Bass of the Week: Blast Cult Gateway
Jason Burns of Blast Cult has been building upright basses for years, but lately, he’s been getting more into the electric side of things with models like the Thirty Two and the Magic 13. His passion for basses of both kinds led to the creation of the Gateway Bass, a bass guitar that carries many of the aspects of a double bass. As a result, Blast Cult says it “sounds more like a double bass than an electric guitar.”
Its stripped-down look includes a blue pine wormwood body and a maple neck. The crossover really starts at the ebony fingerboard, but even more apparent is the use of double bass strings. Burns fits the Gateway with an active piezo pickup system for double bass with active tone controls.
Get the scoop from Burns himself:
Blast Cult Gateway Bass Specs:
| Scale: | 32″ |
| Body: | Blue Pine Wormwood |
| Neck: | Maple |
| Fingerboard: | Ebony |
| Pickup: | Active Piezo Double Bass pickup system |
| Electronics: | Active Tone Controls |
| Strings: | Blast Cult Double Bass Strings |
What a beautiful and unique instrument. I would love to get my hands on one. We bassists are so lucky there are so many talented luthiers out there.
Read the forums. These people used to make double basses. They cheated people and didn’t deliver, so now they are trying to get in a different market to escape their bad reputation.
4:20 of talking, 24 secs of actual playing the instrument. Should have been the other way around.
Imagine how blown his mind will be when he hears about some guy named Leo Fender who built this thing called a Precision Bass.