Dan Armstrong

Dan Kent Armstrong (1934–2004) opened his guitar repair shop on West 48th Street in New York in 1965, later relocating to Greenwich Village. In 1968, Ampeg hired him to consult on their guitar line. What he proposed instead was something entirely new: bodies machined from solid blocks of clear acrylic — Lucite, Plexiglas, Perspex, all trade names for the same PMMA material — with interchangeable pickups slotting into a routed channel and secured by a thumbscrew. "I just wanted to be as original as possible," he told Guitar magazine in 1973. "Not to copy anybody's anything."

The See-Through guitar and bass launched at the 1969 NAMM show. Six pickup variants were available — Rock, Country, and Jazz, each in Treble and Bass voicings — designed by Bill Lawrence, who shared Armstrong's Greenwich Village workshop. Around 3,000 guitars and 3,000 basses were produced before Armstrong broke with Ampeg in 1971 over disputes about manufacturing quality and costs. Keith Richards received one late in 1969 during Stones rehearsals and used it on the subsequent US tour; it appears on the cover of Get Yer Ya-Ya's Out!. Other users have included Bill Wyman, Jack Bruce, Leslie West, Paul McCartney, Joe Perry, Johnny Thunders, Randy Rhoads, and Tom Verlaine.

After leaving Ampeg, Armstrong moved to London, where between 1972 and 1975 he built the Dan Armstrong London series — wood-bodied guitars with a genuinely sliding pickup that could be repositioned anywhere between neck and bridge. He also developed effects units (the "Sound Modifiers"), amplifier designs, and pickup work. A 1998 Japanese reissue of the See-Through, built by Fujigen, used pickups made by his son Kent Armstrong, who continues to manufacture pickups today.