|
|
Oscar came to Alembic to build his dream instrument, since what he wanted wasn't exactly an off-the-shelf item. It's sort of one part bass, one part guitar,
and perhaps something else completely. Crossroads was ordered as a "6-string piccolo bass" and while that's mostly accurate, I
sometimes catch myself calling it a guitar.
When we organized the first details of this instrument, the scale length
was clearly the focal point, and the other features started naturally to fall in to place. Oscar knew he wanted a Coco Bolo top and back,
and at first he considered a smooth Darling shape. After reviewing that
idea, he decided on the Omega carving.
Oscar really wanted the look of the dummy humcanceller pickup. Strictly
decorative in this case, when it came time to route, it was clear that the standard arrangement would leave
too little room between pickups with this scale length.
Faced with the choice of eliminating the central routing or reducing the space between the bass pickup and the end of the fingerboard, Oscar chose the
latter, and we could proceed with routing and carving. Moving the bass pickup
toward the fingerboard also makes the tone from that pickup, for lack of a better word, "bassier."
|
|
|