1971 Armstrong Fretless Excellent, Original Hard, $2,995.00

I’ve had this bass for probably thirty years or more and it’s finally time for it to find a new home. I’ve kept it all this time as one of the few tangible reminders of my very personal association with Dan Armstrong, back in the day. As many of you may know, I hand-built the original prototype guitar and bass for Danny at his request back in 1967-8 or so, from a set of rough drawings (which I still have), and a whole lot of talking between us, perhaps fueled, at the time, by some er, combustibles. Well, the 60s, you know. Danny had come up with the idea of a Plexiglass-bodied electric, and, as he did with all of his brilliant ideas (there was an astounding number of them), immediately got others to do the working out of details for him. So….. it was up to me, as a 20-year-old, to come up with bevels on the body, a peghead design, neck shape and inlay, how to attach the neck, way more. I did quite a creditable job if I do say so myself, making both instruments in my own repair/restoration shop, long before I ever had a store. They went to Ampeg as instruments to copy in production; no one knows whatever happened to those two originals, probably cut and modified to death for experimentation. While this particular bass is not one of those, it is an early one and extremely rare, being one of what I’m told were only about fifty fretless ones, ever. It still has all its original parts, including a real ivory nut and genuine Amrerican-made Grover Rotomatic tuners (I was a high-quality-only kind of kid, still am), also comes with two spare rosewood saddles, no idea why. One of the photos below is of Danny and me holding the very first prototype guitar right after I finished it, in 1968 or so, but who could remember exact dates from back then? Like they say, if you can remember the 60s clearly, you weren’t there. This bass still has its original hard shell case though. $2995 w/ohsc