bapu
carl
his Ric until he got his Alembic.
Carl, that was exactly my upgrade path too.
My bass history
1. Cheapo Model Bass ($100)
2. Broken P-Bass ($15, needed pickup wiring)
3. Gibson EB-0
4. Gisbon Eb-3
5. Rick
6. Alembic Series I
While I still have the Alembic, I also now have the Line 6 Modeling Bass, A custom made (by our own spacey) 5-String bass, Kala Uke Bass and a of course the obligatory Fender American P-Bass. I'd love to have a Rick again and some kind of fretless and I'd be pretty much set from a bass guitar point of view.
I can't complete with BAPU as my bass collection is not as colorful, though ranges from 1968-present:
Kay-P Bass (1967)--hated the log of a neck
Gibson EB-1 (1969-solid body violin- petite 30" scale)
Three Rickenbacker 4003's (70, 80, 90's--a Fireglo, aJetBlack & a Mapleglo)
A fairly recent Fender P Special
Epiphone EB-0
My Gibson EB-1 was destroyed in a hurricane a couple years after I sold it for $300. They are vintage collector's items now and bring in big $$. I still have one Ric, the 4003 Maple, the Fender P Special, and a few years ago bought that Epi EB-0 just to have the muddy sounding 30" scale around again (but never use it). Never got into Alembics; the ones I tried in the early 70's had 35 inch scale, which was too long for my small hands. The bass I currently play most is the P-Special (Jazz neck P+J active pickups--very versatile tone). But the bass I am most proud of is still my Ric (the Mapleglo)--thus my reply to this thread. While I looked at getting the Chris Squier model Ric back in the 90's, it was not ric-0-sound (stereo) and for me being able back then to run the neck and bridge pickups through different bass amps live, with different eqs was not only fun, but it made for big bottom and nasty tops.
It will be really nice to have the Rickenbacker samples available from NI and eventually from OrangeTree Samples. Really nice finally to have those as options for the keyboard.