I went up to the Guitar Show in San Rafael today. No Alembics up there (Guitar Showcase from San Jose was there, but did not bring Alembics this time). No dictionaries on sale either.
But that didn't mean there wasn't some interesting stuff. There was the normal array of vintage Fenders ranging from $1800 for those piece of crap 70's Fenders that you wouldn't have spent $250 on back then up into the $20,000 range for cherry pre-CBS Jazz basses. There were a lot of Gibsons including quite a number of Thunderbirds (mostly the '76 reissue, but they are very nice too) and a lot of EBs.
By far the most interesting instrument for this crowd was a very, very rare one:
I've seen a lot of guitars in my time, but this is only the second BecVar for me, and the first bass. The hardware and pickups are all pretty much Alembic as is the body construction.
The inlay is pretty wild:
It's powered by an Alembic power supply, which the owner didn't have anymore (more about that later). He popped the back open to change the batteries, and there, it was quite different than an Alembic - there were a number of small circuit boards and at least six 9-volt batteries (most of them removed in this picture):
I believe the top and back of this instrument are cocobolo. The neck appears to be wenge or walnut, maple and an ebony center laminate. It weighs a ton (over 11 lbs, for sure). It plays perfectly (I didn't plug it in)
This instrument is being sold by the original owner, for whom this was custom built in 1980. He's a very nice guy who owns or has owned a number of Alembics and Alembic-related instruments including this BecVar, a Doug Irwin bass which was never completed (and you thought you couldn't find a rarer instrument than a BecVar), and Dolan instruments.
He even had the original BecVar catalog brochure from when he purchased the bass. It shows a similar triple omega BecVar 8-string bass that was built for John Entwistle simultaneously with this one. The Entwistle bass has a marquette mandala on the body - the owner told me that BecVar asked him if he wanted the same body inlay, and he told him to do something from Star Wars instead...
He's asking $4500 for the instrument, including Anvil road case, but no power supply. It will be at the show on Sunday 7/27 if you want to see it in person, or contact me here and I'll pass on his contact information (he lives in the SF Bay Area).
Not good enough? OK, here's a couple of shots of the booth of a new exhibitor called Bassmint/Guitar Cellar in Kansas City. More exotics than in an issue of Bass Player:
I have more pix of the BecVar in higher resolution on Picasa:
http://picasaweb.google.com/dfung60/VintageGuitarShowSanRafaelCA Enjoy,
David Fung
