I apologize in advance for the lengthy post. I just received my fourth custom guitar from Alembic last week. The third arrived almost a year ago the same day. For the last two I didn't ask that a Factory to Customer thread be generated. In fact, for the latest one, I saw only a drawing and nothing else during its entire build?not even the woods that were to be used. I simply asked Susan to pick me out a nice piece of walnut. I had complete faith in their abilities. So here's the story behind the latest one. The first three I had done to commemorate the birth of each of my three children. I told them that if they play guitar, they can have theirs once they are old enough. My youngest is almost seven, so there was quite a long time between the second and third builds. Not Alembic's fault. Life just always seemed to get in the way. It wasn't until my daughter began asking where her guitar was that I realized I had to do something. Now, while having guitars built to honor your children and to "pre-humously" bequeath them might sound like a wonderful thing, for me it kind of backfired. Not only did I never take them out of the house for fear of damaging them, even when I played them at home they didn't seem like mine. It always felt as though I was borrowing them and so I never bonded with either of the three. I know?pathetic. But it didn't really matter, because I never played out of the house anyway. In fact the only time I jammed with anyone since high school was the three Alembic Gatherings that I attended over the last few years. But that all changed two years ago. Our local School of Rock organized a modified adult program and they got six of us to form our own group. So now I'm playing every week and four or five shows a year. For the first time, I needed an Alembic of my own. And so began the journey of what's affectionately come to be know as "The Beater" because it will be mine to play the hell out of! Each time we built a guitar, we started with a completely new body shape?something that I've found very challenging. Let's face it, drawings can only convey so much. Even in progress pictures don't tell the entire story. Here's a montage of the four guitars. I stole three of Mica's photos because my photography skills are sorely lacking. The chronological order (oldest to newest) is top left, top right, bottom left, bottom right.
When the first guitar was delivered, I was shocked at how small it really was. When I came time to build the second, I asked that we retain the same overall shape but that the body be much more substantial. I thought I liked the horns on that one until I saw a picture of a custom bass from the 70's with these lovely curled horns. I wanted to incorporate those into the third build, whose body is a bit of a departure from the other two. After the third, I realized that I prefer longer horns, so I asked that we basically build a guitar that has all of my favorite elements from the first three. And that's precisely what they did. Not that I don't love the other three, but this one is essentially the vision I had more than ten years ago when I first started my journey with Alembic. But it's wonderful to see this natural evolution?the features of each of my children's' guitars reflected in my own.
The third guitar was the first of mine to have a volute and I requested that this have one as well.
As far as electronics are concerned, all of the others had the basic Skylark package, which seemed to work just fine at home. After playing live for quite some time, I realized what works best for me. On the "Beater" we went with a three way blade which makes pickup selection so much easier, because I can leave one in the bright position without it being activated. Then we have normal/bright switches for each pickup as well as individual volume and filter knobs. The monthly special when I ordered this was free LED's, so we've got those as well. The switch and knob closest to the bottom are for a boost on/off with variable gain setting. Typically the latter is controlled by an internal trip pot, but I asked that it be on the outside for easier real time adjustment.
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