Alembic bass restoration

Corvus

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.

Corvus

Weapons. The scraper plane is a great thing. 
Made some hard sanding blocks as the body top/bottom weren't that flat after some movement or glue creep.

After this it needed damage making good: various dents steamed, some bleaching, some in-filling. The tail ends can get compressed & battered.

Then detail sanding everywhere and bits of scraping, to make sure every last bit of the pesky original lacquer was banished.

Corvus

I decided to grainfill with z-poxy partly because the padauk has big deep ol' pores and it'd save hosing tons of clearcoat.

This took several rounds of fill/sand.
Each time you have to wait overnight really before sanding back, and you can only do one side at a time.

But one good thing is now we can get some sort of idea of what the thing'll look like in the end -

WezV

Nice!

it's not uncommon for both paduak and purpleheart to move towards brown over the years

Corvus

Cheers Wez. Absolutely, the purpleheart was actually still dark purple under the toffee layer. Not lairy bright like new/fresh, but was good to have it back to something purple-ish. The padauk looked like Bournville chocolate before, it was good to see some character coming back.

Corvus

Then finally it's ready for clearing. Using 2k, it's water-clear and non-yellowing.

The z-poxy was sanded back, and at the end a thinned wipe-on coat done to give a slight tint to everything, so to take it back a bit from being too new and spangly.

The maple's aged too, it's much less bright than newish wood which helps.

Moved into the sun to show the colours - nothing like everyday lighting but hey

Deadman

Good God, Bill. That’s incredible. I love it.

Corvus

Cheers kindly DM.

Last bit. All the brass got a polish up (as did the silver rod side markers, before lacquer).

Then assembly, heaving the electrics in. Couple of the previously mullered wires let go, so had to go fishing & sort those.

Slightly oddly the dummy coil pickup is glued in.

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

Anyway, it's done and the owner was well chuffed which is great.

I did him a a document covering everything, and info like screw threads and how to take apart/assemble the wiring sections. I colour-coded some wiring so the next guy can get in & out with less hassle hopefully.

WezV

That's looking great

danishbacon

Wow

DartmoorHedgehog

That looks superb. What's the DIN-type socket for?

Funkfingers

DartmoorHedgehog said:

What's the DIN-type socket for?

Balanced signal output and external power to onboard active circuitry.

PhilKing

That looks really fantastic.  It probably looks better than when it left Alembic!

Corvus

Thanks all! Cheers.

Funkfingers

Corvus said:

PhilKing said:

That looks really fantastic. It probably looks better than when it left Alembic!

To me, after the refurb, it looks not unlike the photographs of John Paul Jones' basses at Knebworth 1979.

PeteC

That looks really great. Lovely restoration job.  I bet it sounds killer too. 
I remember the Washburn Falcons (etc), although 6 string, took some inspiration from the Alembic look/construction. 

impmann

Absolutely gorgeous. Big fan of Alembic guitars and basses here... sadly wayyy beyond my pay grade!!

Corvus

Cheers chaps.
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.

MtB

Top job there Bill

Andyjr1515

A real top drawer job there @Corvus ;  Great bass, great restoration.

Corvus

Cheers Mike and Andy, ta chaps