Alembic Guitars Club
Alembic products => Showcase => Series I Basses and Guitars => Topic started by: poor_nigel on January 20, 2016, 12:38:07 AM
-
Bought a new-to-me petite SI off the For Sale page and had it sent to the factory. This will make the second time I have paid more to fix a bass up than I paid for it in the first place. Not generally smart move, but someone down the road should bless me daily for it in the future. I'll post some of the pictures Greg sent me of the bass as it currently is, and then some later after:
Complete refinish
Amber tint to match current color
install Ebony fingerboard, fretted
install Side LEDs in violet 2@ 1-12-24
install Front Laser LEDs in Blue or Violet 2@ 1-12-24
install Mother of pearl ovals
install Mother of pearl star @first fret (not too plain, not too fancy)
reveneer peghead with Zebrawood Bookmatched front only
Bevel front and back of peghead
Bronze inlaid logo with shell
Install customer supplied pickups, bridge, tailpiece
Plate Pickup selector
Plate Large Kidney with holes
Plate Rounded rectangle 2 battery
Set of ebony and gold knobs
I'm sure there will be some other minor changes along the way. This will also be its Factory to Customer page, pix posted when I get them.
(http://club.alembic.com/Images/411/224396.jpg)
-
That bass is already beautiful looking Nigel I'd be really interested to watch that thread to see how it progresses.
-
(http://club.alembic.com/Images/411/224448.jpg)
This is an all-in-one thread. One-stop lookin. Above is a decent shot of an old hand-cut silver sheet metal logo. Pictures will be going up slowly. Mainly due to operator head spacing issues . . .
-
(http://club.alembic.com/Images/411/224454.jpg)
Peghead has cocobolo front and back. Logo is leaving, along with the cocobolo, but the scalloped nut is staying. I love adjustable ones, but . . . Machine heads will be gold Schallers or gold Hipshot ultra-lights. I prefer the larger pegs of the Hipshots and their 20:1 turning ratio. I have a couple sets of the Schallers sitting around, so packed one up to go to the factory with other parts I have for this bass. I'll decide later. Hipshots have a larger mounting hole, so no going back once drilled for em.
-
I'm looking forward the restoration thread. I just LOVE these classics, and hope to have one of my own some day.
-
It looks like another one from the zebrawood log. It has almost exactly the same grain as mine.
(http://club.alembic.com/Images/411/224468.jpg)
Beans? What beans? I was with a band that toured Great Britain, and a strange little man in the north of Scotland went bonkers over my Alembic. A couple years afterward he emailed me that picture from out of the blue.
I have no idea what the beans have to do with anything, but as I was flipping through pictures looking for one that showed the grain of the zebrawood, that one is the best. I'm a big fan of Salvador Dali and Stanley Owsley, so there ya go. (I've always thought that it was a fantastic picture of beans on toast as well, if only somebody would get that Alembic out of the way.)
-
WOW! Those are some big beans!
-
(http://club.alembic.com/Images/411/224491.jpg)
Typical 'run'of'the'mill' old SI shorty. Pickups are toast/plain ugly, bridge is ???, tailpiece is not good. Unusual dot configuration for an Alembic, but the front LEDs would obliterate them, so gone. Fret board is listed as ebony, but it looks like a very close grain rosewood. Off it goes with MOP oval to fit the LED better. Might change the electronics to SII volume and pan. Might . . . Considering removing the stereo jack in favor of an installed LED dimmer for the fronts, or a selector switch for Side, Front and Side, Front, and Off positions. Might . . . I never use the batteries to tune with and my tech ran away decades ago when I never paid him, so . . . Also recessed truss rob cover w/serial number etched into it and back battery cover recessed, as why wasn't it in the first place??? Can't see it on these pictures, but the hum-canceller is push in about 1/4 on the 'E' side, so will be replaced and glued in properly. Fun, fun, fun! More to come later. Ugly pix of top of peg head with bad chips out of the woods, requiring replacements of front and back, plus I like headstocks to kind of match body woods. My personal glitch, I suppose.
-
(http://club.alembic.com/Images/411/224494.jpg)
Some people like buck-eye burl, and some don't. I am one of the former people. I do not like sap wood, etc. I don't like ugly, dead, defective, whatever woods. Just a wood snob, I suppose. This bass has sap wood in the back of it. When Mica saw it she said, Why'd they put it in the back? As it was a good thing. Some people like it, some don't, obviously. Nothing I can do about it. I will take bets that Chris the master wizard with wood there will make that strap hole disappear to where only a microscope can detect it when he is done with it. I wish he would make the worm wood disappear. No such luck, says she in charge. Oh well.
-
Hi Thomas,
Having the sister Bass to yours I am watching this progress with baited breath! Please keep all the current details posted.
I might contact you on the finer details. ;-)
Forge on my friend.
Peace,
Pete
-
Nigel
If you are changing the fret board bridge and tail piece then you should think about a new adjustable nut too. Just a thought.
Good luck with it. Look forward to seeing it done.
Willie
-
Well Thomas if the defective wood disturbs you that much you can always send the bass to me. ;)
Keith
-
Or have a book matched to centre piece put on the back. Although I can imagine the labour to do that would increase your budget for the project somewhat.
-
Hey Willie, it has a scalloped nut, so no chance of it getting changed. Rare outweighs proficiency in a few cases. And Kieth, I will happy send you this bass for a mere handful of hundreds. No more than an inch thick, promise! Jazzyvee - I thought about that, and it could easily be done, for more than I paid for the bass, I imagine. I dream about doing that to Monty - Never would, as it ain't my bass, but the evil thoughts do creep in once in a while. I do not hate the back that much. And honestly, I have never seen this bass in person, so it might look better than in the pix. Next pix will be ugly peg head shots. A lot of the work being done here is on the peg head.
-
Nut is scalloped, so no new adjustable nut. Given. Testing posts here. I do not like this new board. I am on drugs and cannot learn new stuff easily. So I am even slower posting these daze . . .
-
Also, the tailpiece on this bass was a walnut/brass hybred, I did not notice. Rare, desirable, hard to get. Nothing I need to deal with now, though.
-
I'm amazed that the front and back can be removed without obliterating the bass.
And for the record, I love that shot of the back, including the worm hole or whatever that is.
I also like the cocobolo headstock, but I'm curious to see what you have lined up.
If you are replacing all those parts, I'm sure you could recoup some of your costs on the pickups and bridge.
Keep us posted!
-
If you mean the hole near the back strap mount ?? that's where the original mount point was, it's been moved more onto the heal (I suspect to help the balance), though may get in the way a bit if you like to play up that high allot, but seems it would help a little with the slight neck heavy issue ??
The better guitars are put together with glue that's designed to come apart (at a temperature a bit above a hot car boot in summer was what the guy (Jim Williams) who taught me how to build them told us). So you can heat it up (heat lamps, alcohol burner ??) and then "carefully" pull it apart. Early instruments, I think they used animal glue which will also heat apart. We used Tightbond, Aliphatic PVA glue. Probably the most common pull apart is removing the fingerboard.
-
The better guitars are put together with glue that's designed to come apart (at a temperature a bit above a hot car boot in summer was what the guy (Jim Williams) who taught me how to build them told us). So you can heat it up (heat lamps, alcohol burner ??) and then "carefully" pull it apart. Early instruments, I think they used animal glue which will also heat apart. We used Tightbond, Aliphatic PVA glue. Probably the most common pull apart is removing the fingerboard.
Is that the Jim Williams of Audio Upgrades in LA?
-
Hey edwin, no, Jims in Australia (http://www.abc.net.au/local/stories/2011/05/12/3215407.htm). He did a course in Vermont way way back, when he came back I think he just built for a while and then set up a school to teach guitar building. I think I was in the 2nd uptake (6 students) 35 years ago, we all had the same bench/tools etc and all built an acoustic steel string (I'll post some pics of mine later), so 6 weeks, 6 day a week, 12 hours a day... Massive learning curve, but great skills to have.
-
Neck was twisted on this bass when it was inspected at the factory, so it is being replaced. I am too messed up to even play a short scale now, so the bass will be traded. I have no need for money, nor basses nor sound equipment. The only thing I seem to want any more is vacation supplies for occasional jaunts place my current situation will not let me visit. So the bass will probably be traded for a quantity of vacation supplies. Kind of pathetic, but makes perfect sense to me, and if it is the one last thing on this planet I enjoy, why not?!
-
So what ever happened to this bass?
-
There was a post on the club somewhere earlier this year having to do with this bass, not sure where though. It’s a beautiful bass.
-
It was restored, and it was later sold at an estate sale. I'm not 100% certain, but it seems that our dear friend poor_nigel succumbed to his illness.
-
Thomas was about as much a fan of these instruments as any of us here is. He had a fine collection of Alembics, and a fine manner. He'll be missed here. :'(
-
Absolutely Edward, I had sent him a couple of emails over the years asking him if he would sell it to me and then out of the blue he contacted me around the middle of 2011 regarding his series II Europa to tell me that...... "You do know that someday you will own this puppy, anyway, right? My word is my bond....." The only condition he laid was " If the bass turns out to just not be what you need to cover your sound and playing needs......... as the new custodian of this bass, please pick a worthy owner, and not just some ******* with the bucks to lay out for it. What if a kid bought it and decided it needed Jazz pickups in it?"
I bought the bass from him in early 2012 picking it up from Mica at Alembic. From his emails he seemed to be passionate about the things he treasured and when selling things on, whom he sold to was at least as important as the price. Although he drove a hard bargain, the Europa I had from him is a superb bass and perfect for me, it wasn't his dream bass so he was happy that would go to my safe hands and he planned to use the money to give one of his other basses TLC and modifications. I'm not sure if he ever managed to finish that project. Mica may know more about that as he planned to ship it there for the work to be done.
http://www.alembic.com/info/fc_ktwins.html (http://www.alembic.com/info/fc_ktwins.html)
Well I am really treasuring that bass and it's more bass that I ever thought I'd have.
RIP Thomas (aka Poor_Nigel).