All the years I've been a fan of the Doobie Brothers, i hadn't realised Tiran had used an Alembic till today. A quick troll through the internet turned up this pic of a very nice series bass.

 
graeme

Cool!  Were you able to determine when the picture was taken?

According to Doobfan - http://doobfan.com/photos/tempe/
 
it was Tempe, Arizona, 1974.
 
I spent most of the morning hunting for pictures but only came up with this page.
 
graeme

This one looks like an Alembic, except a few of the features don't look right.

Could've replaced the bridge for some reason, maybe a tremeloe (with the arm removed). looks like it might be a fan headstock. If it's not Alembic it's a pretty good triple 'O' copy.  
 
Graeme

The headstock makes me think it might be a Kenneth Lawrence bass...

a few of Kenneth Lawrence's first basses looked very very much like Alembics in body shape so i'm sure that's what it is.

Thanks!

Bec-Var strikes again?

After reading the Lawrence section in American Basses:  KL really admired ALEMBICs and the work of Harry Fleishmann, learned a lot of his craft working for Steve at MOONSTONE.  He built several early in his career that were along the lines of the bass Tiran is playing in the picture, obviously ALEMBIC-inspired.  In fact a picture of one of his basses in that book looks a lot like the bass with Tiran. He's of course gone on to find his own style and is building terrific instruments and doing wonderful inlay work, one axe at a time by himself.
 
J o e y

Some comments on his experience with alembic
https://www.tiranporter.com/bass-alembic

Just goes to show, they aren't for everyone. He acknowledges Jimmy J sure gets the sound from an Alembic, just didn't work out for him. Gave it to a roadie... gotta' love that!

The timeline is interesting... Tiran's bass has no serial number. I used to think it must be the missing number 73-44 until I saw too many other wack-a-doodle things show up here. Who knows? I agree, somewhere between '72-'74. 

Then, there's the post over in the Showcase - Series I thread:

https://club.alembicguitars.com/series-i-basses-and-guitars/my-new-precious-tiran-porter-s-73-alembic/msg96788/#msg96788

Tiran is a great player.  Very unusual and cool bass lines on those Doobie Bros tracks.  And it's always a surprise to learn that somebody whose bass playing I really enjoyed knew about Holdsworth ... and me.  Wow!  You just never know.

If you look closely at the second photo in that link you'll see that in that moment he has the Q-switches on full boost with the filters pots turned up high.  It's no wonder it sounded a bit bright to him.    But I bet he sounded great on it anyway.

These basses are definitely not everybody's cup of tea.  Despite the amazing tonal range we have with our electronics packages they'll never be a Fender P.  And if that's the sound you seek then Alembic may not be the way to go.  To each their own.

Cheers!
Jimmy J

That's a cool bass, wonder where it is now