Alembic bridge disassembly - Flitz polish on brass

[UpperBout]

I only took a few pictures - I was sort of racing against sun-down, since I was working outside in natural light.

Before:

I marked the order of disassembly and orientation on a shop-towel


That Flitz is miraculous stuff, but you do need to add elbow grease.

The tail-piece after:


The "After" picture:


I also conditioned the ebony board with pure lemon oil:



Did a rough set-up and intonation last night as well.

BTW, there are lots of tips and guidance on the Alembic Club on bridge disassembly/polishing, so google on over there for more details.

 

[OldDirtyBassist]

I might have read somewhere online about using VO5 to keep the brass nice and shiny. You might look into it cause it will go right back to the dull look.

 

[AltGrendel]

I thought Alembic put a light coat of lacquer on the bridge to keep things clean.

 

[UpperBout]

I might have read somewhere online about using VO5 to keep the brass nice and shiny. You might look into it cause it will go right back to the dull look.

Yes, that's right. I didn't put the v05 on during this session - it was kind of rushed. But I plan to this weekend.

 

[UpperBout]

I thought Alembic put a light coat of lacquer on the bridge to keep things clean.

Depends on the model, I think. Even the models that have it eventually wear off. Except the ultra-fancy Series II's which are gold-plated. Series I's are chrome. My old Series I (1977) has the lacquer, but it's wearing off a bit. With Alembics, everythings so customized, there are probably as many exceptions as there are standard.

The good news is that regardless, the brass cleans up pretty nice with a bit of elbow grease. I think if I were to do this again, I'd get a little dremel and some of those conical foam buffing bits.

 

[fhm555]

Looks good. For future reference, get a can of Never Dull. It's a wadding polish so it gets down in the little nooks and such much better than a rag wetted with cleaner/polish so it makes for a quicker job.

If you want the best, Semichrome is the only way to go. It brings back the blue luster of chrome like nothing else, although it can be tedious on small parts as it takes a lot to get it all rubbed off. It also does a bang up job on other metals, it's just more work.

 

[megafiddle]

I also like Simichrome for metals. It's very slightly coarser than Flitz, and so cuts faster,
and cleans better.

-

 

[charlie monroe]

That's a sweet bass. How do you control string height with that bridge?

 

[UpperBout]

That's a sweet bass. How do you control string height with that bridge?

The body has threaded metal sleeves embedded, and the bridge has allen wrench height adjustments on each side. You can't adjust an individual string height independently from the other strings, but the radius of the neck is cut into the slots in the brass saddles, so I've never needed to vary the height individually on any of my Alembics.

 

[fhm555]

Looking at the style of that bridge, the massive yellow metal parts, the nylock nuts for intonation, the carrier rods for the saddles, it's like Alembic anticipated the steampunk look and built accordingly.

Or maybe their style helped inspire steampunk?

 

[UpperBout]

Looking at the style of that bridge, the massive yellow metal parts, the nylock nuts for intonation, the carrier rods for the saddles, it's like Alembic anticipated the steampunk look and built accordingly.

Or maybe their style helped inspire steampunk?

Some of their early creations are [Invalid or Expired Link Removed],


although I think that's an unintentional coincidence. But the very early incarnations were extensively hand-wrought wood and metal creations, and fairly ornate.

Alembic as a separate company was largely spawned out of the Grateful Dead's desire to push sonic boundaries ([Invalid or Expired Link Removed]), and Alembic, for all intents and purposes, invented the "boutique bass". A lot of what went into the Early Alembics was due to the fact that there were no parts to source from - everything had to be hand-crafted. (another steam-punk-ish aesthetic)

 

[UpperBout]

I did some more work on this bass, and it's really come back to life.

Thorough cleaning and readjustment of the headstock and machine heads:


Flitz polish on the headstock logos:

The machine heads are still somewhat pitted and losing plating, but I don't mind - they work fine and now they don't have any looseness or "play" in them.

BTW - to be clear, I didn't use Flitz on the machine heads, just the brass logos. The machine heads got a mild cleaner and tooth-brush to remove gunk.

The side dots were nearly invisible:


Flitz did not seem to be punching through the layer of varnish obscuring the dots, so I masked off the dots with tape (couldn't find my real masking tape...)

And used a super-thin strip of fine-gauged sandpaper to get to the shiny metal.

Result - totally visible dots. This technique is one of the recommendations from Alembic. It might have been a scosche more aggressive than I intended, but I definitely need the dots. Add a bit of hand-wear from playing and the abraded ebony should revert to the same appearance as the rest of the the neck.

I'm still looking for the definitive "setup and intonation for fretless" guide. I'm happy with the way it's set up now, but I was just guessing based on the usual setup guidelines for fretted.

 

[rjmsteel]

Really nice job on the brass.

One day I'll disassemble the brass bridge on my Distillate. Again nice work and correct attention to detail/ marking out the bridge for re-assembly.