Brother Bill,
 
I'm STILL in love with those Curlees. Although I never played one with Dimarzio PJ combination. I played one with 1 big square cream-colored PU with small holes (screws???) in it (also Dimarzio???)
There was one in a musicshop in Brussels that I passed by coming from school. Th shop owner knew me and let me play on it when I payed him a visit. One day it was gone ***sigh*** that time I couldn't even DREAM of spending that much for a bass.
Maybe we'll be reunited once!
 
Paul the bad one
 
 
Oh ...in that store I played also a Haymann bass. Never seen one afterwards.

Paul TBO,
I played an old Haymann in a music store in Newport, Rhode Island a little more than a year ago.  I don't remember the name of the store.  The bass was funky in a never-been-maintained sort of way.  I thought it was a Shergold at first.  I recall it was the opposite of an Alembic in pretty much every respect.
John

Brother John ...you got THAT right!
The bass I played in the store some 30 years ago had darl-smoked-PLEXI handrest alla Jazz-Bass over the PU's!!!! There was a hole in the headstock with a plexi plate in it that hold the letter H. Weird-weird-weird.
I even remember what  I had to play on that bass: Nights in white satin fo cryin'out loud! The shopowner gave a demo afternoon for his 3 (three!!!!) Mellotrons. You remember them???
 
Paul the bad one

Paul,
The Haymann didn't seem to have been designed by a musician at all!  Strange bass...  My little brother would have killed for Mellotron until a couple of years ago.  Being an old fan of progressive rock, I love the way they sound.  Time to break out my old King Crimson CDs again... :-)
John

John,
 
Yeah, Mellotrons sound great...for about an hour. They're such a PITA to maintain though. The new synths may not quite have the warmth of the mellotron, but you don't have to worry about the tapes breaking in the middle of a song :-0
 
Ken (TEO)

Here's a pic of the '62 Jazz, Curlee, and Spoiler.
 >

Here's a pic of the '62 Jazz, Curlee, and Spoiler.
 >

Hm ...Oh ...huh ...were are my glasses??? Seeing it now it has more of a tree in a sunny landscape.

Oops, evidently I can't post pics using webtv. Sorry for now
 Bill

Bill; can you email them?  If so, and if you like, you can email them to me and I will post them for you.

Nigel,
 
His full name is Augustus Owsley Stanley III, family name y'know. I believe his grandfather was the governor of Virginia. Lots of latin names like Augustus, Marcus etc. in those southern states. In the late 60's very early 70's he was refered to as simply Owsley  aka Bear later formally changed to Z. Bear . He is alive and well and living in Australia where he makes expensive Grateful Dead type jewelry in 24K gold and enamel as well as bronze sculptures. I just spoke with him around the holidays.
 
As to the association with Alembic...there wouldn't have been an Alembic without him. He is a catalyst for putting people & events into motion, he's quite a pushy bear. We met while the Dead were recording Aoxomoxoa at Pacific Recording Studio in San Mateo, CA. He saw Ron and my talents and the need the Dead had of them. He wooed us away from Ampex and Pacific Recording  to move to Novato, CA and share a building with the Dead and work together to create better live music. He suggested we name our company Alembic (see the meaning of the logo on our website) and had his good friend and my art mentor *Bob Thomas design the Alembic logo. Although Bear was never a partner in Alembic, he was pivotal in its inception and direction.
 
-Susan
 
*Bob Thomas- also designer of the Steal Your Face Dead Logo and the Marching Bears. He painted the cover for the front and back of the Live Dead album my favorite, maybe because all the instruments had Alembic electronics in them, it was the Alembic PA System, Alembic did the live recording and it was mixed at our Alembic Recording  Studio as was Europe '72.  Anyway I digress, I was only a mere girl of 18 when we started Alembic and Bob was very encouraging to my art endeavors. He taught me a great deal and I feel his influence in all my instrument designs, especially the inlays. He was a musician as well and used to hand carve and make bagpipes. Bear BTW was his art patron and I wound up with the largest part of Bear's collection of Bob Thomas paintings when he moved to Australia.  Bear felt they belonged with me & Alembic. Those adding to my own collection come to a grand total of  12 full canvas paintings plus two wooden icons. He passed away over 10 years ago and since all but the icons and 2 paintings reside at Alembic, I continue to feel his presence on a daily basis and it's a good thing.

Bear has some examples of Bob Thomas' work along with a brief bio at www.thebear.org
 
Sam

Thanks for that bit of history Susan.  I just recently finished reading Blair Jackson's Garcia, An American Life, which greatly enhanced my knowledge of that time and place.  The music, art and culture all had a great and valuable influence on my life as well as the lives of countless others; indeed to no insignificant degree, on our society and our global community.

Here are Bill's (beatlejuice) basses; sorry for the delay, the cable system was down for a few hours:
 

I just spent time reading some of Bear's essays: http://www.thebear.org/index.html  Well worth the reading. A good way to finally become a member!
 
Gale