Hi.

This is my custom Alembic Rogue 5 string bass.  It was born on 3/21/08 and I received it on 3/28/08 from the fine people at Alembic.

Here are the details:

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.

What does it sound like?  Give a listen, won't you?

Recording notes: all of these samples were recorded direct into my board.  No effects, no compression, no nothing.  It is the bass into the board into Sonar.

C scale and open strings

Both pickups

Bridge pickup

Neck pickup

Coming Down the P-bass like tone Mountain

A Jazz Bass Like Remark You Made

Skin Tight

This is why I love these basses - This clip is the only exception to the recording notes above.  There is a Sansamp BDDI in front of the board with a bit of drive added.  The great thing is that this bass can get this tone out of practically any amp with a tube preamp section.  Just overdrive the input a bit and this sound happens.  It is quite fantastic really.

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.  Warning!  Severe bass porn will follow!  Those with weak hearts or really bad GAS problems should probably look away.

The following are pictures that Mica Wickersham sent to me while the bass was being built.

Here we were figuring out how the controls would be laid out.

Here is a diagram of the final control layout.  The "NQ" and "BQ" are switches for the neck and bridge filters.