Bass of the Week - Page 53

Polish luthier Piotr Zakrzewski has some pretty great bass designs, including his Exclusive model. The mid-range of his three basic basses, the Exclusive is a double-cut bass with the lower horn being significantly deeper to provide easy access to the very end of the fingerboard. The Exclusive EX1 01 really caught my eye with its faux f-hole, which provides more...

I get to check out tons of basses every day, but when Anthony Wellington posted the details of his new Fodera my jaw hit the floor. The latest in the renowned bass educator’s collection is a Buckeye Burl Yin Yang Imperial 6 Elite from the New York boutique shop, who stated it’s the “most complex Yin Yang we have ever...

Aries Basses is a custom shop producing some pretty incredible instruments out of Varazdin, Croatia, including their Senes bass model. The Senes bass sports a singlecut design with a unique hole in the upper horn, offering a distinct look. The bass is completely custom, and can be built with a variety of top woods. Standard options for the Senes includes...

Surine Basses decided to go all out on their Regency model with this “Rainbow” 8-string bass. The hollow-body bass has a stunning 32-strip laminate top and matching headstock with a variety of exotic woods. Equally impressive is the 7-piece thru neck made of rock maple and purple heart, which is topped by an ebony fingerboard. And if that’s not enough,...

This week we take a look at a unique bass made by Delgado Guitars out of Nashville, Tennessee. Proprietor Manuel Delgado is a third-generation luthier with specialties in acoustic instruments, and the Delgado Bass is no exception. The acoustic-electric bass has a hollow-body with about 2? in depth and a 34? scale. Though a variety of woods are available, the...

While checking out different luthiers’ websites, I came across the GMR Bassforce NT: a neck-through version of their flagship model. Based out of the UK, GMR’s Bassforce is proof of their constant work. “The shape is seen on Bassforce is a case of evolution of early models which started coming out from the workshop nearly 30 years ago,” explains GMR’s...

German bass company Hot Wire produced a super cool version of their Inlaw 521 BO model with a stunning quilted maple top and matching pickup covers. The “zebra” effect is attained by using a lighter quilted maple and a dark quilted maple to create a sharp contrast. The Inlaw comes in several versions, but the 521 BO is a 5-string,...

Texas-based luthier Bud LeCompte has lots of cool designs on his website, but his Prototype 1.5 (aka PT 1.5) really caught our eye. With one foot rooted in the past and one stepping forward, the cool singlecut body shape has LeCompte’s unique style written all over it. “I like a lot of the traditional instruments, but I don’t want to...

Originally introduced in 1964, the Burns Nu-Sonic was the follow-up to the original Burns bass design. Famously, the Nu-Sonic was used by George Harrison of the Beatles to record the bass line to “Rain”. The company reissued the Nu-Sonic after the brand was reintroduced in 1992. The short-scale bolt-on bass is built with a basswood body with a maple veneer,...

Designed by Jochen Imhof, the Esh Stinger I is described as the company’s “dark side” and was even used by Type O-Negative’s Peter Steele. In addition to several finishes, the German company created a Monstergreen finish with green pickup covers and block inlays as a tribute to the fallen low-ender. Featuring bolt-on construction, the Stinger I is built with a...

After 20 years of work making and repairing stringed instruments, Meaulnes Laberge formed ML Basses to focus on building electric basses. One of his striking instruments is the Volcan, an edgy yet elegant design available in 4- and 5-string configurations. Featuring bolt-on construction, the Volcan is built with a light maple body, three-piece maple neck and an Indian rosewood fingerboard....

While looking up videos of Jack Casady on YouTube, I stumbled upon a real head-turner of a bass: the Lane Poor Minima. Poor, who is renowned for his pickups, designed and manufactured the bass in the early ’90s. Besides the obvious headless and stepped-tuner body design, the Minima had a graphite fingerboard with special epoxy “frets”, which as Bob Gollihur...