Author Topic: '75 Series 1 (Read 320 times)

petero · « **on:** January 29, 2004, 04:16:48 PM »

Hi all. I'm a newbie here. My jones for an Alembic bass is reaching feverish proportions. (What else is new?)

I've got a line on '75 Series 1 34 scale that is missing the transformer box. Is it too much of a hassle to buy it without one? The seller says they can be used with a battery without the external unit. Is this true?

What's a reasonable price? He's asking $2500.

Thanks for your help.

Peter

kungfusheriff · « **Reply #1 on:** January 29, 2004, 04:24:45 PM »

You can use two nine-volts and a stereo-to-mono cable until you save up enough scratch to get the power supply.

dela217 · « **Reply #2 on:** January 29, 2004, 05:34:06 PM »

I don't think you can just use any stereo to mono cable. I think that to do it correctly there must be an in line resistor. I am not sure of the specs of the cable, but I am sure someone here knows.

You can convert the jack from stereo to mono and use a standard cable, but I wouldn't. I know Alembic will supply a schematic of this if you want.

You can also go into any music store these days and buy a stereo to mono Y cable. They are usually not used in musical instruments, but you can generally find them in the P.A. gear section.

mothy4 · « **Reply #3 on:** January 29, 2004, 10:42:09 PM »

I have a cable using a TRS 1/4 right angle plug feeding a male XLR where Pin 1 is the sleeve (ground), Pin 2 is the tip and Pin 3 is the ring on the TRS plug.

The male XLR feeds either of 2 adapters. The first adapter cable is a female XLR where pins 2 and 3 are isolated with 10k 1/4 watt resistors and combined to feed the phone plug tip. Fitting the two resistors in the XLR is the tricky part but it is possible. Pin 1 ground goes to plug sleeve.

The second adapter looks like a female XLR Y-cable with 2 lengths of cable terminated to phone plugs. These plugs pick up pin 2 and pin 3 respectively along with ground from pin 1. Each of the phone plugs is labeled or color coded to indicate front or back pickup.

This XLR adapter setup gives the option of stereo or mono operation as needed. When I sit in using and amp other than my own, the mono adapter is used and with my rig, the stereo adapter is plugged in.

Hope this gives you an idea of how to fashion your own cable system.

David Houck · « **Reply #4 on:** January 30, 2004, 07:25:19 AM »

Peter, welcome to the club! I don't own a Series bass, so I can't speak from experience; but I gather from the posts I've read here in this group that it's rather impractical to own a Series bass without the power supply if you play it a lot, as it's generally said that they eat batteries quickly.

Also, you may want to take some time and read a lot of the older posts about Series basses and educate yourself about them. The Search feature of this board works well for that purpose and there's a lot of great information to be found here.

As far as the price, it's within the range of what I've seen older Series I basses go for on Ebay. So if it's a good example of a Series I from that period, the price is not unreasonable. Again, most used Series basses will have the power supply; so you may wish to consider the cost of acquiring another power supply when considering the asking price, keeping in mind that used power supplies are not common.

petero · « **Reply #5 on:** January 30, 2004, 08:13:57 AM »

Dave, thanks for the reply. That's exactly the type of answer I was looking for. I will take your advice and do some more research. Thanks again.