Retro-Rama

The Alembic Series I marks a point when innovations in bass playing and bass building began to inspire one another on an unprecedented scale. When Stanley Clarke first picked up an Alembic in the early ’70s, the alchemy between electric bass players and their instruments went to a whole new place.

The story behind this bass starts a few years earlier, during the heady days of the late ’60s in the San Francisco Bay Area. Technology was rapidly evolving, and over the next few years, sonic experiments conducted by Alembic’s Ron Wickersham, Bob Matthews, and Rick Turner spilled over into the world of instruments, especially bass guitars. Guild Starfires belonging to the Jefferson Airplane’s Jack Casady and the Grateful Dead’s Phil Lesh became laboratories for Alembic. The Starfire’s Hagstrom Bi-Sonic single-coil pickups were analyzed, rebuilt, enhanced, and replaced, and these experiments led to the development of active preamp circuitry inside the bass. With the same attention to detail of their electronics quest, they began to design and build a bass that was a leap forward in all areas of its construction and sound—the Alembic Series I. The first one, an exotic combination of zebrawood, purpleheart, and maple, with a 32" scale, was delivered to Jack Casady in 1971.

This 1976 Series I is breathtakingly beautiful and has the sound to back up its good looks. It belongs to legendary Muscle Shoals bassist David Hood and has been his main recording bass since he bought it new three decades ago; it can be heard on hits like “Givin’ It Up for Your Love” by Delbert McClinton, as well as countless others. The wide body has a maple top and back with a koa core, and the ebony fingerboard has distinctive oval abalone inlays. The Series I has neck-through-body construction; this design type is not only visually pleasing, it improves note-to-note evenness and sustain—both of which are evident acoustically. I immediately noticed the Alembic’s loud acoustic tone, which seemed to come directly from under my plucking hand. This bass feels easy to play, but you can dig in and make it growl as well.

This Series I’s 34"-scale neck, made from laminations of birch and amaranth, extends through the body to a graceful point. According to the story, Alembic designed the point to encourage owners to use proper guitar stands, in hopes of lessening accidental damage. This body style was also available with an “omega” shape cut into the body instead of the point.

The electronics are sophisticated, especially for the time. The controls are a little daunting at first, but they’re logically organized and easily mastered. The 4-way switch operates like a standard 3-way pickup selector with an added off position. The tone controls are variable filters with a 3-position Q switch, which gives a wide variety of tones. The bass comes with an external power supply for the preamp, which converts the pickup’s high-impedance signal to low-impedance and allows the user to go mono or stereo and send each pickup to a different amp. The q" output jack requires a stereo cable, which activates the onboard battery supply.

This bass covers a lot of sonic territory, with its own characteristic clarity and evenness. You can roll off enough treble to get a dub-like sound, but the extended treble response’s glassy sweetness is where the Alembic truly shines. It seems to magnify your right-hand articulation; you find yourself playing with a heightened sense of accuracy, as subtleties (and mistakes) that are lost on many instruments come through in this bass.

There have been many design innovations since this bass was built 30 years ago—but in terms of both looks and sound, this Alembic’s classic beauty and fabulous functionality will never go out of style. We all owe a debt to the visionaries who bravely blazed a trail deep into the future of bass!

Peace, love, and grooves to you all.

Many thanks to Jim Roberts’s American Basses [Backbeat Books] for the details and company background. Learn more about David Hood at www.hoodbass.com.