Hey friends,
Occasionally I wonder how many Alembic instruments might live nearby in my area of SoCal. I know a couple guys who own them but not as daily drivers so it's pretty rare to see on in the wild. But that's what happened yesterday.
I was walking with a friend who was visiting from out of town (I know, walking in LA is already a shock!) when we happened upon one of the great vintage guitar shops in Studio City called Ventura Music Inc. I've driven by this place roughly 8-million times and never set foot in the door.
George, the owner, has apparently been in this spot for 16 years and he has accumulated quite a collection of vintage and rare gear for sale and trade. Lots of Fenders and Gibsons of every vintage, I saw a Guild Starfire on the wall, Dan Armstrong plexi, and a bunch of instruments I don't know anything about. And then lo and behold there's a very old Series I hanging on the wall. What the??
So let me introduce you to 73-28, a sweet looking long scale bass from the very early days that looks like it has been through a lot.
George explained he had no power supply and the bass was only partially operational. He said sound comes from the bass pickup but the associated switch just introduces terrible distortion.
He's a drummer first but knows a lot about guitars having bought and sold them for many years. But I thought maybe I could give him a hand and try to get this old axe working. So I went back today, brought my Series I fretless to show him how things are supposed to work, and I poked away at his bass for a while trying to get something to happen. I even built him a stereo to mono cable with summing resistors figuring that might give the bridge channel a chance...
But sadly, NO LUCK. As he said, it's passing some sound from the bass pickup but that's the only thing that was almost working. The pickup selector is sending audio thumps down the line (a sign of DC present?) and the badly done replacement Q-switch on that channel just makes a terrible racket. No sound whatsoever from the bridge channel.
I exercised the pots and switches, still nothing. My summing cable didn't work either which was a bummer. Plugging it into my power supply confirmed the bridge channel was completely silent.
As you can see, somebody did a very rough job of replacing the Q-switch on the bass channel. It's a bad fit that's pushing the board up higher on that side. The board is actually holding that switch in place since there's no nut on the front side. It looks like one of the flat-pack opamps may have been replaced at some point. The pickups mini-coax connectors are under blue heat-shrink so I didn't dig in far enough to try swapping them. And oh my, that telephone-style 1/4" connector is SO complicated that I wouldn't know where to begin troubleshooting it. I don't know enough about these original PF-5 boards to be of any help, though I understand this was nearly the end of the run before the PF-6 took over.
Anyway, I thought you guys would enjoy seeing another bass from the very early days. George is willing to sell or trade it but he is unlikely to invest the cash to restore it to it's original operating condition. He's also trying to keep it "original" as opposed to updating it with today's internals - something I would probably do in a heartbeat. Sadly, "original" at the moment means nonfunctional...
If anybody here is interested in taking something like this on as a project you can reach George at eight-one-eight, seven-six-one, nine-six-six-nine I've only just me him but he seems like a good guy and we have a lot of mutual muso pals...
Jimmy J
