The Blue Steel out for an evening recently.

Nice to see that guitar again.

A couple of shots from last night's gig with Musical Youth.  

 

On the whorehouse front porch with my Europa.

My walnut Rogue

My Buckeye Burl

looking good Darrell. Nice rig too :-)
 
Graeme

Thanks Graeme! Just having fun! That's actually my light rig Ampeg SVT 7pro. My big rig is a SVT 4pro that I use at bigger venues if they don't have a good PA. I bi-amp it and run 2x18 Subs on the bottom and two 4x10 neo's for mids and highs. The best and worst decision I ever made in music was buying my first Alembic bass. The best because they are the best sounding and looking basses that I have ever seen or heard. I have yet to hear a sound system that can make them sound bad. Now for the bad, once you buy your first one, you get hooked and want/need another and another and well you get the picture!

Your big rig sounds like something I would love to try. I'm sure I've seen Stanley Clarke with something similar on a concert over here. Two SWR Big Ben cabs, two 4x10 cabs and a guitar amp. It must sound incredible even when not up loud.

Jazzy you are correct, it is probably even better not loud, because bass being omni-directional gets lost the farther you get away from the speakers especially the real low notes. That's because it's hard to move the air in the back of a room. That's why a bass has to have three or 4 times the power, and much more speaker surface than a guitar, which is directional and cuts through without having to move the air. When you go to a concert at a very large venue, they always have literally a wall of woofers and thousands of watts driving them to the point that the building shakes so that the bass is heard and felt (you can feel bass that you can't hear) throughout the venue. With that said that's where the 18's come in, they move air at high or low volume and at low volume if you don't have enough speaker surface the low notes will fall off pretty quickly.  
I had a chance to see Stanley last year at a venue with a real high ceiling that seats 1600, and he had a rig similar to what you described. He was able to fill that venue with bass without playing loud. He does use two different amps for bass guitar and acoustic.  He uses an Ampeg SVT 4pro (bi-amp) for splitting his high and low pickups on his guitars, and a SVT 2pro for his acoustic bass. The little fender amp covers the high frequencies on his tenor and piccolo basses. I've rambled enough, but in my opinion for what it?s worth an 18  or 15? with 4x10 is a great combination to cover the full spectrum of frequencies that you can get with an Alembic bass. BTW my SVT 4pro is in a rolling rack case because they are pretty heavy.

 
Recent outing with Memphis Bluesman Darren Jay, with my recently upgraded and shielded 1977 Series I (.5)

Nice, Tom.  What was the upgrade you had done?
Rob

Hi Rob,
 
When I had the shielding upgrade done, as long as Ron was under the hood, I had the Q switches swapped out for continuously variable Q potentiometers.  
 
Between the new pickups, the variable Qs, and the fact that I don't have to think about electronic noise based on which venue I am playing, it's really a completely different and revitalized bass. While it sounded excellent before, it had a much more limited (or maybe targeted is a better term) tone palette. Now it covers all that ground and much more.

Hi Tom,
Thanks for the feedback and congrats on the new configuration.  I've been thinking of doing a similar thing to one of my basses, I just keep hearing good things about the tonal flexibility with the CVQ switches.  I might just end up making the change.  Enjoy!

Here are two of the three best Short Scaled early Series I basses I've had