Hi all,
Thought I'd introduce myself, I am now an Alembic owner, having purchased this amazing brown bass off of reverb:
https://reverb.com/item/26954892-alembic-stanley-clarke-signature-brown-bass-natural-flamed-walnut-w-ebony-and-led-s-old-priceBass was my first serious instrument, and in my teens I idolized Stanley Clarke, and learned every track off his first solo album, while teaching myself to slap and pop. Then I toured on bass in my 20's, but the last *ahem* 30 years I'd been concentrating on guitar. But I never completely gave up on the bass...I was really good at it, and it was fun. I've done a lot of bass work on recordings since then, but not any live work on bass.
So I found myself playing bass at a jam session during the last NAMM show in Anaheim on an Ibanez Mikro Bass, and just having a total gas playing it! It's small, 3/4 scale (I think 29 inches or so), and it was just so easy to play, and it didn't even sound half bad. And the low string tension made even extreme vibrato easy. Afterwards I started thinking about how I've always wanted a short scale bass, because they're so easy to play during those moments when you want to display some level of virtuosity. And after all these years I realized that my technique is at a point where I can wantonly shred a small scale bass.
So I searched for pro quality short scale basses, really scouring the web. I came up with a couple of custom builders who seemed promising at under $5K, but this nagging thought kept coming back to me...that what I truly wanted was a Stanley Clarke model Alembic. Truly, it's what I've always wanted, but somehow it wasn't realistic. But this time was different...because somehow, for no good reason, I just happened to have Alembic-level cash sitting in my checking account with nothing better to do. BTW, I'm pretty sure my mousing finger is sprained from the recoil of clicking that buy button!
I cannot wait until it arrives...let the games begin!
-George