Joe Perry said the clear-body Ampeg-era Dan Armstrong is his go-to guitar for slide — and he can trace it back to the first time he saw one in a shop in 1971. "I remember being in a music store in, like, 1971, and because the Rolling Stones were using all Ampeg stuff, and I’d seen pictures of Keith Richards playing it, I figured I’d try one out," he said.
That first try mattered. Perry said the instrument "is solid as a rock," and that its fit and finish make a practical difference for slide work: "The neck doesn't move, and it stays in tune, so it's been a really good slide guitar for me." He calls the guitar explicitly his slide choice. "It's actually my go-to for slide."
The numbers and details Perry offered sharpen why this isn't just a sentimental choice. He said the clear-body Dan Armstrong is rare, that the guitar has a flatter neck radius, and that he uses it in both open A and open G tunings. He described its tonal character plainly: good for dirty, gritty, bluesy, and slide tones.
Put another way, the guitar delivers on the two things slide players need most from a tool: stability and tone. Perry said he once had someone "build a little thing so he could put a Seymour Duncan pickup in the guitar," seeking a specific voice, and later restored the original electronics — "the guitar now has the original pickups again," he said — settling back on the instrument’s factory setup.
Context makes the story looser but no less important: the Ampeg-era Dan Armstrong is tied publicly to the Rolling Stones and is known for its see-through body, details Perry cited when he first decided to try one after seeing pictures of Keith Richards with the instrument. That association helps explain the initial curiosity; the guitar’s construction and tuning stability explain the lasting attachment.
There is a tension in Perry’s account worth noting. He experimented with a modern pickup in the Dan Armstrong to chase a tone, then returned to the original pickups. That sequence — modify, then revert — underlines a common trade-off in tone work: incremental hardware changes can yield short-term gains but may not surpass the sum of an instrument’s original design, especially for slide where neck stability and natural resonance are paramount.
Perry’s description supplies a clear conclusion: he keeps the Ampeg-era Dan Armstrong because it simply does what he needs. It is rare, loud in character, and built so the neck doesn’t shift; it stays in tune and produces the dirty, gritty, bluesy slide textures he wants in open A and open G. Those are the practical reasons it remains "my go-to for slide."
