Dan Armstrong Bass Pickups

[billyz]

I got a Dan Armstrong Plexiglass Bass coming in for some electronic work.
Customer complains about the volume and tone on certain settings of the tone control.
I understand they are actually two coils one thin and one fat with some kind of blend tone control.

Anyone have experience with getting the best out of them ?

[David Schwab]

Is that an old bass or a reissue?

[David King]

That's a strange one.

Any reason to believe that it isn't just a stacked humbucker with a way to split off the bottom coil?

Why make the bottom coil larger area like that? Did they run out of room?

Are we missing a second story magnet on the near side?

[billyz]

Is that an old bass or a reissue?

David,
Actually he has two. They are old ones. They have different pickup mounts too. The older one has a metal plate on one side to hold down the pickup. the other has a thumb screw on the rear of the body.

He says the older one sounds better than the thumb screw model. But it has been modified electronically. Both have original pickups, but he say they look a little different from each other. I have not seen either one yet. He is on his way today.

any thoughts ?

I believe it is a Bill Lawrence design, and not humbucking. That pic is one I found on the web of a dead one someone removed the potting compound from.

[David Schwab]

That's a strange one.

Any reason to believe that it isn't just a stacked humbucker with a way to split off the bottom coil?

Why make the bottom coil larger area like that? Did they run out of room?

Are we missing a second story magnet on the near side?

The wider coil has a bassy tone. The top thinner coil is brighter, so then you get to mix the two.

They were Bill Lawrence designs, and they had a few different ones that were interchangeable.

I wouldn't mod the old basses. Maybe an outboard preamp would help.

[billyz]

Well, unfortunately one pickup was dead. the other only works on the fat coil and it is a problem with the strange tone control. So we decided to wire it up like a standard treble bleed using all the old parts.

Both pickups were slightly different, you could see the magnet on one side of one of them and the top was radiased differently too.

Both cavities were routed to different depths one was 3/4" deep the other 7/8" deep. The older one had the bar magnet soldered to the bottom plate with no thumb screw hole. the newer bad one was not soldered to the plate. Both had the bar rail grounded.

Surprisingly light considering the plexi body. At least not as heavy as I remembered. played like butter.

[belwar]

I got a Dan Armstrong Plexiglass Bass coming in for some electronic work.
Customer complains about the volume and tone on certain settings of the tone control.
I understand they are actually two coils one thin and one fat with some kind of blend tone control.

Anyone have experience with getting the best out of them ?

Woah! That sucker is wierd! what a neat looking pu

[billyz]

Pictures of the DA bass. Sorry did not get photos of the older pu before mounting it in the newer bass or of the wiring etc. ended up using a modifed P bass schematic with the existing CTS pots 1970, 250kA. Actually sounds pretty good , Fat ,punchy with great top end. The tone control .047 cap , really has alot of range.
only wish one of the pickups had been good to hear the true tone. Also, the PU coil measure 22k out of the circuit. I believe it is the fatter coil, but don't know for certain.

[David Schwab]

I always wanted one of those basses. I could never understand why he used a wooden bridge tough? Seems counter to the lucite body!

I made a lucite body for a Denelectro neck back in 1980.

[billyz]

I always wanted one of those basses. I could never understand why he used a wooden bridge tough? Seems counter to the lucite body!

I made a lucite body for a Denelectro neck back in 1980.

The Bridge does look like a Glorified Danelectro. Heavier though, the Rosewood piece has a small brass pin in the center to slide it around on. But does not hold it down. I have come to like the simple wood bridges. I used to remove all of them and put on an 9 way adjustable metallic something. I now embrace the Funkyness .

I am getting some unusal stuff in lately. Now a 68 EB2D with a non functioning baritone switch. Hope they left the inductor in.

Next week I have a sting model p bass coming in for a pair of DarK Star PU's and a BadAss. we are going to use some Stacked 500k pots for V/T probably .047 caps. Should be fun. I have zero experience with the DArkStar Bi Sonic pu's, they look interesting and I am a Fan of JAck Cassidy's early work.

[David Schwab]

The Bridge does look like a Glorified Danelectro. Heavier though, the Rosewood piece has a small brass pin in the center to slide it around on. But does not hold it down. I have come to like the simple wood bridges. I used to remove all of them and put on an 9 way adjustable metallic something. I now embrace the Funkyness .

Wooden bridges are fine, but it seems to contradict what Dan was trying to do with that guitar having a plastic body and all.

I am getting some unusal stuff in lately. Now a 68 EB2D with a non functioning baritone switch. Hope they left the inductor in.

The inductor is under the bridge under a black plastic cover. It's kind of stuck in with a lot of wax. I had a '72 EB-2D. The baritone switch is fairly useless. I think they were trying to make it sound like a bartitone guitar/tic-tack bass. You can't use it to play regular bass though, it removes all the low end. What I did was remove the push button switch and install a 6-position varitone circuit using the same inductor. That was far more useful.

Next week I have a sting model p bass coming in for a pair of DarK Star PU's and a BadAss. we are going to use some Stacked 500k pots for V/T probably .047 caps. Should be fun. I have zero experience with the DArkStar Bi Sonic pu's, they look interesting and I am a Fan of JAck Cassidy's early work.

I don't find two tone controls very useful. Turn one down and it affects both pickups. That's probably why Fender stopped doing the stacked Jazz basses.

The DarkStars sound nice. Stick some buffers after them and they are the basis of the early Alembic tone.

Here's my lucite dan-o

[billyz]

David,

Nice looking plexi instrument. Are they hard to shape and polish ? Do you get chipping when cutting?

I don't find Dual tone controls that useful either, but I am just the one doing the tech work. Personally I am happy with the old fender bridges too. I took off a Badass on my 65 p bass and put on an original, sounds fine to my ears.
I am curious to hear the DarkStar pu though. He is putting Flatwounds on too.

Yeah , I told the guy the baritone was useless, but he wanted it back stock. Maybe he is selling ? I bet if you just bypassed the whole thing it would sound much better. To me " Less is always More" in terms of tone and response. But I am an Old School kinda of guy.

[David Schwab]

It wasn't hard to work with. Back then I didn't have a lot of tools, so I cut the body out with a jigsaw and used a round over bit in a router for the edge. I did all the polishing by hand with some compound. It wasn't too bad. I had to make the body from two layers which I bolted together. Someone gave me a sheet of the stuff that was left over for a bank teller window! I was going to use glue, but didn't want bubbles to show.

I see from looking at the schematic that the choke is in the circuit all the time with the .02 cap. I don't remember if mine was like that. I guess it probably was. The baritone switch then bypasses the cap. I wired up my Varitone so it would bypass the whole thing on position 1.

I never used the bass much, since it was too boomy to use on stage and would feed back if you looked at it the wrong way. The two pickups never blended well, and the bridge pickup by itself was too thin and honky sounding. I ended up trading it to my girl friend at the time for a '74 P bass, which I still have, but now it's an 8-string bass. I posted that photo in another thread.

But I liked funky old basses, and also had two Mosrite Venture models.

[SlimJim John]

I got a Dan Armstrong Plexiglass Bass coming in for some electronic work.
Customer complains about the volume and tone on certain settings of the tone control.
I understand they are actually two coils one thin and one fat with some kind of blend tone control.

Anyone have experience with getting the best out of them ?

I wouldn't mess too much with it, especially if it has no pickup switch. The ones with no switch were prototypes and are the rarest of the rare.

Check the contacs on the pickup and make sure they are tight and not corroded at all.
I had a similar problem and the jack was bad! I replaced the jack and it worked magnificently!
You are right about the pickup, it is really two in one. The "tone" control is more of a 'fader' for moving between the top and bottom coils, one coil being for bottom and and the other for higher frequencies. I did some maintenance and got mine playing like new. I removed corrosion and rust from the pickup contacts and reseated the pickup, but there is also a wire there, and if the wire is in the wrong place it will sound "good", if you move the wire to another contact it sounds GREAT. I can't remember where the wire is supposed to go now since I did all this many years ago.

Mine is still playing great. I had the issue with the jack, and finally got some strings (GHS Flatwound light gauge short scale) and the thing is playing like an old friend again. I have wanted to mod it, with a 'better' pickup or a better bridge; that rosewood thing is horrible for adjusting the intonation and action. But I left it as it was and was rewarded with a value of about $3,500. I never sold it. I just love it so much.

Also Kent Armstrong lives in Grafton VT and can be reached by email. He will make custom pickups for these for about $100. Make sure you tell him you have an original, and if you have a bad pickup send it to him. The contacts on the ones Ampeg is making now are different from the original.

[SlimJim John]

The Bridge does look like a Glorified Danelectro. Heavier though, the Rosewood piece has a small brass pin in the center to slide it around on. But does not hold it down. I have come to like the simple wood bridges. I used to remove all of them and put on an 9 way adjustable metallic something. I now embrace the Funkyness .

I didn't see this pic before because I wasn't registered. Yeah, that's a Prototype. No switch. All the models released after this initial offering had a switch, and you can wire one in, but I wouldn't/didn't. It drops the value by about $750. If you care about value, that is. I don't, but I have kept it original all these years.

I passed up one with a switch a few years ago priced at $750 and have been kicking myself since. Kent Armstrong bought it because He didn't have one with a switch, either...

What's the Serial Number? (In case you don't know, hold it like you're playing it, and look down. It's on the side of the neck and can be seen through the Plexi...)