Alembic Guitars Club
Connecting => Miscellaneous => Topic started by: edwin on March 17, 2016, 09:19:11 AM
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(http://club.alembic.com/Images/449/226915.jpg)
(http://club.alembic.com/Images/449/226916.jpg)
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Cool... not sure I have ever seen/noticed the headstock inlays before. Does Jack have it back in his possession?
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Apparently he does. I'm sure more details will come out soon.
Too bad about the refinish and loss of the outer ebony control plate.
Here's a shot that shows it in its original glory from Rosie.
(http://club.alembic.com/Images/449/226921.jpg)
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Hey, double post. It's been a while since that gremlin got me. It's like playing hide and seek on a Commodore 64.
My post must have made it. I got the error message.
(Message edited by Ed_zeppelin on March 17, 2016)
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As many times as I tried to cop his licks (especially off Bless Its Pointed Little Head) I know absolutely nothing about that bass. Is it a Guild Starfire or the Gibson thingie (like Crosby's Alembicised guitar)?
Is that the bass we hear in the iconic intro to White Rabbit? I saw Blue Man Group do that perfectly by whapping on the ends of PVC pipes with paddles. That was nuts. Here's what it sounds like: http://youtu.be/STuC0Wl2Gfk (http://youtu.be/STuC0Wl2Gfk)
I love the control module thing. It looks like something Dali would have come up with. More, more. We must know.
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Guild Starfire. The wooden control plates were carved by Bear.
Great that Jack has this bass back. Very important historically.
I had sent a friend, who is tight with Jack, a picture of Jack and Jerry jamming at Olompali, Jack was playing this bass. My friend forwarded it to Jack who replied with some interesting tidbits and background about the instrument. I thought I had kept his response and am bummed I either can't find it or no longer have it.
Courtesy: Rick Turner
Jack Casady & Phil Lesh did not play Starfires because there was a lot of room for Alembic electronics; they played them because of the combination of the original Hagstrom made single coil pickups (not the ones in the reissue Starfires) and the flexibility and sound of the flatwound Pyramid Gold strings which made the short scale Starfires sound huge.
Ron Wickersham devised a method for testing frequency response of magnetic pickup coils in around 1969, and found that the Hagstrom/Starfire pickups had the widest frequency response of anything he had tested. So Ron was documenting what Jack & Phil's ears had already told them.
Owsley Bear Stanley had already discovered that the pickups could be hot rodded by adding a second magnet, and so the sound was born. Ron further improved things by building transistorized emitter followers onto the pickups, thus creating what were probably the first active pickups (yes, 1969).
I was concurrently developing the concept of neck through instrument design and also starting to wind my own pickups. Ron tested them and found that they beat the Guilds & we were on our way to designing the Alembic sound.
Meanwhile, the Hagstrom/Guild pickups were discontinued by Guild & the rather pedestrian humbucker was substituted. That was the end of the cool Guild bass sound.
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Ed:
I believe Crosby's Alembicized 12 is a Starfire, not a Gibson. I got to play it many years ago when it was back at the mothership for a tune-up prior to going out on tour.
Bill, tgo
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I thought that as well, but according to Rick Turner (http://rickturnerblog.com/2016/01/23/15/);
quote:We were mostly modifying and repairing existing instruments?doing a lot of what would be now termed irreparable harm to vintage Gibsons, Fenders, and Guild basses, but we were ?Alembicizing? them?making them better than new. We had an incredible clientele?the Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, Santana, Malo, and David Crosby among others. I was working on Phil Lesh?s ?Godfather? bass making pickups for it, and I?d started on what became Alembic bass #001 for Jack Casady.
Crosby got wind of the alchemy we were brewing at the place, and he brought in an unfinished thin, hollow body 12 string. He?d somehow talked Gibson out of a ?Crest? body?hollow, 335 shaped, outer ply of the arched top and back plus sides done in gorgeous Brazilian rosewood with a great solid Brazilian neck made by Bay Area lutherie legend Mario Martello. Ron and I were basically to put our overactive brains to work and turn this into the world?s best electric 12 string. David had the faith that we could do it ...
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quote:Owsley Bear Stanley had already discovered that the pickups could be hot rodded by adding a second magnet, and so the sound was born.
I realize you're talking about Hagstrom single-coils (I'm a big fan), but I'm just curious if that has anything to do with Alembic's hot rod kits (http://club.alembic.com/index.php?topic=11247) as noted in Jazzyvee's post? They pop up on eBay now and then and I never knew what the heck they were about.
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Amazing news,
I can't imagine the eureka moment when someone recognized Yggdrasil (and I'm tryin').
I have a hot rod kit.There are magnets,copper tape,instructions,and a wood dowel IIRC.
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Wow!
Simply amazing twist of fate!...
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Proper - back as it should be, and should've been all along. One less loose end in the universe.
Re: White Rabbit intro - I think that's the Jazz Bass that he was using prior to getting into the Starfires - at least it sounds like that to me - more percussive and less woody.
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Glad to hear he got it back! Can't wait to hear more of the story with this amazing piece of history.
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quote:Jack Casady & Phil Lesh did not play Starfires because there was a lot of room for Alembic electronics; they played them because of the combination of the original Hagstrom made single coil pickups
I put together a little pictorial that I hope demonstrates why that is.
(http://alembic.com/club/messages/449/226938.jpg)
(http://alembic.com/club/messages/449/226939.jpg)
(http://alembic.com/club/messages/449/226940.jpg)
(http://alembic.com/club/messages/449/226941.jpg)
(http://alembic.com/club/messages/449/226942.jpg)
Anybody seeking to follow Jack Casady and Phil Lesh's path should definitely be on the lookout for this bad boy:
(http://alembic.com/club/messages/449/226943.jpg)
My favorite bit of irony there is that basically you get two of the most badass pickups ever made and the rest is free kindling. Even then, they're only half-done without the magicians at Alembic sprinkling fairy dust on 'em.
Fender made a stink about the headstock (Fenders were rare in Europe at the time), even though a motorcycle racer and mechanic named Paul Bigsby (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Bigsby) had made this guitar in 1948, years before Fender designed the Stratocaster:
(http://alembic.com/club/messages/449/226944.jpg)
Here's the electronics, for history buffs.
(http://alembic.com/club/messages/449/226945.jpg)
That was just about the only chambered semi-hollow bodied guitar on earth for around half a century or so, and nobody but Bigsby and Merle Travis knew it! Now everybody's making them! (Ive played bass for Merle's son, Thom Bresh, many times. I've played that guitar, as well as the acoustic version.)
Hey, I wound up within spitting distance of the topic! That doesn't happen often. This stuff fascinates me.
I mean well.
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Free association! I love it.
As the OP, this was the kind of discussion I like to see!
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This started off in another thread, about the silk thread wrapped around the ends of bass strings. Since one of the functions is to identify the manufacturer, I thought it would be interesting to see if those were Casady's original black tape strings (probably LaBella?), on the bass this excellent thread is about.
I searched the 'net for color photos of that bass back in the day, and discovered that apparently color photography wasn't groovy or something. Few and far between. But I thought I'd share what I could find, and let others weigh in.
A question that has arisen is whether the Hagstrom single coils were actually Bi-sonics or regular single-coils with an extra magnet and pole-pieces, so they resemble humbuckers but actually aren't.
(http://alembic.com/club/messages/449/226968.jpg)
Casady's mojo is fierce:
(http://alembic.com/club/messages/449/226969.jpg)
I kinda like the color it is now, though I still think the moron who decided to refinish it should be stripped and subjected to a mass frowning. (At least they didn't use house paint.)
(http://alembic.com/club/messages/449/226970.jpg)
Extras: the 1965 Starfire at the Rock 'n Roll Hall of Fame's (https://rockhall.com/education/distance-learning/digital-classroom-1960s/jefferson-airplane/) great page on Jefferson Airplane.
(http://alembic.com/club/messages/449/226971.jpg)
Alembic #1 (http://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/studio-still-life-of-a-1971-alembic-bass-number-one-bass-news-photo/107158154) (seemed appropriate to mention it.) The pic in the link is much larger.
(http://alembic.com/club/messages/449/226972.jpg)
Anybody have a link to a discussion of that bass?
? GettyImages 2016
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My best friend back when I started playing guitar (68) had a Hagstrom III guitar. I happened to play one last month at a music store. They are not bad sounding guitars and the neck is great. You could lower the strings right to the fretboard without any buzzing when they were new. I would say their real failing was that they did not have much of a distinctive sound of their own.
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I don't know where the term Bi-Sonic came from, but they are most definitely single coils. If you google Dark Star pickups, you'll likely come across a discussion of their construction. A while back I had a late 60s Starfire II and got a couple of extra magnets from Rick Turner and that beefed up the tone a bit. Finances dictated the sale of that bass, but I did have fantasies of sending it to Alembic for a new headstock and other treatments.
They are great pickup, especially with the spider group sex preamps.
I have an old Hagstrom II guitar. I took out one of the original pickups and installed a Dimarzio strat pickup and a humbucker. Didn't really improve it all that much. I got that guitar for about $45 in 1976. The finish was gone and one of the saddles was replaced with a house from Monopoly. Now, it has a Stars Guitars bridge. Or maybe it's an Alembic. It was done when I had sold the guitar, but then I found my friend who I sold it to, and bought it back. Not a great sounding guitar. But, I digress.
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Ed,
here's a link for ya(more links at the bottom of thread)
http://club.alembic.com/Images/411/2565.html?1417971005 (http://club.alembic.com/index.php?topic=8090)
...and a random pic
(http://club.alembic.com/Images/449/226992.jpg)
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Curtis Novak makes a great sounding replica of the bisonic pickup:
http://curtisnovak.com/pickups/BS-DS.shtml (http://curtisnovak.com/pickups/BS-DS.shtml)
http://curtisnovak.com/
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Thank you, Mr. Blue. I will use it well. I'm fascinated by the progression of ideas.
Speaking of:
quote:My best friend back when I started playing guitar (68) had a Hagstrom III guitar. I happened to play one last month at a music store. They are not bad sounding guitars and the neck is great. You could lower the strings right to the fretboard without any buzzing when they were new. ...
Thank God, this will save us both a thousand words:
(http://alembic.com/club/messages/449/227006.jpg)
Isn't that brilliant? Its got a terrific Jetson's name, too: The H Expander Stretcher. (http://www.hagstrom.org.uk/expander_stretcher.htm) (and if you've ever had your H expanded, you know how uncomfortable that can be. The stretching is the worst part.)
Check out the long history (http://www.hagstrom.org.uk/VGHist/TFN01a.htm) (the little tabs at the top of the page. It took me forever to find it, and that homepage goes on forever.)
Cheapskate gear hounds like me can save a ton of money on pawnshop prizes in this realm. In a lot of cases, Hagstrom issued the exact same guitars under names like Goya, Merson Cromwell, and especially Kent. (They made a lot of those.)
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On one of my trips to Alembic when they made my basses (76-77) Casady's bass with the sliding pickup was there getting some work done. Rick T let me play it for a while - I guarantee, it's all in the fingers. I'm sure Jack can make anything sound like Jack, and a great instruments makes it easier for him to play. Me playing Jack's bass? Sounds like me with higher fidelity. Also got to play McVie's continuously fretted bass when there. I also sounded like me
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I really like this thread - thanks to all of you for contributing, especially the photos.
To me, all of Jack's basses are iconic / influential and, in the case of 72-01, personally inspirational.
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So...does anyone know how this bass got back?
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This is the story I heard:
Jack's 67 Guild Starfire bass is indeed back in Jack's arms ! It looks different as someone refinished it after it was stolen. It was stolen after a Jefferson Airplane show at the Seattle Center Coliseum October 11th, 1969. In 1979 my dear friend and bass player bought the guitar from a fellow employee. He had no idea of its history. January 5th this year, I saw a post that Jack had written and somebody shared. I took one look at that picture and said that's Leroy's bass ! I called him right away, and asked if he wanted me to contact Jack to get it back to him. Leroy paid $1800 for it in 1979. He said do it. So after a lot of chatting with people that knew Jack, I finally spoke with Jorma. We made a little funny plan , to surprise the hell out of jack. I'm not going to tell the whole story here, because I have written the story already. To wrap this up, I shipped Jack's bass to him about a month ago ! Jack is very happy !
This details it more, but it's laid out in a way that's hard to read:
[moderator's edit: long, unwieldy URL removed; see TinyURL three posts down]
(Message edited by davehouck on April 03, 2016)
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Thanks, Edwin! Awesome story behind this reunion! Great to see Phil and Jack returning to their musical roots.
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Thanks Edwin!
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Edwin, I made a TinyURL (http://www.tinyurl.com) for ya:
http://tinyurl.com/z9moq37 (http://tinyurl.com/z9moq37)
quote:The following URL: ... [omitted] ...
has a length of 326 characters and resulted in the following TinyURL which has a length of 26 characters:
Lost 300 characters in the process. I feel lighter already.
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Thanks! I didn't realize the size, as the new Safari window doesn't show it all and the tiny edit window here fills up fast.
Hopefully at some point Jack will play the bass out in the real world! I'd love to hear him on it again.
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Will never get tired of saying it. Along with Jaco?s Bass of Doom being recovered, Peter Frampton's recovery a little while of his Black Beauty Les Paul infamously stolen in my country in 1980, this is another wonderful history of a musician reuniting with his instrument. I am sure there are still a lot of fine instruments waiting to reunite with their original, rightful owners, but every now and then I wonder when will show to the surface the Funk Machine, James Jamerson?s P bass...
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What a cool story.
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