Well, the Rogue survived the rigours of DHL transportation and arrived in one piece this morning. Sadly, I only had about 15 minutes with it, before having to rush off to work.
First impressions (keeping in mind that I've never played an Alembic before);
1. Hmm, small isn't it? Not a bad thing, as it's much lighter than my other (mostly Fender) basses.
2. Eek! String rattle!!! Not what I was expecting at all. There is a pronounced rattle around the middle of the fretboard (5th to 12th frets, all strings). Hopefully just a case of tweaking things, as the frets don't appear to have been stoned at any point (unlike the person who designed the snazzy headstock logo ;-). Certainly no offence intended there, BTW, just being humorous.
3. Wow! Whopping big sound! Massive punch AND sustain (in my experience, basses often give one at the expense of the other, but not this baby).
4. Great slap sound, but where do I put my fingers for string plucking? My large, clumsy, arthritic fingers tend to need a lot of space for my own special ham-fisted brand of slap 'n' pluck, so I found that a little tricky on this bass, as there's not much room between the end of the neck and the high front pickup. Still, I'll just have to adapt my style, as the sound is certainly worth striving for.
5. What a lovely neck profile. In the pictures I've seen, Alembic necks often look to be almost parallel, like a Rickenbacker, but this neck is just gently tapering and nicely rounded at the back (somewhere between Precision Bass and Jazz Bass in feel, I'd say). I like it a lot!
So, all in all, I'd say that I'm a happy bunny. Or at least, I will be once I've had it to bits, set it up properly and polished it.
Will post some more pics in the gallery, once that's done.
Cheers to all for your support and encouragement so far.
Andy
