Pure Brilliance

Truly a rare sight on an Alembic bass, a Maple fingerboard. To help with the inevitable wear on a light colored fingerboard, we applied a thin layer of finish to the wood so it can keep it's good clean look for a good long time. Though we've resisted Maple fingerboards for, oh about forty years, we just couldn't say no to Lalo.

Lalo is a "fan of maple fingerboards because the attack is faster and it also lets me switch from fingerstyle to slap in the middle of a song without too much adjustment." There's only a handful of Alembic instruments with Maple fingerboards for now.

For the Series I and II instruments, a hollow-core body is preferred so the backplates don't grow amazingly large since the electronics occupy a good bit of space that is outside the realm of the plate. Lalo wanted a solid body, we had to figure out how to make the electronics fit, keep the plate size normal, and make it look good. We wound up with two good ideas, but the second one was the better of the two. We took the solid body halves and sliced each cleanly down the middle, like a clamshell. Then, we had the access to carve out some of the bulk of the wood to make the enlarged cavities for the electronics, keeping in mind that we wanted to keep things as solid as possible. Glued back together, the seam at the center of the body is nearly invisible, even when you know to look for it. It's the "non-sandwich."

Lalo ordered this bass with gold plated hardware. The day we were to send the parts to the gold plater, we looked at the black and white impression the bass has, and suggested he change to blackened brass hardware. Lalo would hear nothing of it. "I am a BIG fan of gold hardware...the tuners and bridge gold for sure." Once the gold hardware was on the bass, we had to agree - it visually melts into the Birch and looks fantastic.