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#1918038 - 03/28/08 08:11 PM

New bass: Alembic Rogue 5 custom

Bumpcity
MP Hall of Fame Member

Registered: 08/13/01
Posts: 5785
Loc: Seattle, WA

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Sometimes in life one must give into certain facts. “You only live once” and “The only thing that is sure is death and taxes”. About 5 months ago I realized another fact: “No other bass sounds like an Alembic”.

I’ve had my Alembic John Paul Jones custom for a little over 3 years now and in that time I’ve tried desperately to get any other bass (with 5 strings) to sound like the JPJ. Nothing came close. Ever. I fought and argued with myself for a very very long time on this subject. I didn’t want to order a custom bass from Alembic. I really didn’t. Eventually I realized that it was going to be the only way to get “that tone” out of a 5-string bass. It seemed silly that my favorite bass to play was a 4-string when I’m primarily a 5-string player. I desperately missed my low B thunderous hammer of the gods.

After talking to Susan Wickersham for about 4 hours over multiple phone calls I finally did it. On November 7, 2007 I ordered a custom Alembic Rogue 5 string bass. I’m not going to post how much it cost. If you really want to know PM me and I’ll tell you. It was an obscene amount – that’s all I will say here.

Now that the long wait is over I will share with you the build pictures I received from Mica Wickersham during the build process and the pictures I took about 30 minutes ago of the bass in my basement.

First the stats because this will answer a lot of questions I’m sure.

Style: Rogue 5 string 35” scale with “Orion” style headstock
Body woods: 5A quilted maple top, maple and purpleheart accents, mahogany core
Neck woods: maple with 2 purpleheart and 1 ebony stringer, ebony fingerboard (with no inlays)
Blue LED side dots
Sterling silver logo
All standard brass/gold hardware
Electronics: Signature electronics + master bass control + master treble control

Really the only thing that retains the Rogue name on this bass is the body and slim pickup style. Everything else is much more like one of the King Signature series basses but with some added funkiness to the electronics. The JPJ bass I have has standard Signature electronics and I knew I wanted those on this bass. However since I had ultimate freedom to do whatever I decided it would be nice to have a master bass and treble control as well for additional tonal flexibility. After playing the bass for a few hours today I am so glad I opted for adding those controls.

Sounds added

C scale and open strings

Both pickups

Bridge pickup

Neck pickup

Coming Down the P-bass like tone Mountain (yeah... I know I use that song a lot to sound demo stuff. I like that song)

A Jazz Bass Like Remark You Made

Skin Tight

This is why I love these basses

Apologies if there are errors in any of those songs. I didn't check the originals to see if I remembered how to play them correctly.

On with the pictures.

Bass in carving