E of H,
The phenomenon you are talking about, where you feel that anything interfering with the pure signal of the bass actually limits the tone potential, is something that becomes very obvious to the user when recording. I spent the last 37 years as a session musician, and I always noticed that my Alembics had the best tone when recorded direct. I always liked the Countryman direct boxes, and the Alembic straight into the board was always a more expansive tonal range than when I played live through a rig. For the first 2/3 of my musical career, this was certainly the case, but as amplification has improved, and I figured out the secret to great tone with my F1X or F2B, there is certainly less of a dichotomy these days. The key for me is a ton of fast solid state power, and the use of a properly maintained Alembic preamp.
Let me explain properly maintained. Years ago, I remember arguing with Ron Wickersham about a perceived difference in tone between the F2B and F1X. He kept saying there simply should not be any difference in the tone between the two, but I was absolutely sure of what I was hearing. None of this was resolved for many years, until performing maintenance on one of my F1X preamps. I had two of them, and could really hear a difference between them. One simply did not have the clarity on the top end, and there was a marked lack of fullness in the low end. This was exactly the issue I had noticed between F2Bs and F1Xs years prior. The difference was it was now between two F1Xs. After an exhausting search for the issue, Ron suggested I clean the corrosion of the mono output jack. Apparently this jack design will corrode slightly where it combines the stereo signals, and this can lead to a diminished signal and thus loss of clarity. One minute and a little emery cloth later, my faulty F1X was sounding as great as my other one, and to my surprise, exactly like my F2B! So, Ron was right in that they should sound identical, but I was right in that there was a marked difference in the two particular preamps I was comparing due to the corroded output jack. My advise to all of you out there who think your bass sounds limited by your use of an Alembic preamp, clean your output jack connections!
