Alembic is an American manufacturer of high-end electric basses, guitars and preamps. Founded in 1969, the company began manufacturing pre-amps before building complete instruments. History The company was founded by Owsley Stanley as a workshop in Grateful Dead's rehearsal room in Novato, California, near San Francisco, to help improve the band's entire sound chain, from its instruments to its sound reinforcement system. Eventually Alembic was actively modifying and repairing guitars and basses, recording sound, and designing and building PA systems. Artist Robert Thomas designed and painted the logo of the company in 1969, which included multiple elements that represented mankind and energy as values that Alembic aimed to show to public. By 1970, Alembic was incorporated with three equal shareholders: Ron Wickersham, an electronics expert who came in from Ampex; Rick Turner, a guitarist turned luthier; and Bob Matthews, a recording engineer. The company took over Pacific High Recording Studios in 1971, and the studio was renamed Alembic Studios. Inspired by the wide frequency response of the Hagstrom Bi-sonic pickups installed in Phil Lesh and Jack Casady's Guild Starfire basses, Ron Wickersham and Rick Turner designed low-impedance pickups and electronics with greater bandwidth than the high-impedance pickups typical in electric guitars and basses of the time. To boost the low output of these pickups, Wickersham designed an active onboard preamp. Turner referred to this process as "Alembicizing". The company's first instrument was a bass guitar, made in 1972 for Jack Casady. This bass incorporated a massive electronics suite, with state variable filtering capability, and had pickups mounted on brass tubing so that their position could be adjusted. The company sold the recording studio in 1973, the same year a story in Rolling Stone helped generate enough cashflow for a standardized bass guitar line based on the Guild Starfire. At that time, the company had two locations—guitars and electronics were built in Cotati, and the main office was in Sebastopol. 1973 was also the year that Stanley Clarke, then with Return to Forever, replaced his Gibson EB-2 with an Alembic, increasing Alembic's profile. Their bass guitars were expensive, costing up to three times as much as a new Fender bass. According to Tony Bacon and Barry Moorhouse, it was Alembic that started the trend of high-quality, high-price bass guitars. In 1974, Matthews left the company. The recording studio had been sold, as was a retail store in San Francisco where they