A recent post said that the standard arrangement for the tuners on a 5 string was changed from 3+2 to 2+3. Not my cup of tea, at least not in the looks department - maybe someone is in for a big surprise when they first open the case of their new custom-ordered Alembic 5 ;-)
Was it Fodera who started this? They take it even one step further: the B tuner is the furthest away from the nut. The design of the Fodera peghead allows them to put the tuner there: the B string travels 'to the left of' the posts of the E and A tuners, and it is wound to the post from the top down.
Another interesting novelty is the 'compensated nut' on the MusicMan Bongo. The idea behind that is that the length of string between the nut and the fretting position must resonate at the proper frequency, sympathetic to the fundamental occurring at the 'sounding' end of the string.
About threading the string through the body ... I know that it can make a big difference on other basses, but I don't think it would do much on an Alembic. The idea behind Alembics in general seems to be to isolate the string as much as possible from the woods, with firm anchor points so as to let the string vibrate as freely as possible. There is a certain amount of mechanical feedback from the woods to help colour the tone, but it doesn't have much of an impact on the amount of sustain that the string is capable of.
With other basses, through-the-body strings sometimes seem to be there only to help the bass not resonate too freely, which would ruin the sustain - that's the complete opposite of how Alembics are built.
(Message edited by Adriaan on January 27, 2004)
