| One Of The Best If you own an Alembic Bass you already know it's one of the best bass instrument you can buy. The Classic Northern California Hippie Sandwich Bass is an excellent excellent instrument. For those who also want a different type of sound. The sound that only comes from a bolt on instrument. Ed Roman recommends The Dingwall Bass, The Lowrider Bass and the Quicksilver Guitar. Truly Hand Built Craftsmanship I have always been an admirer of the hand built, old world
craftsmanship style guitars.
Alembic is probably the very first company that I can remember that was known as a quality hand built type company. They built instruments for John Paul Jones of Led Zeppelin and most of the members of the Grateful Dead, and they really struck gold when Stanley Clark adopted their Bass. FYI Ron Blake, who is currently my #1 Luthier, entirely built Stanley's Carl Thompson Piccollo Bass. Alembic pioneered the multi laminated neck through body design that is favored by today's top bass builders, myself included. They use obscure exotic woods in their search for high quality tone. Most brands of instruments are built with passive "non active" electronics, though some of them are active, (battery powered). Alembic was the first company to popularize a true electric instrument. Alembic guitars actually plugged directly into an AC power supply. This gave them some advantages tonally. Plus it allowed some cool options like LED's (light emitting diodes) for position markers. Speech Lesson One of my pet peeves is the fact that it seems that no one except Alembic owners can seem to pronounce the word "Alembic" correctly. Most Alembic owners can't even pronounce it. I could understand it if it was actually a hard word to say, but it isn't, in fact it's easy to say. Why does everyone insist on calling these instruments “Olympic?" Take the marbles out of your mouth and say Uhhhhhhhh - Lemm - Bic! OK, that's good, now say it again... Uhhhhhhhhhh - Lemmm - Bic! Now wasn't that easy? I could never figure how anyone could pronounce a "b" as a "p." Anyway, that is your speech lesson for today. In my opinion... I believe that a guitarist should use a little common sense in making a decision to buy a guitar. I believe that most guitars on the market are well constructed and play well. (even the ones made by the big corporations) I strongly suggest that guitarists should OPEN their minds to accepting the smaller companies that still hand-build they are basically the innovators of the industry. Ed Roman - 06/20/97
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