The Story
Barton Applewhite of Barton Basses sent this in for us to check out and it stopped me in my tracks. This monstrous 11-string fretless Harpbass includes a four regular bass strings plus seven standalone harp strings.
“[The bass is] constructed of swamp ash [and] a flame maple neck through with a cocobolo top,” the luthier shares. “It has Bartolini pickups and a b-band pickup for the ‘harp’ strings. Harp can be adjusted to different open tunings. I usually tune to some sort of open E minor tuning.”
Now that’s a harp I’d like to hear!
