Someday this vermilion will be covered in black spectraflare paint:

  Neptune's trident will be featured on the bass as well

  The inlay is to be in sterling silver:

 Placement is under review.  

The glyph looks nice - on the fingerboard is agreed - just need to consider position.
 
Alembic logo - silver, surface mounted with shell inlay on headstock. Just MOP inlay rather than MOP+Paua might suit the overall black + silver theme better. What do you think?
 
Regarding orientation of the glyph and logo - it might look a bit weird if they are oriented differently - so I think they should be either both vertical or both horizontal (when the instrument is upright in stand). Mounting the logo horizontally under the strings on an Orion peghead should work well. Views?

Nice minimalism David :-) What does spectraflare paint look like?
 
Sean.

The design reference for the nightbass was a moonlit night. The colour scheme is black and silver (as an approximation to mithril).  
 
Susan wouldn't settle for a regular opaque finish, and discovered Spectraflair. To quote the manufacturer:  
 
SpectraFlair pigment is a new light diffractive colorant manufactured by Flex Products Inc. that uses the company's light manipulating Color by Physics technology. By controlling the physical dimensions and surface microstructure, SpectraFlair pigment Silver 1400 generates the appearance of multiple, bright rainbow producing prisms moving over a liquid silver color. The pigment has a pleasing, elegant and dramatic visual appeal that is unique, durable, and easy to incorporate...Coatings containing SpectraFlair enhance the contours of 3-dimensional objects and create spectacular visual effects.
 
Maybe Susan will share her Spectraflair field trip experience with the club.  
 

Wooooo ...Far out man

OK, expectations are high -- I expect an animated GIF of a Bass changing colour sometime soon!!!
 
I am already imagining the bass-player specific stage lighting rig that will be required to do this paint justice!!!

As far as I am aware, this will be the first time SpectraFlair has been used on a musical instrument.

dnburgess - I wonder if that paint is a variation on the chrome illusion one that Bass Northwest has had for sale for months and months:
 

 
The retail is $5350 but they're having an exotic bass sale, so who knows, it may be quite reasonable. Essence electronics, weird shape, possibly trying to be a Fodera? If you take a look at their pictures on the site, the body has very little contour carving. Unique!
 
EffClef

Chromalusion is a Dupont paint system that has been an option on Alembic pricelists for a while. My understanding is that Chromalusion allows colour shifting between up to six different colours - whereas SpectraFlair doesn't shift colours. Rather it diffracts light to produce rainbow type effects, generating a theoretically infinite number of colours.
 
SpectraFlair is usually applied to silver backgrounds, to maximise the rainbow effects. Applying it to black should produce a fair more subtle effect. (To the extent that a black and silver Rogue could ever be called subtle.)
 
David B.

Once I had a Korean built Yamaha BB350F in pearly white. Tacky colour, but it had a similar effect to the Chromalusion - streaks of green and red would stand out depending on the lighting. I'm guessing the Alembic finishes are based on a better product, but anyway it's an acquired taste.

man id love to have that same color paint one on a series I,however ive seen a series I before with a pearl white paint on it, the bass player in the group 'mothers finest'(back in the 80s)

IFF (!!!!!!) I'm well informed there was always been a tradition to use car -laquer paints on guitars. Fender used car-laquer for it's first opaque coloured guitars and you bet when Cadillac or Chevrolet or Buick had a new colour hop ...you could track it in Fender (custom) colours.
Now Dupont highly specialises in car-laquers. I think the white on the Yamaha is the same that is/was very popular on cars. White on first sight but changing colour depending the angle.
 
PTBO

Susan, I think chrome tuners and straplocks will look better than black. What do you think?

Also no fingerboard inlays (other than neptune glyph). I think fifth fret looks best for the inlay.

It would be nice to see what nickel would look like on that, it's less distracting than chrome.
 
Second thought: the hardware finish should not outshine the sterling inlay. The trident in the picture looks more like pewter than like the sterling hardware on the 25th Anniversary model - but I'm guessing it's a draft and not a picture of the real thing.
 
Trident = Maserati?
 
(Message edited by Adriaan on April 14, 2004)