Murfreesboro (and The Low End) is next door to Nashville, so I went down there yesterday to eyeball these axes.
Wierd and wonderful to see this many Alembics in one place! Some of these (as above) are on EBay, a couple not yet.
Brian runs a good store, and stocks only 'boutique' basses, save for the occasional trade-in of the off-the-rack bass, and he is a Lakland dealer. Good guy, and trustworthy in my experience.
The 'GB' S2 is in nice shape. A bit of wear-thru on the satin finish in back, a few dings in the rim, overall good shape. Gold plated parts.
The Distallate is typical of its Spoiler-ish DNA, medium scale. OK, has the circuit with the tone preset switches. Overall good shape, typical 'Brown Bass' kind of vibe. Different with the squarish lower horn.
The Exploiter is striking in person, the Zebra wood top looking very Spalted Maple-ish. Small cone peghead. John Entwistle must have had handwriting like a doctor, I guess he signed the black contol plate. Pretty clean.
Other pieces NOT on EBay:
He's listing a Stanley with Series One electronics. I'm guessing it's cocobolo front and back. It's beautiful and virtually mint. I'm utterly confused as it's vol/vol/tone/tone/selector and three switches, plus a guitar (stereo?) jack and the multi-pin Series connector: No hum canceller, one electronics pocket. I don't know if this is one of those Series basses that could be sent back later to complete the Series package, I don't know if it's Anniversary electronics, and I could only get one pickup to work with a mono guitar cord. But it's drop-dead gorgeous and I could have figured it out with more coffee . . . .
The five-string Epic is long scale and nice. It's '30 of 40', some Special Ed for someone (Guitar Center? MARS?). Nice, but they always have that big volute under the nut. Really nice.
The baritone guitar is drop dead mint. I don't play guitar, but this one is just as it left James' bench.
He also had a Clarke Spellbinder. Funny little bass, molded as one piece, very thin depth. Small neck, very Ric-ish. Striking in black and chrome. Q-switch. Maybe a must-have for a Clarke-o-phile, but it just reminded me of all the seemingly experimental, 80's graphite basses, though with a BIG pedigree, obviously.
J o e y
