I know I'm preaching to the choir here, but just had to share a quick anecdote:
Last night my bandmates and I began the process of recording bass lines for our upcoming album. (I'll post some links once it's released.) I brought out the full bass arsenal to cover any sounds we wanted to get.
There were several songs that were pretty heavy sounding (minor tonality, mid-tempo, wall of guitars, etc)...and I was simply not getting the desired sound with my non-Alembic axes.
Well, I pull out the ole Stanley Sig Deluxe (probably should have started with it in the first place, I know), ran through about 15% SansAmp driver, and *wallah*, the most evil-sounding, cut-through-the-mix, gnarly, bark-of-Cerebrus bass sound of all time. My bandmates specifically commented that it was amazing that those wicked tones were coming from such a small-looking bass...
Anyway, just more kudos to Alembic. Pretty, pretty basses, but they can sound mighty scary (in a good way).