Just for the record (as indeed Flim hardly tows anything with him nowadays), in the abovementioned '89 Guitar Player interview Flim lists two sets of backline he used at the time: for small gigs and rehearsals, a Walter Woods head, powering two Thiele-design cabinets with 12 EV speakers. For big venues, he had a small PA, built up as follows: separate PU outputs from Alembic power supply >> Simon Systems 19 DI >> stereo crossover >> Yamaha power amps >> Meyer Soundlab speakers (highs stereo into two 12 + 1; lows into a single 15 subwoofer).
A few years earlier I've seen Flim on tour with Allan Holdsworth here in The Netherlands, using only a poweramp into a pair of stacked JBL 15 3-way cabs. I was close enough to the stage tie his shoe-laces together and must say I wasn't thrilled by the way his Alembic sounded (rather mid-heavy, with an added edge of a solid state system being pushed to its limit, not very hifi so to say).
As for hifi: you can clearly hear the improvement in sound reinforcement technology over the years. Just compare Flim's sound on Allan Holdsworth's 2002 live release All night wrong or the two James Taylor DVDs Mike mentioned to the (non official) release I.O.U. Live of some 20 years earlier. It seems as if sound reinforcement is (finally) catching up with the unsurpassed sound quality of Alembic basses.
Best Flim Johnson album must be the Wayne Johnson Trio's 1980 release Arrowhead (unfortunately never made it to CD). Most songs fretted, the fretless songs are hard to spot though, at least until Flim's solos start. Contains one of the prettiest bass solo's ever recorded or, as our guitar player once stated, this is how a bass solo should be.
Take care,RR
