be most people's main instrument, but it makes a good adjunct to another bass.

myrtbass wrote: I got a 66 Precision instead.

You did the right thing!

This is one of the original prototypes from '67/68 I believe. It had an incredibly thin neck that would bend with the slightest pressure.
Sounded awesome and I wish I had not sold it about 10 years ago.

I recall playing one or two in the early '70s, they were quite heavy (and solid) is the only thing I remember about them.

I have one. It weighs 9 pounds, 12 ounces. It's one of the early ones, without the 3-way switch.

I'd played one for years when they first came out in the late 60's. It was my third bass, after my Hofner and '65 Precision Bass. Sold it long ago.

But I had a fondness for them, so I bought another.

The weak spot on them were the pickguards, which were made out of very brittle rosewood-pattern Formica, first finished gloss and then matte. If you used a cable with a straight plug, and someone stepped on the cable, the jack would rip out of the pickguard.

I loved the short scale and the nice neck.

Didn't especially love the guitar-sized tuning buttons.

Lots of good info here: http://www.danarmstrong.org/menu.html

Not to stray too far off topic, but...

About two/three weeks ago, I picked up a new Rolling Stones archive DVD release of the band playing the Marquee Club in 1971. Keef plays a Dan Armstrong for the entire show, switching to another one in Open "G" tuning. It's official, I want one now...



Back on topic: Not helping, Len!!

JakeK wrote:Back on topic: Not helping, Len!!

Sorry, Jake!

LenMinNJ wrote:I have one. . .

Len! So neat to run into you here! I bought my AUB-1 from you what, maybe twentyish years ago? Still have it, and it was photographed for the Ampeg book as well. (I also still have my binaural mics, though my D-7 seems not to be working anymore, leaving me unable to listen to my DATs.)

farace wrote:Len! So neat to run into you here!

Hey, Bob! Really nice to catch you here. I remember that Ampeg bass well.

At one point I had an Ampeg ASB-1 Devil Bass too. That was something to look at. Not much fun to play, though.