So here's the story behind the latest one. The first three I had done to commemorate the birth of each of my three children. And I told them that if they play guitar seriously, they can have theirs once they are old enough.
Now, while having guitars built to honor your children and to "pre-humously" bequeath them might sound like a wonderful thing, for me it kind of backfired. Not only did I never take them out of the house for fear of damaging them, even when I played them at home they didn't seem like they belonged to me. It always felt as though I was borrowing them and so I never bonded with either of the three. I know…pathetic (not to mention very expensive wall art!). But it didn't really matter, because I never played out of the house anyway. In fact the only time I jammed with anyone since high school was the three Alembic Gatherings that I attended over the last few years. But that all changed two years ago. Our local School of Rock organized a modified adult program and they got six of us to form our own group. So now I'm playing every week and four or five shows a year…hopefully with more to come. For the first time, I needed an Alembic of my own. One I could take wherever and whenever I wanted. And so began the journey of what's affectionately come to be known as "The Beater" because it will be mine to play the hell out of!
Here is a montage of my four Alembics showing how the fourth one came to be. Oldest to newest, they go: top left, top right, bottom left, bottom right. I borrowed four photos from Mica's archives, including one from an ad they ran in Vintage Guitar Magazine. We've designed all four body styles from the ground up. The first one gave rise to a new line for them - the Darling and Little Darling guitars. You can see fairly easily the evolution of the final guitar, which is my favorite of all. When I received the first one, I loved the style but was shocked at how small the body really was. When it came time to build the second, I asked that the overall lines remain the same but that the body be much more substantial. I thought that was going to be "the one" until I saw a bass from the mid-70's with these wonderful little curled horns. When we built the third, we incorporated those modified horns, but the overall shape of the guitar was a departure from the previous two. When it came time for the fourth, I asked Alembic to include all of my favorite features form the other three - the wonderful lines of the first ("Little Bear"), the larger body of the second ("Stubby") and the curled horns (but longer) of the third ("Chunky"). They friggin' nailed it!