Gemini

The Dark Prince was under construction for only a few days when Rami decided to rescue the Evil Twin and have Kris attempt to inlay small strips of Ebony to fill the cracks. After several hours of tedious labor, the repair was declared successful and Rami had us convert the bass to an unlined fretless and have the two basses develop simultaneously, like twins, thus saving the Evil Twin from living in the corner of the shop, collecting dust all his days.

Both basses feature continuous wood backplates. With all this beautiful Macassar Ebony, who could bear to turn any more than neccesary into wood chips? We have to plot out the positions of each plate before laminating the body together and scroll saw the piece that will be the backplate cap. We then construct custom plywood from Maple and Purpleheart (except for the Dark Prince - not even any Maple in the backplate ply!) and finish it off with a veneer made from the exact piece of wood. We think you'll agree the result is stunning and speaks of the quality and thought given to every detail of our basses.

Just as the backplates, the truss rod cover of each bass is continuous wood. Since the instruments each have the top and back laminate bookmatched to center and covering the neck, the truss rod covers are Macassar Ebony, with the grain of the wood continuing from the cover to the top. This is a subtle feature, one that isn't the first thing noticed when taking in the bass as a whole, but upon discovery is like knowing a little secret, and never fails to bring a smile in the viewer.

We added a twist to the Dark Price and covered the pickups themselves with continuous wood. We've made instruments with specially constructed wooden pickup covers before, even going so far as to make wooden boxes to enclose the pickups, but this is the first to feature continuous wood decorating the top. Since the wood is so dark, we elected to only cover the top with a veneer and leave the black polyurethane pickup mounts.
This is also the first glimpse at the turned Macassar Ebony knobs that Bob made for these basses.

In addition to all the jobs he does around Alembic, in his spare time Bob is an expert woodturner. He's won numerous awards including Best of Show this year at the Sonoma County Fair for a Maple and Purpleheart lidded bowl. When Rami was thinking about all the firsts on his bass, he wanted to add one more: turned Macassar Ebony knobs. Now, you can buy mass made wooden knobs for much less, but when we can make them from scratch, we select the very piece of wood that looks best for the application. While it would be quite cost prohibitive to make the knobs continuous wood, Bob chose a piece that coordinated well with the top of each bass. The gently domed conical knobs are a simple and elegant addition to these basses, and an appropriate finishing touch.