LeftyBassist.com

I'm still trying to find another 5 strings that can beat or at least compete with my old 23 years beast.

This time i gave an other shot at Mike Lull after playing one of his in a local store. I owned a P5 a while back that I sold after a tour because i though the low b was a bit loose.

My new bass is a bit better at it but a thumbrest will probably be a good add-on to help me find the sweet spot.

What I liked about the new Lull is the vintage tone and the modern side of the electronics.

I spoke with Mike over the phone and I tried to explain to him the best I could what i was looking for that bass. I do owned couple of 24 frets 5 strings so I went for his vintage 21 frets version. He suggested me after all to go with a mahogany body instead of the more popular alder or ash to get more mids from the mahogany. I went with the hum-cancelling SD jazz bass pickups.I don't remember why because we talked about the Fralin hum-cancelling too. More mids or bite with SD? Probably from his point.

Then the electronics. I'm not a fan of preamps in a bass but the bass I tried had a nice Bart pre in it and I decided to go for it instead of the Aguilar that was voiced differently. The on/off switch was a must for me. I also added a passive tone which is absent normally with a on/off electronics. Taming the tone in passive mode is very useful these days i found and I asked Mike to add it. It is also on in active mode.

The Bart is very quiet and transparent with a little boost in volume when turning it on at flat settings. I have the bass/treble knob and then a push-pull knob for the mid frequencies set at 250 or 800hz and cut and boost. All settings are useful and musical. I still have to experiment with it since I don't have a lot of experience with inboard eq but there is a lot of great tones with this bass at my disposal.

I choose the maple fingerboard since I don't have that many basses with that type of fingerboard. The finish is impeccable and the feel of the satin neck is really nice. This is a nice built bass with a little custom touch to it and I did bring it on a live gig and it did well but I need to add a thumbrest on it to find my sweet-spot which is somewhere between the 2 pick-ups for me.

I don't have Addison's talent for pictures unfortunately but here are some anyway:

Very Nice Sly... and Yes, the new Act/Passive Tone control is great in these. I recently acquired another Lull M5V myself with all the hoops and whistles. I love it too. Great bass builds.

Looks great.... what's your over-all impression so far as to sound?

It sounds really good with enough growl. The hum-cancelling pickups are really good and it is possible to have one of the pickup louder, providing a clean Pbass sound and a nice Jaco tone. The selection of the midrange frequencies (250 and 800) is really useful. There is no way even at extreme settings to get a bad sound

Since I am not a bassist that favor onboard preamp, I'll have to experiment a bit more but so far it is a killer axe. My main thing to add is a thumrest to be able to get the sweet spot for my attack with the right tension on the low B.