Mike Lull - Founder
Mike Lull's Pacific Northwest roots run deep. In 1954 he was born 50 miles east of the Pacific Coast in the valley of Eugene, Oregon. Five years later, his family moved north to Bellevue, Washington—a newly incorporated small city just ten miles east of Seattle and its thriving music scene. Mike couldn't have known it then, but this move to the Puget Sound area would eventually shape his life as a musician and luthier in immeasurable ways.
Around the same time that his business started taking off, Mike became a working bass player in the Seattle music scene. His experiences as an active musician helped him to further develop his unique understanding of playability and tone, which eventually inspired him to launch the Mike Lull Custom Guitar and Bass lines in 1995. Since the launch of these two lines, Mike's business has continued to grow and he has created and repaired instruments for thousands of artists from around the world, including Randy Jackson, Bob Dylan, Heart, Queensryche, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, Nirvana, Foo Fighters, Death Cab for Cutie, Willie Weeks and Mike Merrit.
Mike Lull unexpectedly passed away after a brief fight with cancer on February 12, 2020. Mike was an icon and visionary, and we passionately honor his name daily by continuing his legacy. Spencer Lull, Mike’s second oldest son, owns and dedicatedly runs the family business with his talented crew to ensure that his Father’s purpose and craft lives on.
In 1970, when he was sixteen, Mike took his first job repairing guitars for a local guitar shop. There he was able to cultivate his gifts and talents, while building the solid foundation that he needed to become a luthier. Soon, word got around that Mike did exceptional work and he developed a positive reputation among local musicians. As his positive reputation grew, so did his dream of opening his own business.
This dream became a reality when, in 1976, he opened Mike Lull's Guitar Works in his hometown of Bellevue. He was just twenty-one at the time and at the beginning of what would quickly become a successful, lifelong career. Over the next few years his business grew wildly—especially when he started building his own custom basses and guitars. That was when his now-legendary fretwork and fine-tuning started to attract the attention of artists from many genres, including jazz, pop, metal, classic rock, blues and country—to name just a few.