Today I turned into an unexpected Lull owner. A friend of mine who works at Moog Audio in Montreal received his first order of Lulls today and I happened to stop by just after they'd arrived. I ended up spending the entire afternoon comparing two M5Vs - one with a Bartolini pre and the other with Aguilar electronics. I was completely blown away by both. At a certain point it became clear to me that I was going to have to buy one of them, it was simply a matter of which one. The Barts offered a wonderful low mid control while the Aguilar had some super fat low end and a compressed punch to the attack of each note that was phenomenal. I've never had such a difficult time choosing between two basses. At one point I was convinced I was going to go with the Bart-equipped bass but later changed my mind. A difficult decision as both instruments made me want to keep playing them for hours. Anyway, I'm very, very, impressed by these basses and would like to thank Andrew for bringing Lull to Montreal and being patient with me as I took my time getting to know each bass.
Moog guy here (Non commission, part-time employee) It was really amazing that you happened to walk in 15 minutes after the first four Lulls arrived! And the shoot out between the two ash/maple M4V's was an incredible opportunity to hear two almost identically built basses with the similar pickups (standard single coil Lull/Duncans) with the only difference being the onboard preamp. My personal Lull M4 (an early 2006 model, Fralin/bart equipped serial number in the 800's) has no mid control at all, so until today I was completely unaware of how big a difference the push/pull mid control could have, and that the highs and lows were so different in the two preamps. I discovered with you today that the two eq's not only had different frequency bands in each range but also gave each instrument a different presence overall. According to Mike, The Bart was centred at 2.5 kHz, 800 khz/ 250hz, and 60hz. while the Aggie was 6.5Khz, 800Hz/ 400hz, and 40Hz.
the Bartolini equipped M5V had a great punch in the lower mids and a sweet growling tone with lots of air and woody attack, while the aggie had very deep punch and a modern attack in the treble. both basses seemed to sound identical in passive mode and in active mode with the eq's set flat.
The two eq's both seemed practical. to get the best of both worlds I'd recommend a Xotic BMC pedal (or any good quality outboard EQ pedal with a boost at 250Hz) for anyone with an Aguilar equipped bass, and an outboard Aguilar 2 band pre for anyone with a Bartolini equipped bass. (or any good eq with 30-40 hz, and 5-6 Khz) I use an older 2 band Sadowsky outboard preamp (in a true road rage true bypass loop) on my M4.
Mike says that generally pick and finger-style players choose the Bart preamp, and the Aguilar is generally favoured by slap players. I think that both sound great for slapping and fingerstyle, while a pick player would probably opt fo the bart (IMHO, YMMV,etc)
In fact I may even order an instrument from Mike with two preamps onboard: a three band Bartolini and a two band Aguilar, with two mini toggle switches to engage each preamp independently or in series... just a thought. (Mike is going to think I'm crazy) I'd stack the volume and blend on the first pot to make room for the extra bass/treble stacked-pots)
Now since neither of us has a membership number in this club yet, I'm just going to have to beat you to the punch and post a pick of my M4 right away...
