Hello fellow Alembic people,
My name is Ingo and I'm new to the club. I'm a bassist first and foremost, but do play guitar, sing, and dabble with other stringed instruments as well. I've played in a bunch of bands over the last 18 years or so, mostly for fun, with the exception of a year or two of full-time gigging/touring shortly after finishing college. That said, I found I enjoy music much more when I'm not depending on it for a paycheck and when there is no business factor involved. It's the creative process of writing original music, solo and in collaboration with others, and the corresponding expression that I really love most.
I've been a long-time admirer of Alembic, but never owned one until I recently adopted an amazing Spoiler bass. For years I've been digging for more and more information on the Alembic story, philosophy, and instruments, mostly due to me being a huge fan of Jack Casady and Phil Lesh, since I was first exposed to their music back in high school. My initial obsession was with Guild Starfire basses (I've owned several and still have 2 of my favorites in the stable), but as I learned more about Jack and Phil, I became curious about filter preamps, broad frequency response, and so on.
Until I picked up this Spoiler, my main basses were my 1970 Guild Starfire and my 1962 Gibson EB-0. Both have been extensively modified, I love them dearly, and I consider them to be lifers. The Starfire had several iterations, including a few different filter preamps and pickup configurations, but now has a Hammon DarkStar, a Novak Bisonic, a passive 12-position mid-notch filter, 4-way rotary selector (neck/series/parallel/bridge), and a stacked active sweepable frequency mid control. The Gibson has 3 wonderful broad-frequency Joe Barden pickups and dual JTEX Distiller filters. I'm sure a lot of you already know where the inspiration for those two customized basses came from! Anyway, I've got several other basses too, but they're less relevant, so maybe we'll touch on those in the future. In any case, the next logical step was adding an Alembic of course!
My Spoiler was made in 1985, 32" scale, I believe it has a Koa top, typical volume and filter controls, an amazing 1.75" nut, and is surprisingly lightweight at only 8.8 lbs, per my bathroom scale. It's clearly been gigged for a long time and has the expected dings, dents, and mojo to show it, but it sets up great and plays like a dream, just as I've always imagined any proper Alembic should! Even though it's only been with me for a short time, I absolutely love this bass already and am pretty confident it too will be a permanent member of my stable.
I look forward to hanging out here and getting to know the rest of the Alembic club!
*wasn't sure how to embed the photos here, so below are some direct links to them:https://drive.google.com/file/d/1D-igXHtQFIq-nhwAwht5CidSG8JEiJ1s/view?usp=sharinghttps://drive.google.com/file/d/1Dsr0tqZ-3CTTx1i29gxA-nstT5AF21FZ/view?usp=sharinghttps://drive.google.com/file/d/1DbgsC7tJ4vlupUpRi5657BL8lBySmd5S/view?usp=sharing
