Thanks Edward! Yep, I wish was a photo of the electronics cavity, especially for these "special" non-typical Alembics. To me, that's the coolest part of Alembics - I know, I'm that kind of nerd! But I like to think Ron Wickersham would understand.
I actually think that the design of the Alembic circuitry (like literally the schematic) is twice as impressive as any of the woodwork, and that's really saying something.
Jimmy, thanks for the notes! Partly I'm genuinely curious, e
.g. what type of filter(s) it has, what the specific range of corner frequencies are for the tone controls, etc. In a practical sense, this can be helpful with understanding how to set downstream parametric EQs, avoid room resonances, and so on. It's pretty cool (to me at least...) to build up the circuit and then actually see what it's really doing - for example, here's a Series 1 frequency sweep with the Q switch full-on:
So partly I'm just interested to know what what the mellow filters actually do to the graph above, for example.
I know it's probably a long shot - they are pretty darn rare! If no one has one, no worries.
As to practical (maintenance) reasons for understanding the circuit: That's definitely encouraging to hear about the robustness of the parts! Fingers crossed that they're never an issue for me. In the back of my mind, that mine are still 43- and 46-year-old instruments respectively, with literally something around 20x the components of, say, a P-bass (no exaggeration). If a solder joint breaks, an opamp or transistor stops working, for example, it's a pretty simple repair, and I may not have the luxury of making-do without the instrument for the amount of time that Alembic themselves might need to repair it. And I actually trust my own soldering skills more than most guitar shops. The Alembic warranty periods are LONG over at this point anyway, ha.
