My Hoyt 6-string Fretless (Mark Gollihur Signature Model)

Yeah, you read that right – the gorgeous work of art in my hands to the right is my “signature model” bass – made entirely to my specifications by Karl Hoyt, luthier and family friend (he’s also made 3 basses for my dad). I even sent him a sketch of the body design – I wanted the extra long upper horn for balance (that’s a looooong neck with lotsa tuners on it) and a short lower horn for easy access to the upper range.

I love my bass; it has a through-body maple neck with an ebony fingerboard, and amazing side wings that are a “hippie sandwich” of wenge (an African wood with the color of chocolate-y goodness) surrounding a gooey center of mahogany. It even features an amazing hand-made bridge of solid ebony – and matching ebony knobs! The bass is truly a work of art.

The electronics are also custom-tailored for this axe; a Bartolini preamp blends the undersaddle piezo pickup for natural “acoustic” sound, while the (now quite rare) active Lane Poor magnetic soapbar pickup sits in the “sweet spot.”

This bass, which I’ve strung with LaBella Deep-Talkin’ Black Tapewound strings, sounds amazingly woody and warm – it just has this wonderful singing tone with no hint of nasal ugliness. And with its low action, the mwah that you can produce with this thing is just unstoppable.

This was the first 6-er that Karl had made, and it was also his first neck-thru, if I remember correctly. He has made quite a few very cool basses, including an acoustic-electric and a couple of electric 5-ers for my dad (1 fretted, one fretless). In fact, if you look back into my July posting archive, you’ll see a mock ad (from a “Wordless Wednesday” post) that my Dad and I did up just to break his stones. Karl’s a funny guy with a goofy sense of humor – and he makes cool basses.

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