8-String Custom Explorer (serial no. MINE)

John Entwistle of the Who designed this Explorer-style bass with Alembic. It features eight strings, which doubles each of the standard four bass strings an octave higher. It was one of three instruments he ordered from Alembic that took two years to build. The bass features the company’s signature figured maple and walnut woods in a laminated construction, and the spiderweb body inlays reference the song “Boris the Spider” from the Who’s A Quick One (1966). Entwistle played this instrument on “Trick of the Light” from Who Are You (1978) and “You” from Face Dances (1981). At live performances, this bass was so loud that the band and road crew would move away from his side of the stage. The LED lights on the neck illuminated the frets when the stage was dark.

Technical Description:

Bird’s eye maple top and back, walnut core, seven-piece maple and walnut neck through body, ebony fingerboard; 34 in. scale; natural finish with sterling silver spider’s web inlays; mother-of-pearl note inlays to fingerboard with LED side dots, double truss rods; arrow-shaped headstock with purpleheart and zebrawood veneers, raw brass Alembic logo, five-ply maple and walnut binding; three active pickups (one a dummy for hum cancelling), two volume and two tone controls, two master volume controls with preset switch and rotary pickup selector on upper treble horn, two-way coil tap and phase switches, low-pass filters, five-pin DIN and standard ¼ in. jacks for stereo output; brass adjustable bridge and tailpiece, chrome and nickel tuners, black plastic knobs