Black Coffee

Congratulations on your order. Hope it's all you are expecting. That's good news about GAK being so helpful... . .. . .

How much?

[quote name='Gully35' timestamp='1356542513' post='1910979'] @ Bassman. Matchetts are a rip off. They priced a tort pickguard for my P-bass at £95 plus VAT. I ordered one through the fender dealer in Lisburn for £50! I will try Dawsons though, definately. And well I'll try matchetts for a laugh to hear their price. Cheers! Yeah I think I'll also phone the GAK shop, it appears to be better than the website. [/quote] Id agree. Dawsons wud be first try. Then belfast guitar centre. Then bairds. Then matchetts. I think the price you were quoted for the pickguard was their way of saying "we cant be annoyed ordering this for you so we will just be so stupid expensive you will go somwer else cuz we r busy" I sympathise with your dilemna bcuz over her we r kinda cut off from real quality bass shops like the mainland have. Its pantz but thats life. I bought my first usa fender p bass in matchetts 17 yrs ago and they wer the cheapest back then. Keep us posted on progress. Try on the forum here for a good secondhand one . . . . Before u order. I wud.

I live in northern ireland too and id reccomend a trip to dawsons or matchetts in belfast and if what u want isnt on the wall they will order u one. U can then try before you buy. Try belfast guitar centre too as its a really good shop. Also in belfast. Its a buyers market so dont let some mainland online giant stuff you with one they dont want hoping you cant be botherd to return it. I learnt the hard way. Just remembered bairds on york road beside yorkgate too in belfast. Great bunch of guys in there.

After all that coke. Maybe santa needs a good burp and he wud be skinny.

Any bassist would love to get a grip on a top, top end bass. But when you set your prices so high that only the very flush will get to buy one new it just makes a big gap in class. The haves. And the have nots. One thing is for sure though. Owning a mad money bass doesn`t mean you can play it. Bein serious if i was given an alembic new id probably sell it and buy 2 or 3 of somethin else.

This thread is getting as cheesy as last years Stilton. Between Sledge basses and no sanity clauses, whats next ? Good King Wenceslas sat down, To play some bass this evenin; Laid the notes out all around Deep and crisp and even.

Years ago I spotted an old battered and chipped but beautifully real McCoy Sting signature Fender model in a branch of cash converters for £50.00. The shop attendant said that they couldn't wait to get rid of it as it was making the shop look bad. I wryly smiled and played it and it was a beauty; but here the story goes bad. I didn't notice the sneaky sweaty geek who was watching from behind the DVD stand and as I set it down to go to the autobank next door he swooped and plucked the deal from below my nose. Lesson learnt - if it seems good, at least put a deposit down before you release it from your mucky paws and don't fall for the disinterested passer by who hangs around like a stale smell pretending to be ignoring you but is about to gazzump your booty.

If Lemmy played an Alembic he would do it with a brown paper bag over his head so nobody would recognise him. Probably shake it to pieces in three songs. As for Geddy Lee, I recently consulted a CD cover and the photo in the inside of one of their hits albums shows him playing a Jetglo Ric 4003 and guess what I've just noticed - the U bend has gone......!!! I wasn't the only one who had an issue with it. I'm not Geddy Lee, not even worthy to tune his bass but if this is one thing I have in common with him I will go now and happily leave that thing alone. Funny as we look around. Geddy now plays a Fender J

[quote name='fender73' timestamp='1356385607' post='1909889'] Surely he's a Fender P Bass player. He'd like to play other makes too but he endorses Fender, and there is a Claus in his contract..... ahem. [/quote] He's Damned. "There ain't no sanity clause" [i][font=arial, helvetica, sans-serif]Did you expect that I would believe the tale you told last Xmas eve About the man that man is fat and round Delivers gifts without a sound[/font][/i]

[quote name='White Cloud' timestamp='1356383412' post='1909860'] I looked around & everybody seemed to be playing Jaydee's, Wal and Status. I switched to Wal so hey ho. Its horses for courses! love Dingwall basses but havent owned one...yet lol. [/quote] As I look around. . . .. Not many people constantly playing Rics, or Alembics may I tentatively suggest.....? Everyone's playing different stuff apart from Lemmy whose spine is probably hewn from a Ric 4003. I love the guy and his music, always have and always will. Motorhead are all that never changed in my schooldays. If Ric would do something about the awful topographical situation around the bridge pup and the U bend from hell it might tempt me back but until then I will admire how they look but despise how they play in my hands. Open Ric-heart surgery to adapt to a u-bend free version leaves a trough which is just a mess. See pic. Why not make the two pups the same as the neck pup and lose the drama.

What bass would match Santa . ? A coffee table sized 9 string monstrosity to cover the belly ?

[quote name='White Cloud' timestamp='1356381397' post='1909826'] Good advice here. This is just what I did, i.e. paid just over a grand for a used Spoiler to put my toe into the water so to speak. This combined with my experience with my friends Series 1 left me somewhat disapointed...it burst the bubble of 30 yrs of Alembic GAS. In fact in the aftermath of my personal Alembic experience I spent the next few years (after moving it on) playing passive Fenders and Laklands. [/quote] I had a bad experience with Rickenbackers. I had bought and sold three in the space of a year. Total money out was in excess of £4,800.00 and I was left with a very sour taste in the mouth and not all the money came back the way it went out so I am very skeptical of VERY expensive basses. The Ric bass ideal I had adored all my youth was a disappointment. My playing style clashed miserably with a Laredo, a 4003 and a 4003FL. The neck profile/shape and the U bend on the 4003 was the reason. I bought a mid range Dingwall (ABZ) before lashing out on a dear one and they are worth every dime - but again it's not everyone likes them and that's their right. I love the playability, string tension on the B and the look on peoples faces as they try to figure out what's different on the fretboard. I will continue to try to climb the Dingwall model tree until I reach the top. Perhaps time will heal my gripe with this. Either that or the good Lord will deliver an opportunity to test drive new basses for some luthier somewhere as a full time job.

Maybe someday hopefully I will be in a postion to purchase and find out for myself. Thanks for the candour Dingus. I know you ain't dissin' them, just an observation on my part that they have priced themselves as new so out of reach for the ordinary everyday man / woman to be able to play and maintain; and why would they change when the Paul McCartneys of this world could buy six at a time and only feel a financial speedbump. It's good business sense for them. My bubble is burst though . . . . I'm an also ran.

[quote name='Dingus' timestamp='1356369139' post='1909628'] They are delicate in the sense that there is a lot to go wrong on them . The electronics on a full-spec Alembic ( and even some of the lesser models ) are very complex by most standards , and it can be difficult to get them fixed properly by anyone except Alembic . Also , the necks can be prone to needing regular adjustment according to some reports , and the dual truss rods can be a bit of a challenge . Bear in mind that Alembic started out as a kind of instrument technology collective for Bay Area musicians rather than as a strictly commercial undertaking and you get some idea of how their unique approach to just about everything has come about . A lot of the things we take for granted nowadays such as neck-thru body construction , use of exotic woods , brass bridges and active electronics were all [i][b]invented [/b][/i]and / or pioneered by Alembic and considering that , you begin to realise their massive contribution to the industry . [/quote] I bow to a lot of knowledge here and I respect that Alembic did it all and laid the groundwork for more, so hats off to them. No complaints or dispute. But why spend so much hard saved money to have a delicate bass with a likely to be problematic truss rod system and electronics that NASA would be happy to orbit the earth with. I'm not being sarcastic here, it's just that I am a little dismayed that one of my bubbles has been burst a little as I thought that for that amount of money it would be a cast iron workaholic. I considered a secondhand Orion 5 string a while ago and on reading this I'm glad I didn't buy it. My basic bass maintenance and tweaking skills would probably have ruined the thoroughbred before it played half a dozen gigs and I would have been left with a mess. Seems Alembic have it sown up. Charge so much for your product that the only people who can afford to play them are the people who have bank accounts that have at least seven figures before the decimal point. Then when (not if) they go wrong you have a blank cheque to fix them at the price of a new Warwick or USA Jazz bass. - Are they based in the Carribean ?

Also. Dingus mentioned they were delicate. Delicate how?

I agree too with dingus.Just waaaaay out of the mere mortals league. It will forever be an unaffordable delicacy. Bit like owning a house without a mortgage. I will continue to dabble in pleb basses while the rich and shameless enjoy the alembics of the world. Im not bitter about it though.

Have alembic not heard of the global credit crunch? I wud love a really expensive bass but if they want me to buy one and play it as badly as i try not to then they will have to change the rules and drop their price. Dummy now spat firmly from cradle. Wot about a boxing day sale? Do they do cheap copies?

Pardon my complete ignorance. But. Why are they so ridiculously expensive?

[quote name='dincz' timestamp='1356287726' post='1908844'] Wow, I've never heard that about Corts before. Don't know about Curbows but the neck on my cheap Artisan was what made me buy it. [/quote] Sorry if I seem really on their case here. It's just my own opinion. There is a small music shop near where I used to work and they only sold Cort or Tanglewood basses and whatever else they had secondhand too. Any instrument they had in stock made by Cort seemed really roughly finished on the neck and odd. Unless they got a bad batch in stock or something....? I haven't tried anything since which would convince me to feel any different. Again this is just my own opinion, if it works for you that's fine but you could buy a much better secondhand 'other' bass for the price of a new Cort.

US made fenders are one of the most common brands the emperor wears. Nice basses but too big a step up on price just to have the letters usa on the instrument. Does that mean the rest are rubbish. I think not.