Peter Lewis Series I Guitar

[rv_bass]

Peter Lewis of Moby Grape, photo credited online to Clayton Call in 1978. 

Series I guitar, beautiful inlays, zebrawood top, looks like walnut and maple neck.  My guess is early 1975 for the guitar based on what looks like trim pots on the front, but slimmer top horn (1974 would have had the soft horn).  Older style pickups and master volume too, which is cool.

[welovecats]

Cool! I like the Grape.

[StephenR]

Thanks Rob! Clayton is a local drummer and good friend of mine. I may be able to cajole a slightly larger image with a watermark out of him so we can get a better look.

I really like Moby Grape. Fortunate to be old enough (hey you got to find some upside) to have seen them open for Procol Harum at the Anderson Theater in NYC 1968. Both bands were fantastic, the first Moby Grape album is just packed with great songs and vibrancy. I saw a reunion gig in 1996 at Maritime Hall in San Francisco that was also really good but with a number of auxiliary players, the old songs still really kicked. Peter Lewis did not play his Alembic on either gig. The early Alembic guitars are really cool.

[rv_bass]

Hey Stephen, that’s all cool stuff!     The photo Online is a lager file (and clearer), but the Alembic Club page restricts uploading photo file sizes to 150kb max, so it gets a little blurry after resizing.

Here is a link to the website with the clear photo…

https://www.claytoncallphoto.com/Classic-Shots/i-kQkRDJZ

[edwardofhuncote]

oooooh. [squeal] The Inlay!

[pauldo]

Wow!  Clayton Call’s collection of photos are epic.

[adriaan]

Hey Stephen, that’s all cool stuff!     The photo Online is a lager file (and clearer), but the Alembic Club page restricts uploading photo file sizes to 150kb max, so it gets a little blurry after resizing.

Here is a link to the website with the clear photo…

https://www.claytoncallphoto.com/Classic-Shots/i-kQkRDJZ

The current file size limit is 1,000 kB.

[welovecats]

Clayton’s pics are really really great. I wonder if he has another shot of Lewis that isn’t posted on there, one where we could see the bridge and tailpiece? There is one other one on there that shows the guitar further away, but it’s still not a very revealing view.

[StephenR]

The current file size limit is 1,000 kB.

Was not aware of the increased size limit, I always shoot for 500kB max based on the old requirement. Is there still a 1,200 pixel maximum for height and width?

I resized this screen grab in Photoshop decreased the pixel dimensions and resolution then used the "Export for Web and Devices" command to save it. That command will compress the image based on content and seriously decreases the file size in the process. It does this by discarding redundant similar pixels so if for instance you have a large area with a solid color it only needs some of the pixel information to store the area of solid color.  A very busy shot with a lot of detail is more difficult to reduce the size on due to the amount of detail  that needs to be retained during compression. This image is only 320 kb and is 860x 1,000 pixels in size at 72 ppi.
If I remember correctly when Clayton digitized his photos that were shot using film to archive them on line he did everything, he probably has no other shots of the guitar if they aren't in his online archive.

[StephenR]

Side note about resizing images. I use an old version of Photoshop since I am not interested in supporting Adobe's current subscription software model. I also have a copy of Affinity Photo on my iMac. It is a great image editing program that can do 98% of what Photoshop does. Affinity sells it for $55, all the version 1 upgrades have been free as they continue to develop the program. Once they hit V2 they will charge again, no indication of how much yet but they plan to continue to offer their software as standalone software that you buy and own, no paying by the month for software that will no longer be accessible to you if you chose not to pay. All the products in the Affinity Software suite work together really well and are $55 each (keep an eye out for sales, usually half price when they are doing a promotion). Available for Mac and Windows platforms with a cheaper option for iPads.  I use Affinity Publisher all the time, too, great program, no more InDesign for me.

I have no personal affiliation with Affinity Software but posted this since I constantly see folks struggling with how to resize photos for posting on various website forums using inferior tools due to the annual cost of a Photoshop subscription.

[rv_bass]

Hey Stephen, that’s all cool stuff!     The photo Online is a lager file (and clearer), but the Alembic Club page restricts uploading photo file sizes to 150kb max, so it gets a little blurry after resizing.

Here is a link to the website with the clear photo…

https://www.claytoncallphoto.com/Classic-Shots/i-kQkRDJZ

The current file size limit is 1,000 kB.

Adriaan, that’s great!  When did that change?  I just uploaded a 975kb photo to the Scenery thread and it worked…thanks! 

[rv_bass]

Clayton’s pics are really really great. I wonder if he has another shot of Lewis that isn’t posted on there, one where we could see the bridge and tailpiece? There is one other one on there that shows the guitar further away, but it’s still not a very revealing view.

I would guess the bridge is the channel style and the tailpiece is brass capped wood, but would like to see it too.

[rv_bass]

I use a free app called I,age Size on my iPad to resize photos

[welovecats]

I would guess the bridge is the channel style and the tailpiece is brass capped wood, but would like to see it too.
[/quote]

Here’s a close-up from the other pic. Correct on the tailpiece I would say, you can kind of see the bridge, is it what you call "channel style?"

[rv_bass]

Channel style is like the one on your 75-183 bass.  I think they switched over to the current bridge style in mid 1977.

If the tailpiece on your 183 bass is original, it likely has the brass capped wood design as well.