Mike Lull Custom Guitars hand-builds bass guitars and electric guitars and perform all types of guitar repair and luthier services for customers worldwide from our shop in Bellevue, WA. Their work is renowned the world over and is based on Mike's long reputation of outstanding craftsmanship.
About Mike
Mike Lull's Pacific Northwest roots run deep. In 1954 he was born 50 miles east of the Pacific Coast in the valley of Eugene, Oregon. Five years later, his family moved north to Bellevue, Washington—a newly incorporated small city just ten miles east of Seattle and its thriving music scene. Mike couldn't have known it then, but this move to the Puget Sound area would eventually shape his life as a musician and luthier in immeasurable ways.
In 1970, when he was sixteen, Mike took his first job repairing guitars for a local guitar shop. There he was able to cultivate his gifts and talents, while building the solid foundation that he needed to become a luthier. Soon, word got around that Mike did exceptional work and he developed a positive reputation among local musicians. As his positive reputation grew, so did his dream of opening his own business.
Open For Business
This dream became a reality when, in 1976, he opened Mike Lull's Guitar Works in his hometown of Bellevue. He was just twenty-one at the time and at the beginning of what would quickly become a successful, lifelong career. Over the next few years his business grew wildly—especially when he started building his own custom basses and guitars. That was when his now-legendary fretwork and fine-tuning started to attract the attention of artists from many musical genres, including jazz, pop, metal, classic rock, blues and country—to name just a few.
Excellent Craftsmanship, Worldwide Reputation
Around the same time that his business started taking off, Mike became a working bass player in the Seattle music scene. His experiences as an active musician helped him to further develop his unique understanding of playability and tone, which eventually inspired him to launch the Mike Lull Custom Guitar and Bass lines in 1995. Since the launch of these two lines, Mike's business has continued to grow and he has created and repaired instruments for thousands of artists from around the world, including Randy Jackson, Bob Dylan, Heart, Queesnryche, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, Nirvana, Foo Fighters, Death Cab for Cutie, Willie Weeks and Mike Merrit.
Mike Lull Bryan Beller Signature Model
In 1999, Bryan Beller grabbed a red Mike Lull Modern 5 Jazz Bass off the wall of the SWR Bass Amplification factory soundroom and took it to a Mike Keneally gig at the famous Baked Potato jazz club in Los Angeles. He never brought it back, and it became his #1 bass for 20 years and countless world tours with artists like Steve Vai, Joe Satriani, The Aristocrats and Mike Keneally.
"I fell in love with it because it's an aggressive rock-flavored 5-string jazz bass," says Beller. "The ash body, maple top, maple fingerboard, vintage late 60s-flavored Seymour Duncan pickups, and original-spec Bartolini preamp combined for a bright jazz bass that did everything right. I can play clean, clear pop/rock and R & B on it, I can make it bark if I get on it harder, and it reacts incredibly well to overdrive effects for the Tim Commerford/Rage Against The Machine vibe. And the playability from the 1st to 24th fret is second to none."
The Mike Lull BBM5 is a faithful replication of that instrument, one that honors the spirit of the original Mike Lull build formula - the best playing, best sounding classic-style basses in the world - with Bryan Beller's rock-focused edge firmly in place.