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Alembic GAS!
- Thread starter mark beem
- Start date
jb - I agree with your observation on infused with love and good karma, the folks at Alembic are great people. looking at your avatar I suspect you might find interest in one of my recent Alembic additions...
It's a 2005 Dragon Wing with LEDs in mint condition. Cocobolo on mahogany body. Plays sweet and much darker than my Essence bass.
Now if you can fill me in on that cool little bass in your avatar I'd be complete.
Has anyone compared the ACG filter preamp with the Alembic filter preamp? Seems like they are both are basically low pass, with the Anniversary, Signature, and Series I versions of the Alembic pre having a fixed 'Q', and the ACG having a continuously variable 'Q', like the Alembic Series II 'CVQ' preamp. Further, the ACG has a high pass filter as well.
Now, I'm sure the Alembic is a masterfully built instrument, but the ACG pre is less that $350 and a Series II Alembic is LARGE amount of money. Has anyone compared the two?
Now, I'm sure the Alembic is a masterfully built instrument, but the ACG pre is less that $350 and a Series II Alembic is LARGE amount of money. Has anyone compared the two?
PM me if you're ever in the Detroit area and I'll help you cross that one off your bucket list.
Then you owe yourself a treat. The only thing I'd caution you about is spending 10 minutes playing with the controls and getting the impression you have heard what the bass can do. The filters do take some getting used to, but they allow you the broadest range of sounds I've ever had in one bass through incredibly dynamic Alembic pickups and the most rock-solid millwork in the business (someone once commented that Alembics have, "the best sorted-out harmonics they'd ever played" - I'd agree). It helps to bear in mind that, in addition to the other artists mentioned above, John McVie (Fleetwood Mac) and Tyron Porter (Doobies) got many of their signature sounds from Series Alembics. So, that's a whole lot of diversity from the same, fairly standard model (the only significant variation being scale length). My humble Brown Bass is below.
I believe one or more TBers who are familiar with Alembics have also had ACG filters. Since I have not had any experience with ACG's, I can't speculate. However, it's more than fair to say that Alembic basses and the Alembic sounds are the products of far more than their filter-based tone management.
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Something with Stanley Clark's electronics in a light weight Rogue would be nice and probably one of the first things I'd buy if I won the lottery.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but it seems like speculating is exactly what you're doing. Pickups and pre, and the wood: that's what goes into the sound.
Almost: I've compared the ACG with the Alembic SF-2, which is essentially an outboard version of the Series II electronics with a few additional features (switchable LP, BP, or HP filters, phase-coherant parallel mixing of filtered & unfiltered outputs).
They're more similar than dissimilar, in that they both require you to think about what it is you want to achieve and then figure out how to go about achieving that; e.g., you can't just "turn up the bass" by turning up the Bass control. Also, it's worth noting that neither of them actually works like a conventional parametric equalizer.
But beyond that, they're also rather different.
I've been toying with the idea of dropping an ACG pre in the Sarzo bass on the left, I wonder how it would sound?These are the closest basses I have to Alembics at the moment..
At the moment! LOL!
I was just looking at that, and thinking an ACG would be a pretty sweet move. You can always put it back to stock later if it doesn't do it for you.
I'm thinking of putting an ACG in my Carvin BB75, but I'm also looking at a couple of MK5's at the moment as well.
I owned an Alembic Distillate when I was in college. Awesome bass, the preamp was amazing. The roll off on the tone control due to the active pre amp would replicate a wah-wah effect.
I miss it and vow to one day own another one.
I miss it and vow to one day own another one.
It's interesting that the Sazo Signature bass came about due to Alembic. As I understand it, Rudy (Sarzo) was doing some studio work and used the engineer's Alembic (don't know what model) on the recording. He fell in love with it but couldn't convince the engineer to sell him the bass. Rudy then approached Peavey to make this bass based on everything he liked about the Alembic he played.
