Looks kinda like a Bandsman doesn’t it!

I bought my Dan Armstrong (London) in the seventies from a guitar maker who had clearance stock when Dan Armstrong stopped trading.

The first thing I did was to slacken off the pickup mounting screws, polish up the pickup rail and then slide the pickup around as quick as I could flick a switch. I  used it like that for years.

The guitar has the same design ethos as a Bandsman. It’s all mahogany, with a set neck and a wraparound bridge (KISS). The pickup was low impedance, which meant it was shallow enough to fit the mounting rail underneath. To compensate, there was a transformer in the control cavity. Apparently, it took them ages to get a transformer that got the sound right.

There’s a tap via the tone control which earths one coil when the tone is wide open. No push pull - just a standard linear pot. That’s still my preferred wiring on my other guitars. God knows why, but I wrote to Dan Armstrong about the wiring and got a comprehensive reply back.

Other innovations included two strap buttons at the base so it was more stable when standing up. That didn’t stop the neck falling out when someone kicked it over in rehearsal, though. An Edinburgh guitar tech had to shim the neck pocket with a bunch of veneer to get it back together. Apparently the guitars were machined and assembled in a London furniture factory and standards were not erm... consistent.

You’ll be pleased to know that mine is not worth anything because I put a belly carve on it and sprayed it cream.