[quote name='lettsguitars' post='1254981' date='Jun 3 2011, 05:40 AM']what's the weight like on these babies? i could never get my head around this particular shape. doesn't the head go through the floor? is this basically a series 1 with a signature on top. there's an interesting word about sig's on ken smith's site. ya gotta love alembics though. good luck.[/quote]
Alembics certainly aren't light basses on the whole (some people do have them custom-made a bit lighter than the standard off-the-shelf ones, though). The Series instruments (1 & 2) are very different in sound, and build, to the Signature instruments. The electronics in the Series instruments, alone, are considerably different, they have single-coil pups to start - if you look on the Alembic web-site you can see that to have Series electronics on a bass adds thousands of dollars to the price on its own.
That said - all Alembics are well built top-end basses and the signature models give great sounds and are lovely basses. Someone has picked up a beauty at a great price.