Alembic Guitars Club
Alembic products => Alembic Basses & Guitars => Topic started by: richbass939 on August 07, 2005, 08:26:39 AM
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I am trying to find some color pics of Phil's Osage Orange. If I knew more about searching on the net I could probably find a lot of them on my own. I found a few B/W ones but I would really like to see the colors in it. I would appreciate any help you can give me.
Thanks,
Rich
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go to the showcase, theres a color pic or two ....
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I've looked around at these and still can't see if it is made of Osage Orange wood. Does anyone know if Osage Orange is just the name of the bass or if that is the wood used?
Rich
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Osage Orange is a wood type. Enter it in at Google for a few descriptions. One can always use Google first with most general questions one might have on anything.
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For wood types there is also a great link that Dave Houck put in this club's Must Reads. My question is Is Phil's bass made of Osage Orange or is that just the bass's name?
Rich
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Part of the Answer: It is made of Osage Orange. Rumor (fact?) says it is the only Alembic made with that wood. I get this info from reading the many posts & history on this site about the bass, so read on. Looks like you have a few more nooks and crannies to search on this site, and there's always something more to learn here wherever that takes you.
Name? From look at the History page again, it appears so.
Who's going out on the limb to ask the elves to build another using this wood? Would they even do it? Is the wood too oily as I have previously read?
(Message edited by lidon2001 on August 08, 2005)
(Message edited by lidon2001 on August 08, 2005)
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http://club.alembic.com/Images/411/1922.html (http://club.alembic.com/index.php?topic=8076)
Nice post on the bass. More out there.
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And this one. Bassmann has some nice info a few posts down, obviously much more knowlegdable than me...
http://club.alembic.com/Images/449/9047.html (http://club.alembic.com/index.php?topic=20743)
Let your search be fruitful...
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As for the picks he uses on his instruments, I found this:
'After experimenting with steel picks (which cut his fingers and, being magnetic, tended to shoot pulses through the pickups), Lesh settled on a pick made of titanium. It's really strong and really light, and it doesn't wear out like the Gibson heavies I used to use, he says. The feel of it is superior for the bass -- you hit the string and it knows it's been hit!'
Searching can be so much fun...
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Thank you, thank you. Those thread links told and showed me exactly what I was wondering about.
Rich
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Post with pic of electronics and a link for more info:
http://club.alembic.com/Images/411/17388.html (http://club.alembic.com/index.php?topic=8237)
If one does a search for quad I bet even more readings on the bass will be found.
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From my quad search. Check out this link. New quad bass? Cool info on the Wall of Sound circa '74.
Phil is using a new quadrophonic bass, the electronics of which were designed and built by George Mundy and the body and pickups by Rick Turner.
http://www.dead.net/cavenweb/deadfile/newsletter19soundrap.html (http://www.dead.net/cavenweb/deadfile/newsletter19soundrap.html)
(Message edited by lidon2001 on August 08, 2005)
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I just watched a 1978 TV recording of a live performance of the Dead when they performed at Saturday Night Live. Phil is using that bass. He had a very blunt but powerful sound.
Was that bass a shortscale? Based on the fact that it was built around the specs of Phil's modified Guild bass.
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blazer,
the modified starfire godfather and the osage bass were both medium scale i believe.
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Medium Scale? Does anyone know if this is indeed fact.
I had always thought Phil played 34inch scale basses. Finding out his Osage bass is a medium scale would come as a big surprise to me.
Anyone? Anyone?
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if you look at the starfire, starfires were originally 32 inch scale length. phil did in fact play medium scale basses untill, his switch to ken smith, and then finally to hi modulus basses (wait a minute guys i remember that phil played a bass that i think was made by doug irwin. it had the same shape as jerry's tiger, but it had p bass looking pick ups... anyone have info on this bass?)befor the ken smith i think he played on g&l for a bit.
(Message edited by jseitang on August 10, 2005)
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if you look at the starfire, starfires were originally 32 inch scale length. phil did in fact play medium scale basses untill, his switch to ken smith, and then finally to hi modulus basses (wait a minute guys i remember that phil played a bass that i think was made by doug irwin. it had the same shape as jerry's tiger, but it had p bass looking pick ups... anyone have info on this bass?)
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The Guild company was founded by former Gibson and Epiphone employees, they made guitars the way they were used to, they gave the designs some tweeks to give them their own look but many of thier early electrics looked like Gibsons. The S100 was their SG, the Aristocrat was their Les Paul the Starfire bass was their version of the Gibson EB2/ Epiphone Rivoli.
The main difference between the EB 2 and the Starfire bass is that the Starfire doesn't have the Basscut switch which removed most of the low end when pressed. But since Starfire was a twin brother of the EB 2 I assume that both basses also share the 30 inch scale length. The picture shows both a sixties Gibson EB2 and a Guild starfire of similar Vintage.
(http://club.alembic.com/Images/393/20293.jpg)
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awhile ago i emailed mica about the orange osage bass; why was it the only one ever made with that wood? the answer was glue. it de-laminated because the wood didn't like the glue. glues have probably changed, but i assume no one has asked for it since.
not to nit pick, but aren't starfires 30.75 scale. isn't that where alembic's short scale measure comes from.
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I just ran a quick web search and got lots of references to 30.5 for the Guild Starfire. Perhaps they made more than one scale length.
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No, Starfires were 30.75 scale--where Alembic got the idea for their own short-scale basses, I believe--and most of the ones I've seen (and the one I owned) did indeed have the bass-cut or baritone switch the bass in blazer's pic lacks.
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sorry i stand corrected.....
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so was phil's alembic osage orange a 32 inch scale bass? Anyone know? Any of the Alembic peeps remember?
(Message edited by cosmic on August 10, 2005)
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The main difference between the EB 2 and the Starfire bass is that the Starfire doesn't have the Basscut switch which removed most of the low end when pressed
Why would such a feature be on a bass? How did engaging it make the instrument sound?
Sam
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The most striking use of that feature was by John Entwistle on Substitute he had used a two pickup version of the Gibson EB 2 during the recording of the song (according to several interviews he did) with his normal settings on the amps and with the bass-cut feature engaged during most of the song. When he does the solo he pushes the button releasing the low end resulting into a very powerful distorted sound. If you listen carefully you can hear the click when he pushes the button.
From April 1995 Bassist interview
?On Substitute I played a two pickup medum scale Gibson bass and I managed to find a decent set of Gibson wirewound strings that vibrated properly. The session was going well and I felt that we were ready for the master take, so when it got to the solo in the middle, I turned the bass up and there was nothing the engineer could do about it. They?d previously balanced everything and it was all going through the mixer at the same time.?
The thing was, given the EB2's short scale and the placing of the pickup the only sound you could get from that bass was a Low muddy thud. The basscut switch made it somewhat more versatile in use.
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Thanks, Blazer, I'll go back and listen to Substitute with that in mind.
See, I learned something today. It's a good day.
Sam
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The other, major difference between the EB-2 and the Starfires was the pickup itself. The older Starfires originally sported a single coil Hagstom-made Bisonic pu.
The Bisonics sound completely different from the Gibson mudbuckers. They are not humbuckers, but big single coils. They are far clearer and have a broader response range than the Gibsons ever had. Think about the muddy bassline in the Animals' We've Gotta Get out of this Place (EPI Rivoli or EB-2 - not sure which). To me, that's the most representative Gibson humbucker sound. The Starfires were much cleaner.
When Guild inroduced the Starfire II, a second bisonic was added. My understanding has always been that Phil's and Jack's Starfires were the II's. They definitely had the bisonic pu's.
Here's where the Alembic lore kicks in (as usual). Over time, Ron and Rick worked some magic to hotrod the bisonics with the addition of a second magnet, rewinding to lower impedance and ultimately addition of Ron's emitter-follower circuit (arguably the first on-board active bass preamp). The sound of this generation of Alembic mods is on Crown of Creation and Live Dead. Later, as Alembic's experiments with pickup winding progressed, the hotrodded Bisonics were obsoleted by Alembic's own pu's.
Guild finally stopped using the Bisonics on Starfires and M-85s in favor of their own humbuckers. Their sound suffered. Since then, all the Guild and DeArmond reissues of the Starfire have one kind of humbucker or another.
Bill
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and now Hammon Engineering (http://www.hammoneng.com/) is producing copies of the original Bi-Sonics. there is some pretty good background info there that came from Rick Turner.
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If you look at Fred's site, check the gallery for Phil playing a very interesting EBO with Bisonics. I have heard that is the bass played on Skullf**k and later stolen. Then go three rows below the lower picture of Phil's EB. The EBO with the macassar ebony pickguard was finished and modded by yours truly. It's an incredible player.
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no confirmation yet of the scale length of Phil's Alembic?
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All reports were that it was 32. At the old dudepit (if it wasn't lost in the big crash earlier in the summer) is a story of how it was used as a test bed for various projects and was ultimately pretty hacked up. Where it is now is anyone's guess.
Edwin
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That's always been my impression as many or most of the original Alembics were medium (32) scale rather than short or long.
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darkstar pickups. i wonder if you could alembic'ize
those new darkstar pickups by somehow connecting a Q
filter with it?
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Don't know what the implications would be. They are being run through various active preamps with supposedly good results.
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i know companies like lakalnd are doing it. would it be possible to connect the active preamp of alembic with the pickup of the darkstars.
anyone? mica? val? susan? RON?