By Mica Wickersham Thomas
Alembic is a lot more that just a company or a logo on the end of the peghead. Alembic is
a way of creating musical instruments unique and outstanding in their field. Alembic is a
place where ideas and materials come together in a search for knowledge and wisdom focusing
on the purest aspects of each. Alembic is the concept of complete flexibility in design.
 Our company was started in March of 1969
by my parents Ron and Susan Wickersham. Originally it was a consulting firm that
worked closely with the Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, Crosby Stills Nash & Young and
the like. We were trying to improve the quality of live sound and recordings of live
concerts.
After improving many aspects of the sound system
and live recording techniques, the guitars and basses the musicians were playing needed
attention to further improve the live concert experience. Too much noise and too many
repairs required for a touring band to deal with. It was clearly time to improve the
electronics.
High impedance pickups have limited bandwidth. My
father designed our pickups to be low impedance to increase the bandwidth. This also made
the pickups low output and so he had to design an active onboard preamp to boost the signal.
They were, in fact, the first active electric guitar electronics ever.
Our shop became quite busy installing these new
active electronics in player’s guitars and basses. We also did a lot of modifications on
the instruments like remanufacturing the pegheads with a fourteen degree angle, machining
solid brass parts for the bridge, tailpiece and nut, carving necks and the like. This
eventually led to manufacturing our own line of guitars and basses from start to finish.
The very first Alembic bass, number 72-01, was made for Jack Casady, then of the Jefferson
Airplane. In 1972 the bass cost more than four thousand dollars. It sounded and resembled nothing that
came before it and was to be the bass that has influenced and shaped bass design ever
since.
About 1973 Stanley Clarke started getting really
famous, and our basses along with him. This is the primary reason we became a bass company.
Since the bass player was usually the worst guitar player in the band, no one else had
concentrated on making finely crafted basses.
We continued to improve our Standard Series
I and II basses and guitars until 1979 when we introduced the first of our lower priced
lines, the Distillate. Since that time, we have further enhanced the Series I and II models so they
continue to be the pinnacle of electric basses even now, all these years later. We have
been introducing a new model every one or two years, so that the Alembic products are now
more available to more musicians.
Presently, our company employs eleven
wonderful people, including my mother and father, my aunt and uncle, my husband, and a bunch of our friends.
Our company is so completely different from most you encounter because of our very strong family bonds,
we really care what our customers think and feel. This is the primary drive beind our continued innovation.
©2015 Alembic, Inc.
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