ABOUT KENT ARMSTRONG
Kent Armstrong’s path in the music industry was paved by his famous father Dan Armstrong - creator of the Ampeg Dan Armstrong Plexi Electric Guitar and studio musician, playing bass on Lou Reed's "Transformer" album as well as recording with The Band and Carly Simon, among others. While Kent was still attending high school, he started working at his father’s shop on La Guardia Place in Greenwich Village, New York. In 1970 Dan headed west to work with Neil Diamond, leaving young Kent to briefly fend for himself until Dan offered a fellow by the name of Bill Lawrence a job at the shop. Kent continued to learn more about pickups working with Bill, and when Dan decided to move to London in 1971, Kent followed.
In England Kent began doing pickup repairs and rewinds while also operating a courier service with his motorcycle to supplement his income. By 1979 he had become established full-time as a very skilled and innovative pickup winder creating designs such as his bobbin-less pickups embedded in epoxy. While he had made a humbucking pickup to fit the original rout in Robbie Robertson’s Telecaster back in New York, his first production design was the Z+ pickup used in early Schecter guitars played by Pete Townshend. Over the years Kent has worked with countless guitarists - including re-winding pickups for Jimmy Page and Rory Gallagher to name just two. He has supplied pickups so unique and diverse to many different guitar companies that to fully describe them would require an entire book devoted to his work.
Today, Kent’s Korean-made pickups are a culmination of many decades of designing pickups - they are made from the finest components and are available directly from Kent Armstrong in the USA and Armstrong Music in the UK and include the Archtop Series, Icon Series, Vintage and Split Tube.