Dan Armstrong

Dan Armstrong was an American guitarist, luthier, and session musician.

Biography

Dan Kent Armstrong was born on October 7, 1934 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He started playing the guitar at age 11, and moved to New York in the early 1960s in order to work as a studio musician and guitar repairman. In 1965 he opened his own guitar repair shop, 'Dan Armstrong's Guitar Service', on West 48th Street. The building was razed in 1968 to make room for 30 Rockefeller Plaza, and Armstrong relocated his shop, renamed 'Dan Armstrong Guitars', to Laguardia Place in Greenwich Village.

In 1968 the Ampeg Company of Linden, New Jersey hired Armstrong as a consultant to improve their Grammer line of guitars. He designed a new line of guitars and basses that were constructed of clear Plexiglas. These guitars had interchangeable pickups designed by Bill Lawrence who shared the Greenwich Village shop with Armstrong, and eventually took it over when Armstrong moved to London. The guitars had long sustain caused by the solid Plexiglas body, though that material made for a heavy guitar—around 10 lbs. A second reissue of the Dan Armstrong guitar was launched in 2006.