Electric Guitar Review

Considering its unique place in the history of electric guitars, the re-release of Ampeg’s classic “see through” Dan Armstrong Plexi at last Summer’s NAMM show really didn’t get very much coverage.

I mean, it’s one of the most distinctive guitars on the planet… who can forget a guitar built of transparent acrylic?

As it so happens, I went digging for some more info on Ampeg’s reissued Dan Armstrong Plexi, only to discover that I must have been channeling someone over at Guitar Player, because they’d just published a short video demo of the instrument over on their Guitar Player TV site.

Plug & Play Pickups Of course, the guitar’s not only notable for its “see through” body––though that’s what gets all the attention––it also boasts an innovative interchangeable pickup system that allows you to pretty much pop the hand-wound pickups right out of the body (with strings still in place) and replace them.

Staying true to form, Ampeg has released the Plexi with a pair of pickups: the painstakingly recreated Rock Treble, along with a brand new offering, the dual blade Rock Sustain––both designed by Dan Armstrong’s son Kent, who designed the original pickups as well.

To get around the lack of versatility that usually comes with a single pickup set-up, the guitar features an innovative tone circuit (accessible via a 3-way switch) that allows the guitar’s single tone control to actually affect different frequencies depending on the position of the switch.

The Dan Armstrong Plexi also sports a a maple bolt-on neck (24.75“ scale length,) rosewood fingerboard with 24 frets, Grover nickel die-cast tuners, rosewood bridge with compensated brass saddles, and a hard shell case. Street price is running around $1400.