Rick Turner Electroline EL35M Custom

Hand made in California in 1999, a custom order 4-string featuring maple fretless neck with pau fero fingerboard, 35" scale (standard is 34"), natural, hand-rubbed oil finish ash. Headboard is covered with faux tortoise, tuners Hipshot Ultralights.
Pickups are a custom Piezo unit built into the, with a Highlander 18v preamp, one Rick Turner Diamond-T Pickup in neck position and (custom order) one Bartolini 9J in the bridge position. The Bartolini was added by Mike Lull.
Controls include Master Volume, Master Tone, Blend between the two magnetic pickups and Blend between magnetic pickups and the Piezo.
The bass came strung with GHS Medium-Light Progressives. The Bass came with a nice, heavy-duty original case.
Comments: The bass was originally custom built for a player in Texas. In addition to longer scale, he also ordered fingerboard lines, but only under the E-string. Lines terminate with an abalone circle, approx. 3mm in diameter.
When I purchased the bass, I asked Mike Lull to add the Bartolini 9J for more tonal versatility. The bass is very light (8.5lbs) even though it has full-sized body. The neck is very slim and increadibly fast. Even though this is my first ever fretless, the neck design and the short fingerboard lines allowed me to play right away, with good intonation. The bass came setup with very low action. Workmanship was impeccable throughout.
The shape of the neck, the shape of the body, the low action, light weight, great sound, everything about this bass just begs you to keep playing. I upped my practice times by 2 hours simply because I could not get tired playing it.

The versatility offered by the combination of the two magnetic pickups and the Piezo is awesome. The Diamond-T pickup sounds similar to a P-Bass - lots of low end, with mid-low end thrown in. The Bartolini gives typical J-bass growly midrange but it sounds warmer and has no single-coil noise.
The Piezo system provides very rich sound with wide frequency range. This bass can be used with Piezo alone - it provides an accoustic sound, and can sound like a double-bass with proper muting technique. By blending in the magnetic pickups, a full range of sounds is available - from dub to very 'trebbly' alost Ric-like tone. I found that I can dial-in tones to suit just about all styles of music and playing. It is also extremely quiet with no noise from either the pickups or the electronics. The notes 'swell'in volume with rich, warm MWAH if strings are plucked over the end of the fingerboard.

Everything about the Fit and Finish is simply great. As soon as you pickup the instrument, it just feels RIGHT. It is perfectly balanced, the smooth, satin-like neck and fingerboard finish feel great under the hand. I could not find any flaws whatsoever.

The bass seems to be built very solidly. It is a year old, and shows no signs of wear at all. Neck is perfectly straight, even after a 7,000 mile, 24-hour plane ride with DHL.

I purchased this bass from Bass Northwest. They arranged to ship the bass to Mike Lull for Bartolini installation. Mike in turn contacted Rick Turner personally to get information on wiring and how best to integrate the new pickup and add the required controls. According to what has been passed on to me, Mr. Rick Turner was extremely helpful. He also shipped to Mike an original blend knob so that it would match the others.

I have been playing bass for 20 years now. I own an Alembic Essence, a G&L 2500, a Staccato, Karrera Violin Bass, plus several Gibson and Fender guitars. I tried this bass with my practice amp, headphones off of a Zoom 506 and on my Carvin 1000W rig with 4x10" and 1x18" cabs. If it were stolen, and if I could afford it, I would get another right away, same spec. The combination of quality, workmanship, unique shape, 'exclamation point' lines, versatility of tone is hard to beat.