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Kent Armstrong, A little Kent history


Tvrtastic
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Kent Armstrong has posted a little clip about his life.  Amazing humility saying “built and repaired pickups for 50 years” when he is the guy personally hand making the pickups for the amazing Ken Smith basses. Does he still make them?  He certainly used to.  
 

Also interesting that he credits so much to Bill Lawrence. 

https://www.facebook.com/kentarmstrongpickups/videos/825181878079226/
 

 

 

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23 hours ago, Tvrtastic said:

Kent Armstrong has posted a little clip about his life.  Amazing humility saying “built and repaired pickups for 50 years” when he is the guy personally hand making the pickups for the amazing Ken Smith basses. Does he still make them?  He certainly used to.  
 

Also interesting that he credits so much to Bill Lawrence. 

https://www.facebook.com/kentarmstrongpickups/videos/825181878079226/
 

 

 

I bought pickups from him in 1990; even talked to the great man himself before placing my order 

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49 minutes ago, OliverBlackman said:

My first overwater came with Ken Armstrong pickups and a John East preamp. It really was a thunderous sound. Anyone got any ideas on when his pickups were in Ken Smith basses?

TBH I only know about the Smith reference through posts in Talkbass etc

but this article goes into a little detail.  

https://www.bassprofessor.info/index.php/bass-museum/bass-hunter-2012-2018/1350-bassmuseum-ken-smith-chuck-rainey-5
 

“It is an open secret that these two powerful sound wonders come from Kent Armstrong's pickup forge.”

It also seems that Kent made the original pickups for Status (then Strata) basses. 

 

Edited by Tvrtastic
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Most British luthiers in the 80’s used various Kent Armstrong pickups, except probably JD and Wal.  Before the interweb it was quite difficult and expensive to source anything else.  
 

I’ve still got a set of Kent’s J bass pickups here, must use them sometime, when there is some work again. 

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On 28/02/2021 at 22:34, Tvrtastic said:

Kent Armstrong has posted a little clip about his life.  Amazing humility saying “built and repaired pickups for 50 years” when he is the guy personally hand making the pickups for the amazing Ken Smith basses. Does he still make them?  He certainly used to.  
 

Also interesting that he credits so much to Bill Lawrence. 

https://www.facebook.com/kentarmstrongpickups/videos/825181878079226/
 

 

 

I enjoyed that - thanks for sharing! 

It's always  humbling hearing someone of Kent's renown paying tribute to someone who he learnt from, in this case Bill Lawrence.. 

Absolute proper respect for that, and for both Kent and Bill's work over the years. 

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