Hi Don,
That matches with a few other very early Alembics that I've seen - on Gbase now, the Doobie Brothers bassist's bass (lower than serial 40 I believe) has the battery between the pickups - it lost its brass plate cover and has a plastic strip. Guessing that didn't go 20 more based on other early exmaples in the gallery of Series I's. Love that kind of history - it would be very cool to have a reference of serial numbers and changes in hardware though I understand that many things (carmel pickups) overlapped depending on what parts were on hand.
(Message edited by toddharris on April 28, 2011)