Color of pickups

[Charles David Tichenor (alembic76407)]

Mica, What is the story on the different color's of pickups. Most are black, but I've seen cream pickups and  redish brown on A few Alembic's, always on Series 1 basses, are there any other color's, and do they mean any thing, were they special order, or was it just a passing fancy.

[David Fung (dfung60)]

Mica will have the definitive answer, but I've only seen the brown covers on old (mid-70's) instruments.  They are the coolest!  
 
There have been changes in the black Series I pickups as well - the old ones have no logo or marking, just smooth black.  In the 80's there was a molded in Alembic on the pickups, and in the 90's the pickups had a gold foil-stamped logo.  I've noticed in a number of the recent Featured Customs that the molded logo seems to have reappeared.
 
David Fung

[Michael Delacerda (dela217)]

I have seen many different colors of Alembic pickups.  I personally have owned basses with clear, tan, cream, red, and black pickups.  I have heard of others too.  Such as green and transparent colors as well, kinda like a tinted clear.  I would love to find a source for the correct color of the potting material of the ones that are caramel colored from the 70's.  I think that they look the coolest.  I have a bunch of basses with that color, but I think you are kinda stuck with black if you need to get them replaced.  
 
Another cool option that I have seen pics of is pickup covers done up in the wood that matches the face of the instrument.  Continous wood frontplates??

[mica]

The earliest ones were clear, I think these were cast in acrylic. I've got a few in my collection that are tinted beautiful jeweltones. Then we started to cast in polyurethane, and the only color it came in was caramel, good thing it looked nice with the wood. I've seen cream, rust and a weird greenish color too.  
 
I don't think these were special ordered at any time, just a reflection of the available materials.
 
By the mid 70's, the polyurethane finally came in black, and now they don't even make the caramel color anymore (but it comes in bunches of other colors). Our attempts to tint the white to a vintage caramel haven't made a satisfactory substitute for restorations.
 
Tony has made some really interesting pickups with the polyurethane colors. He's done some crazy splatters of red white and black and a rising sun starting with red then filling with white.
 

[Kris Stewart (elwoodblue)]

Mica,
  couldja post a couple pics of Tony's creations ?... sounds very cool,
   
smiles
kris