Alembic Guitars Club
Alembic products => Alembic Basses & Guitars => Topic started by: Mlazarus on October 02, 2022, 08:37:11 PM
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Does Alembic have individual bolt on necks preferably ebony fret board? That way i can connect it to a pbass style body.
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Search for threads about "Modulus Alembic Bassstar". Closest thing there is, to my knowledge. Might be the only thing.
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I am fairly certain that Alembic has never made bolt-on necks. Even when they made graphite neck instruments, Modulus supplied neck-thru necks. While Modulus did make bolt-on necks (I have an old Modulus Blackknife neck, along with Alembic PUs and electronics, on my #1 player), I have never seen an Alembic employing one. If you want to build a Fender-type bass with a graphite neck, you may be limited to searching out an old Modulus neck. Another company named Moses also used to manufacture bolt-on graphite necks. They were a different design. While the Modulus necks were hollow, the Moses necks were solid. I have both. I prefer the Modulus, but the Moses necks are nice necks, too. I’m not aware of anyone currently manufacturing bolt-on graphite necks. Let us know if you find anyone currently doing so.
Bill, tgo
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If Alembic decides to make the Alembic spec ebony bolt Ons, I think it would sell. Only problem I see, it would be deceiving to have an Alembic neck (With the logo) on a different bass body. Not a true Alembic bass. So, I would think Alembic would make a bolt on with it stamped "Licensed by Alembic" But no logo. Fender does it.
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If Alembic built electric cars, they would probably sell, too. But, like bolt-on instruments, that’s not what Alembic does.
Fender doesn’t manufacture “licensed by Fender” necks. They make agreements with other manufacturers for the other manufacturer to mark their necks “licensed by Fender”. The other manufacturer pays Fender for the right to do this and agrees to specific guidelines to insure the quality of the neck. In its history, Alembic has only a few times licensed another manufacturer to put “Alembic” on their instruments. The Modulus instruments were one example. Another were the Japanese violin-looking “Alembic” basses, like this one:
Bill, tgo
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It's just a nice thought for the sake of music enthusiasm.
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There i have it. The Modulus Alembic Basstar. I just saw it on Reverb. I wonder how much the neck itself goes for. Maybe I'll put it on my P bass body with Bartolini pickups. Nice neck.
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The Modulus Alembic instruments were strictly made by Geoff Gould at Modulus and, IIRC, used Bartolini PUs. They licensed the use of the Alembic name as the two companies were very close.
Bill, tgo
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interesting.
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I had the guitar version of the Modulus and really liked it. Was it a Blackstar? I sold it to someone on here I think some time ago.
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Oh yeah, here is my post about my old Blackstar. Only reason I sold it is the whammy bar stuck up too much for my taste.
https://club.alembic.com/index.php?topic=17445.msg176075#msg176075
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The Modulus Alembic instruments were strictly made by Geoff Gould at Modulus and, IIRC, used Bartolini PUs. They licensed the use of the Alembic name as the two companies were very close.
Bill, tgo
There were also a few Alembic basses made with set-neck graphite necks that at the time were supplied by Geoff/Modulus Graphite. The mid-80s catalog I have features a number of pictures of a short scale graphite-neck Series I with a Koa top. There is a page long description about the graphite necks where they refer to the Alembic Series "G" bass. I don't think many were ever made. The 1981 price list shows graphite necks as an option for Series I and II instruments. As far as I know the Modulus Alembic Basstar stuff post-dates the Series "G" basses but I am not entirely sure.
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Moses no longer makes necks. Status of England are not taking any new orders but may have some bolt on necks left. They were more known for their MM style graphite replacement necks. I have 2 of their Mark King Black Beauty models, a 5 and 6. Great basses. But alas now you can't get one made.
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We didn't really have anything to do with the bolt on necks that Modulus made.
Our graphite neck basses (probably around 50 or so were made) weren't exactly set neck, kinda hybrid - most went about halfway in the body or sightly more, where most set neck guitars might make it to the neck pickup. We covered of the graphite with an inset of wood on many of them, though there are some examples where you can see how far in the body the neck goes on the back. The main reason is that it needed to stay clear of the terminal omega or point, which wasn't going to be something nice to do in graphite at all. Carving graphite seems like a very bad idea!
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Thanks for sharing that cool Fun Fact.
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Here's an example of one that shows the graphite exposed all the way to the battery compartment. This is my 1980 fretless bass which has served me very well for many years. I didn't know there were only about 50 Alembics made with graphite necks so now I realize how lucky I was to be there right at that moment in time and come away one of these rare birds.
I don't mean to hijack the thread but I will take the opportunity to describe this combination of materials as "compressing" the sound. If anybody ever tried a Travis Bean metal-necked axe you'll know what I mean. It sustains for days but you can't play soft or loud dynamics. It's as if the bass is already running through a compressor/ limiter.
But for me I found this "compressed" sound to work really well for fretless. Plenty of sustain and a bit of growl.
I so loved this bass that in 1982 I ordered a fretted version which I played only for a short time in that configuration - ironically it appears on two long-lived videos from that era. But in the end I didn't like the compressed thing for playing live so I had that bass converted to a fretless to act as a backup to my main one. And I switched back to traditional wood-necked fretted basses to regain control of the dynamics which I felt were missing.
OK, sorry for the detour. Carry on.
Jimmy J
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😎
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Now that's one sweet looking instrument, Jimmy! I LOVE my Modulus graphite neck. I haven't really thought of it as compression, but the guitar is very balanced and even toned. I've never noticed any issues with dynamics, but then again it's a guitar, not one of those things with cables instead of strings!
hehehehe
Bill, tgo
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Unlike Jimmy's 80 fretless the Koa Series I with graphite neck in the catalog is one of the ones where the graphite is only visible about halfway down the back. I was unable to tell from the picture if it goes through the entire body, the top is not book matched to center and there is different wood showing in the neck area of the front of the body that isn't Koa. Interesting to find out that there was more than one approach to attaching the graphite necks, though, the differences may be largely cosmetic.
I noticed a long time ago that the basic tone of my neck-through Quantum bass sounds compressed, it seems to give a certain focus to the notes but you have to like that baked-in sound and the feel of graphite under your fretting hand to bond with a graphite-necked instrument. There are a lot of things I like about my Quantum bass but my preference has swung back to wood for necks.
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Since I am too lazy to scan the picture of the back of the Koa Series bass in the catalog where the graphite neck doesn't look like it runs the length of the back of the body I tried to find a picture of it online. No luck but I did find some other interesting examples. So far I have yet to find another one where the neck looks attached like the bass pictured in the catalog.
Here is what must be a really rare Series II, Exploiter body style with graphite neck...
https://reverb.com/item/33903656-alembic-series-ii-exploiter
John McVie's old graphite Series bass. I know this one has been discussed here previously. This is one unique bass!
https://reverb.com/item/6414168-alembic-series-graphite-john-mcvie-actual-bass
Modulus Graphite Basstar neck-through, I thought these were all made with bolt -on necks, this looks much more desirable.
https://reverb.com/item/3375089-modulus-graphite-bassstar-bass-1983
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On my graphite necked Series II, the neck goes through the body and goes to the tailpiece. But on the body it is covered with wood laminates.
A weird thing about the graphite neck basses is that the headstocks are hollow. Well at least mine is.
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A hollow headstock would help reduce neck dive I would imagine :)
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Still too lazy to set up my old scanner so I took a quick and admittedly lousy photo of the Koa bass from the early 80s catalog. I have always really liked the top on this one.
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Yeah, I've always lusted after that one.
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This one is mine. Serial number 81-1814.
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And the back.
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Interesting, how those two extra wood layers that frame the graphite neckthrough are placed. I wonder if the purpose is to make gluing up the body wings easier? I had always wondered how you got wood to stick to a graphite neck. I'm guessing they screwed those thin strips to the neck beam, then glued the wings on.
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Since we veered into the subject... here's McVie's '76 graphite-necked Series bass, one of the two prototypes mentioned in the History. (Stanley Clarke got the other one) Notice how the neck beam appears hollowed and wood-filled?