Hi John,
Looks like you've given a lot of thought to re-thinking the Alembic philosophy, and I think you may have stepped on a few toes here (just kidding, we like to think we're open-minded).
As far as I know, Alembic will not install electronics packages from other manufacturers, which rules out humbuckers with coil taps. I'm no expert, but I'm thinking coil taps are only possible on high impedance pickups. Also, Alembic does only low impedance single-coils (with a dummy humcanceller) or humcancelling dual-coil (no series/parallel option) - a humbucker is a totally different design. Do a search in this club on humcancelling and you'll find more detailed discussion.
I assume they can build you a 3-band EQ, and it will probably be an excellent EQ in itself. But if you put a pair of standard Alembic filters, which are low-pass, before the EQ, you'll probably end up boosting freqencies that you've just been cutting, and vice versa. IMO that will result in a very 'processed' sound.
Also the standard Alembic filters are always on, there is no 'off' position. No doubt you can order a filter bypass switch as an option, but perhaps a switch to select either the filters or the EQ would be more useful.
What you call the 'level' pot of the Alembic filter in fact sets the cut-off frequency. The 'on/off switch' adds 8 dB of boost right at the cut-off frequency, and there is already a slight boost in the 'off' position (if you look at the Essence package, there is no switch: the 8 dB boost is always there).
The sound palette available on an Alembic with low-pass filters is quite different from what you can achieve with a 3-band EQ. And I'm not sure what adding an EQ onboard would add - surely you also have an amp or a preamp with EQ?
Adriaan
