Mike Lull Archives

Last week, the bass community suffered a major blow with the loss of Mike Lull. Beyond his incredible craftsmanship, Lull was a positive force and an inspiration to all those he met. We wanted to honor him by featuring the M4V/M5V as our bass of the week.

Bass builder Mike Lull has passed away at the age of 65. A cause of death was not announced. The news was shared on the Mike Lull Custom Guitars Facebook page.

Mike Lull introduced a new short-scale version of his P-style bass called the P430 at the Winter NAMM Show this year. The P430 will carry the same features of the full-size P4 – such as an alder, swamp ash, or mahogany body – but it will have a short 30-inch scale. That’s something Lull was not interested in doing until...

Mike Lull has taken the classic non-reversed T-Bird style bass concept and combined it with his own engineering. The result is the new NRT4 and NRT5 basses. The NRT4 and NRT5 offer up the same specs as the company’s T4 and T5 models, but with the non-reversed body shape. Lull wanted to take the classic deep tones of the original...

Mike Lull mashed up his M-series body and T-bass pickups to create the JT4 and JT5, a bass with a modern yet familiar feel and “T-bass boom.” And while the body is a modern take on a classic style, Lull designed the pickups by trying to get the same sound of an original Thunderbird bass while creating his own T-Bass....

Mike Lull Guitars unveiled their newest signature bass at the Winter NAMM show this year, based on the instrument and specs of bassist Bryan Beller. The BBM5 is based on Lull’s M5 bass, modified to suit Beller’s playing style and wishlist. The bass is a 35? scale 5-string bass active jazz bass with a Bartolini NTMB Pre-amp and Seymour Duncan...

Mike Lull Custom Guitars has announced the Jeff Ament JAXT4 Signature bass, to be available starting in January 2012. The Pearl Jam bassist worked closely with Lull on the specifications of the bass, which is a modified version of Lull’s T4. One of the key features to the JAXT4 is it’s oversized body, which is 20% larger than Lull’s regular...

As one of the world’s most respected bass luthiers, Mike Lull’s work has been heard around the world. His Seattle, Washington-based shop has allowed Lull to work on nearly all of the instruments used by bands from the area known as “the grunge capital”, including Nirvana, Soundgarden, Pearl Jam and others. His story began as many do, with youthful rebellion,...

Mike Lull introduced a new Tom Petersson signature bass, the TPT4, at NAMM this year. The TPT4 is based on Lull’s T4, with some tweaking specified by the Cheap Trick bassist. One of the key differences is the pickup placement. The pickups, made by Lull, are both pushed up closer to the neck: a position that Petersson worked meticulously at...