Phil Lesh's "Big Brown".

[sailingshoes72]

Cool photo of the guts of Phil Lesh's Alembic-ized Starfire Bass:

 

[lungimsam]

I’m interested in the seemingly really light string guages.
Did they have zip ties in the 70’s?

 

[SFIV1967]

Did they have zip ties in the 70’s?

Cable ties were invented by Thomas & Betts, an electrical company, in 1958 under the brand name Ty-Rap.

History – ZipTies.com

www.zipties.com

Ralf

 

[bassman10096]

I’m interested in the seemingly really light string guages.
Did they have zip ties in the 70’s?

I understand Phil has always favored very light gauges. I suppose that gives him a wide range of pick attacks between very light and digging in.

 

[lungimsam]

Playing with a pick is great for light guages. No string slapping frets when digging in like with fingers and super articulate tone.

 

[chazmo]

Boy, that's really cool, sailingshoes! Thanks for posting!

 

[lungimsam]

I saw an interview vid where it was really noisy and Phil did not appear to know how to use it. Kept fiddling with knobs but never got it going. I am surprised that Alembic couldn’t make a quieter running circuit. Maybe he had not used it in years or something wasn’t working right.
However, in the online live concert videos I have seen it always sounded great. And also the red Starfire sounded fantastic. I think there was a Columbia University 1968 or something like that black and white video of it when it was still the red color and it sounded fantastic.

 

[Minnesota Flats]

Imagine having to trouble-shoot that thing if it went dead...

 

[mellowgerman]

Always fun to see those guts!

Though zip ties were available back then, I'd be willing to bet a lot of that wiring has been updated since the original electronics. From what I've been told, a good number of the older Alembic instruments out there have been updated to operate quieter and more efficiently.

 

[RVBASS]

Nice photo. Alembic gave it a full going over a few years ago, so likely new zip ties. The last time Phil used that bass in concert was 1979, so not too surprising that he wasn’t all that familiar with it in the interview you saw. I’ve seen that video as well, the cameras, etc. could have added to noise interference. Phil actually fools around with camera interference during a scene in the Grateful Dead movie with his other quad bass, Mission Control.

 

[scottferreter]

yummmmmm!

 

[Guildedagain]

Is that a parallel port?

 

[mgod]

I believe that was that the second bass, the all--Alembic.

 

[mgod]

I believe that was that the second bass, the all--Alembic.

Hm, the Quote didn’t work. My comment referred to the comment about noises, not the photo . This bass is still used sometimes