https://reverb.com/item/99056645-alembic-mk1-1975
I wonder what the middle stringer is made from?
Looks to me like maple, walnut, Purple Heart, but that's just a guess.
Wonder if the body is maple or birch?
It looks a little darker than the neck, but it could just be a slightly darker cut of maple. I wish there were better images.
I think this is the bass in question being played by its second owner:
(https://i.ibb.co/qLLbdh9t/IMG-9836.jpg)
Reminds me of [s_wood]'s #74-74, the Fowler Series.
https://club.alembicguitars.com/series-i-basses-and-guitars/74-74-tom-fowler-s-alembic/msg270770/#msg270770
The darker center neck laminate is interesting.
I love the early ones with dark necks — if I ever have one built, it's going to have one. In the meantime, maybe an old one will come along.
My 75-174 originally had the same neckwoods with dark center laminate. But after two headstock breaks the entire neck was replaced by the previous owner with just maple and Purple Heart, wish they had retained the original neck wood combination.
The dark primary neck woods on the older basses are usually walnut or Purple Heart. I love the walnut primary neck woods basses.
I've often wondered what led to the gradual migration to maple/purpleheart as more of a standard as neck layup. Lots of variety in the early ones, but walnut/birch seems to have been a favorite. Same with body cores. Lots of experimentation before mahogany settled in. 74 I had forgotten had that rarer-seen oak core. I can't really tell about the one in the subject of this thread... definitely looks lighter than mahogany. Birch, or beech maybe?
There's really no wrong answer for what works, those are all stable hardwoods, but there are certainly some differences in the end result.
I don't have the build details yet, but 75-254 appears to be all maple and walnut, both neck and body. Pickups have the four screw mounting, but it's still the U channel bridge and the brass-over-wood bird. Production was ramping up that year, so it makes sense the house recipe would start to take shape.