David Gilmour’s Alembic F-2B Preamp

David started using an Alembic F-2B preamp in the early 70s, at first as a preamp for his Yamaha RA-200 rotary speaker cabinets.

We bought a bunch of them back in the early Seventies for Roger Water’s bass system. One day we decided to use one to power Dave’s Yamaha RA-200 revolving speaker system, and discovered that the amp just generated a nice warm tone. It shouldn’t really be a surprise – it basically uses a Fender circuit.

Phil Taylor

Around the late 80s/early 90s David started using an Alembic F-2B preamp in place of the preamp stage of his Hiwatt amps. According to Gilmourish.com, this setup was used up until the early 2000s, when David went back to using the preamps on the Hiwatts.

We use an Alembic F2B, mid 70s bass guitar preamp based, I believe, around a Fender Showman circuit, which is very clean and with minimal controls: brightness, volume, middle, treble and bass.

It has been modified to reduce the bottom end and fitted with an extra valve. The way in which Dave uses his system is that he always gets a good, nice powerful clean sound ‚ a lot of his sounds are basically clean with a bit of delay ‚ and when he does his overdriven stuff, he introduces various pedals.

Phil Taylor