Oct 21 Edition – This Week’s Top 10 Basses on Instagram

Just The Tone

Austrian Custom Builder BITE Guitars presents another luxurious one-of-a-kind bass specimen, the ‘Flower Power 24 by Klaus Voormann’. This is a Punch model with a gold-colored body and neck, adorned by handpainted daisies and birds all around. The bass was commissioned by the world’s no. 1 bass collector, Uli Salm from Germany, and its design is the work of Klaus Voormann, legendary graphic artist, bassist, producer and 2-time Grammy winner.

Legendary "German 5th Beatle" Klaus Voormann Designs BITE Bass

Klaus Voormann became close friends with The Beatles in their early years in Hamburg and took over the bass from Stuart Sutcliffe when the latter withdrew in 1961.

In 1967 Klaus won his first Grammy award for designing the Beatles’ Revolver album cover. His work history as a musician includes various solo projects with John Lennon, Ringo Starr, George Harrison and Paul McCartney, as well as work with Eric Clapton, Bob Dylan, Manfred Mann and others.

Garden sceneries around Easter 2024 inspired Klaus to the flowery bass design. The daisies on the fretboard are deliberately placed to serve as fret markers and the artwork is covered by a protective layer of clearcoat. The bass body is made from alder and the neck from American hard maple, as is standard with BITE basses. Soundwise the bass sports a pair of BITE 1000-millivolt split coils, emitting BITE’s signature sound, a healthy and articulate growl which bites through the mix. BITE’s 1000 millivolts are considered the most powerful passive high-output pickups.

This is the 12th BITE bass finding its way into the world’s largest bass collection containing over 850 specimens and counting. Collector Uli Salm, himself an accomplished rock bassist with an impressive record in stage & studio, exhibits 100 basses of his collection in his Zwick Rock ‘n’ Roll Club in St. Pauli, the party district in Hamburg where the Beatles underwent their formative years.

Klaus Voormann also issued a certificate of authenticity – in itself a lovely piece of art – and captioned it “I painted the BITE bass no. 101777 with flowers”.