70s Alembic bass sorting out. It's a bit short on detail pics, it turned into a major pain so didn't stop
to photo much, but here we go.
Alembic's history is fairly interesting and a bit wacky. This bass is also pretty wacky in parts. it's from what I'm told is considered 'golden age' or similar.
It arrived with a good lot of scrapes, dents and some deep punctures. The clearcoat obscured the wood to where in normal light it looked like slabs of dark chocolate. Grain was hard to see, this pic's under strongish lighting. The wing outers are padauk over walnut, central stringers are purpleheart. Everything looked brown or yellow/orange. The side dot markers are silver rod but were hard to see.
A quick sample of some scars
It refused paintstripper, and orbital sanders just skipped over it. Scraping was very hard to do. Stripping turned into a slow, horrible job.
Strong paintstripper would slightly soften the lacquer, enabling some scraping to be done. Then it'd get really hard going, so stop, rinse & repeat stripper/scraping.
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Made some hard sanding blocks as the body top/bottom weren't that flat after some movement or glue creep.
Each time you have to wait overnight really before sanding back, and you can only do one side at a time.
it's not uncommon for both paduak and purpleheart to move towards brown over the years
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Moved into the sun to show the colours - nothing like everyday lighting but hey
Last bit. All the brass got a polish up (as did the silver rod side markers, before lacquer).
Wish I'd got pics of the headstock but it always seemed to be in a different postcode... it's got a scarfed head with lots of laminated layers
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I remember the Washburn Falcons (etc), although 6 string, took some inspiration from the Alembic look/construction.
Hi Pete, I don't have a bass amp and play bass like a guitar player trying to play bass... but it seems punchy & lively to me.
Cheers impmann, indeed, think these are in the £6k to £7k region? Matey reckoned a modern replacement might cost him £20k! It was interesting to have a good close look around it, very handmade feel, pretty far away from your modern CNC ultra precision and all that.