Series I 75-150

[dela217]

You almost tossed the hand cut logo!!??!!!  
 
As far as the pickup selector goes.... I have an older Alembic brochure with a guitar in it.  The guitar is serial number 73-45 and it uses the same type of pickup selector knob.  I also used to own a Guild Starfire that was modified by Alembic in their early years.  That same type of selector was used on it too.  I suppose it could have been fitted when it was made.

[kungfusheriff]

This thing feel like it weights five
pounds.
Crikey!
All I can say is--if she ever displeases you, don't forget your scoliotic friends in New York.

[lbpesq]

Thomas:
 
   That bass sure has character!  Other than doing something about the holes below the bridge, I wouldn't do anything other than having it preserved in a sort of arrested decay condition.  I've always appreciated the almost rustic look of the original Alembics.  One can always get a new one that looks new, but your's is a treasure that wears it's age well.  Of course, it's your bass and you should do what makes you happy.  Either way enjoy and make much music in good health.
 
Bill, the guitar one

[dela217]

Arrested decay.  I like that!  All of my basses are in that state.
 
I know what you mean about it feeling like it weighs 5 lbs.  I have an older Alembic that is VERY lightweight too.  I get used to my heavy basses and when I pick it up, I am shocked every time.  Even though I had this bass for 20 years.

[dadabass2001]

Thomas,
When I said walnut beauty, I was referring to the neck. Since it's a neck through I thought it might get the same kind of woody tone my fretted Epic gets with its walnut top lam.  
It's a sound I truely love, and I'm guessing since I run my EQ near flat that the sound I'm hearing is the top wood. It's not so much in the attack as in the decay of the notes. I lack sufficient skill to pull it up on demand, but I do LUV that sound!
Mike

[poor_nigel]

Hey Shawn.  Scoliotic?  I don't take kindly to people who make me go to thesaurus.com.  However, try swimming/floating
for some relief, but don't drown, OK?  This bass does not displease me.  I agree with Bill 100%.  It has great character.
However, it looks better in pictures than in person, and letting the finish go to bare wood is not preserving the instrument.
It is already pitted (As if sand blasted) above the front pickup on the pickup selector side.  I will have this little bass  
refinished because I like it and want to keep it for a decade or two, before it passes on to its next custodian.  I hope to have  
had it and played it enough to where they have to refinish it, also.
 
I polished the logo and it does not look anything like it did.  It looks so good, I might stick some 70 Schaller chrome tuners  
I have on it, like it originally had, and I don't like chrome (Hmmm, Michael, did these come with chrome or gold?  I  
remember sending Bucky a chrome tuner for him to get gold plated, as he could not find a gold plated one to replace a  
broken one for his old bass).  The Schallers on this bass are not the originals, and original drill holes are present on the  
back of the headstock.  The logo stays off until it gets refinished, as it will not stay in place without it being glued.
 
It turns out that the batteries for the LEDs were just about dead (I will have to sit corrected on it needing a new switch), and  
with the insertion of some Coppertop Ultras, boy are they bright, and side and fronts come on together in the second  
position.  I also checked the wiring, and it is nine volt in parallel.  Therefore, no hooking the side LEDs up to the 18 volt  
line.
 
Michael, thanks for the information on the pickup selector switch.  The allen screws made me think it was what came on  
the bass.  Now I believe it with some confidence.  I cannot believe the tones that come out of this five-pound wonder.
 
Thanks for the great info Mica.  Oh, and thanks for renaming the thread, too.  The fretboard on this bass is probably the  
thinnest I have ever seen on a bass.  So thin that they had to drill into the sacrificial laminate for the LEDs to fit.  Because it  
has no accent laminates, the core looks really thick on this little body.  The more I play this bass, the more I like it.  I can  
just imagine how I will feel about it when I have racked up over an hour total playing time on it - been swamped at work  
this week.

[mica]

Mom remembers having used that switch.

[kungfusheriff]

I am, as ever, a walking dichotomy (heh heh), O Thomas: cursed with a bad back and devoid of swimming pools, yet smitten with Alembic.
Your thoughtful and detailed notes on this wizened work of wood will surely be invaluable when my wife finishes her education, hands me a blank check and says Go call Alembic.
(I love my wife.)  
Play and enjoy your Lil' Bit O' Honey in good health, sir.
God, does it really weigh five pounds? Mica, would the crew build a bass with a birch core? My Little Wonder weighs ten, and is often uncomfortable to play standing up, so I've been racking my brain for ideas to minimize the weight of the 32 cocobolo five-string I one day hope to own.

[poor_nigel]

Hey Mike.  I am just going have to show my ignorance and state that I do not know what you mean by a woody tone.
You are the second person to ask me this of this bass.  I do not talk about bass sounds much on boards and clubs.  The
bass sounds brighter and thinner than my S-II running 'flat.'  However, I can pretty much configure amps and  
speakers for pretty much any fretted sound I want.  I will ask Bob to explain to me in detail what a woody/woodsy  
tone is and get back to you on it.  
 
Time Warner of Wasteland, Maine finally got HDTV in, and I hooked it up yesterday and turned it on.  Checked out  
the nine HD channels and left it on the Who at the Isle of Wight concert that happened to be on.  Hmmm . . .  But it  
did have its moments and I do love to watch John and especially Keith play.  This really got me in a vintage frame of  
mind, so I hooked up some old amps and played some Tommy and Jethro Tull on the Lil? Bass.  This bass was made  
to play on these amps!    
 
 
 
If there are any Sunn amp fans/freaks (like me!) out there, this is a 66 200S and its bottom and a 68 Sentura II (I like  
a touch of reverb once in a while) with a 68 200S bottom.  I ran the bridge pickup to the Sentura and the neck to the  
200S.  Holy Noel Redding!!! - without the ?Fender Bass,? of course.  
 
Thanks for the verification on the PU selector switch knob Mica.  One less thing to mess with.  Shawn ? ?wizened?  
work of wood?  That is twice now you have made me learn something.  My head hurts now!  Perhaps you can have a  
bass stand built that will hold the bass out in front of you, so it holds the weight and you just play it.  Did the bass  
player in Yes used to have one of these?  You know, carrying around the weight of your large vocabulary could be  
the cause of your bad back.
 
(Message edited by poor_nigel on October 16, 2004)

[kungfusheriff]

Tom, I'm sure the catalog of words chasing each other 'round my mind bears some responsibility for my back pain, but I think that incident when I was working for the Korean supermarket bears more responsibility.
A tip for all--when using one of those unpowered forklift thingies to move half a ton of soy milk or any other heavy cargo, you must always push and never pull. After you yank a few vertebrae out of place and tear up your muscles, they never work right again.
Your stand suggestion is a thoughtful one, and well appreciated, but I look like a big enough dork already, thank you very much.
I tried the Comfort Strapp last week and it felt nice but no way was I paying $32 for anything that cheesy. Ended up with some stinking slab of black (p)leather that pretty much does the job, and the fumes provide a nice buzz while I play.

[poor_nigel]

Gee shawn, you have the best excuse in the world to take drugs!  I once was in a band with a lead player with a bad  
back, and every once in a while he would drink while on his pain killers - That did not last long.  He was great when  
sober, though.  I will take Lil Bass to work and weigh it on the postage scale there.  My bathroom scale is way off,  
which is a plus in my book.  i will let you know her real weight, so you can consider it when your wife strikes it rich.  
Maybe you can afford a Moody strap then, too!  
 
Paul, I am sorry I totally passed over your asking about the rig in the pictures.  Here:
 
 
 
The top rack is input.  The signal path starts with the fourth unit from the top.  It is an old real time analyzer that I  
added the gutz of an RS-5 to, so it would analyze the input signal and work as the RS-5 normally would.  I clipped  
the tap to the analyzer when I thought it was introducing a dirty signal to the output.  The RS-5R sitting on top of the  
CD player in the larger pictures will replace this shortly, and the gutz will be put back in their little blue box for when  
I want a more portable power supply.  
 
The output is mono, here, and goes to the Eden Navigator.  I have the EQ set flat, as I was testing the speakers  
recently.  The CD player is hooked to its stereo Aux inputs.  The Peterson strobe tuner (top unit) is connected to the  
tuner out of the Eden Navigator.  Therefore, I can mute the Navigator and use the Peterson silently.  The third unit  
down is a MidiVerb 4 that I sometimes use for reverb, flange, and echo.  It is connect to the Navigator via the effects  
loops ins and outs.  
 
The bottom rack is output.  The top unit is a 20 amp Furman conditioner.  The stereo output from the Navigator goes  
into a graphic equalizer that I use to cut things out of the sound, mainly.  I use the parametric EQ system on the  
Navigator to add with.  The signal then goes to the stereo three-way electronic crossover.  This one is a Rane.  They  
are very dependable and easy to use.  This is a tri-amped configuration, so there are three power amps to run the 21's,  
the 10's, and the horns sitting on top.  I ended up turning the horns off, as crossed over at 6,000 Hz, nothing was  
coming out of them, except sounds that I would want to cut out anyway.  I do turn the horns on, if I play a CD.  Hey,  
this is actually a really nice stereo.  My only problem with the Navigator is that its input is strictly mono.  So it's a  
really nice mono-stereo.  I have seriously considered dumping it for a F2-B and a SF-2.  Not this year.
 
(Message edited by poor_nigel on October 16, 2004)

[poor_nigel]

Part II to Paul:  
 
This rig is just a temporary setup till I make the new cabinets for the 21' woofers show above.  The horns and another set just like them, plus the
eight JBL 10's sitting on top of my projects pile below, will be stuffed into four cabinets of two 10s and a horn each.  I should probably eliminate
the horns, but they would be more useful for other aplications if I leave them in the design.  
 
 
 
After I get Lil' Bass fixed up and the new rig built, I will probably finally do something about replacing the Navigator with something that is true stereo.  
 
(Message edited by poor_nigel on October 17, 2004)

[poor_nigel]

Hey Mike.  Bob's definition of woody/woodsy:  
Mostly it's a warmth thing.  Woody is the opposite of sterile.  I think that any instrument could sound warm and woody through a Boogie 400 head  
 or an SVT.  On the other hand, it takes a woody-sounding bass to produce pleasant tones through a GK.  
 
By this definition, yes, both my Alembics have a woody/woodsy sound, epecially when I play them through tube heads.  Plus they still have a growl  
and a bit, whenever desired.  
 
Unofficial weigh in ? Step on bathroom scale ? pick up bass ? weight minus me equals @ 7.5 pounds.  Accuracy = who knows . . .  
 
(Message edited by poor_nigel on October 17, 2004)

[palembic]

Thanks for explaining Thomas ...great set-up.
The day Maine trembled... quite a movietitle!!!
Well ...see it this way: thanks to you there was something moving at least in that state
 
hehehehe
 
Paul the bad one

[poor_nigel]

You are more right than you know Paul.  Welcome to the Wasteland.  Here is Lil Bass in case: