For those of you who have nothing to do, or have a job and only say that they are busy. Here are some nice pictures at the Alembic Member Club in Japan. If you still have nothing to do, try translating the text for me.
 
http://www8.plala.or.jp/alembic/
 
Manfred

WEW
Beautiful.
Did you see: most of the time Small Standard and Medium Scale.
The japanese average height of people is smaller than here I guess.
I love those SStandard bodies but would always try to have them in long LS neck (maybe with some countre-weight in the body for better balance).
Anyway ... a very nice gallery.
And big fun: My Mac translates the signs in ??-signs.
LOL
 
Paul
 
BTW: one of the guitars shown has been in construction recently and you can see it in the factory-customer department.

Hey Val, there are several Distallates like yours:
http://www8.plala.or.jp/alembic/gallery_pumpkin.html

Thanks Dave,
 
Mica told me they made about 300 of them exclusively for the Japanese market.  Mine made it back to northern California somehow, it must have been homesick  . I love the look of quartersawn zebrawood. The man I bought from about 10 years ago was switching to guitar, but he was not the original owner and could not give me any history on it.  Mine is a long scale now, those should all be medium scale.
 
Valentino

Hey, isn't it maple fingerboard on this Elan??? A truly unusual option in an Alembic!
http://www8.plala.or.jp/alembic/gallery_hishii.html

Yep ...rare and VERY nice!

The first Elan had a white painted fingerboard (the entire bass was white) made for Hojin Egawa, a talented bass player and the H in the Elan serial number code.  
 
If my memory is correct, we made about 20 Elans with a Maple fingerboard for our distributor in Japan shortly after Hojin got his bass.  
 
I really enjoyed Bassstar's website. I can't read much Japanese, but the design is great and the information seems very detailed. I love the graphics on the events page.

That was a fun gallery to look at. I finally got see what a California special looks like, besides the one on product page. The sunburst finish looked really nice.