1 BILLION BASS DREAMS AT YOUR FINGERTIPS
TOO MANY CHOICES?
Let's focus on your individual bass needs: What music do you play, in which setting? What's your preferred bass sound, look, weight, size, budget? Mail, call, text or DM us! Happy to take up your thoughts and come up with a bass that fits you 100%.
MORE POWER - LESS STRAIN - MORE FUN
- BITE builds top-rated custom basses in Vienna, Austria since 2019
- All BITE basses carry original BITE 1000mV passive high-output pickups. That's an unprecedented 1000 millivolts of articulate bass power (comparable passive industry average is 300mV, passive 'hot' and active 700mV): you need less amplification, your sound remains noisefree and clear, an easy stroke will bite right through your mix
- Rated 5/5 by 95% of buyers (see CUSTOMER RATINGS below)
- Top-rated by all major bass publications (see PRESS REVIEWS below)
- Standing their ground consistently on major stages, such as O2 London (20k), MGM Grand Las Vegas (17k), Qudos Sydney (21k), AO Manchester (21k), Beijing Capital (17k) or Rock in Rio (100k) (see ARTISTS below)
- Why was BITE founded? Founder Wolfgang was unhappy about widely available basses that lack punch und get muddy when amplified
17 WAYS A BITE BASS WILL BOOST YOUR BASS LIFE:
If your bass is weak, meaning your pickups generate only an average amount of voltage, you will be tempted to play hard to make your bass heard and felt, and this will strain you and especially your plucking hand.
On a BITE bass, with its high-output pickups generating 1000 millivolts, a soft and easy stroke is enough to unleash all the bass power you want. We can hear you going, hell, why would I need a powerful bass, I got my amp, duh! Breaking news: amplification often makes everything worse.
Turning up the amp also amplifies all the unwanted noise that creeps in along the signal chain: residual bass hum, cables, pedals, DI, mixer, speakers. As a result, your original signal loses definition and clarity, and you often end up with a loud but muddy bass, like a throbbing headache. Such a poorly defined bass is easily drowned out by those pesky high frequencies in the mix: the voice, the guitar, the snare.
Instead of relying on amplification, it is way more effective to start at the beginning of the signal chain with a passive high-output pickup. The stronger and better defined your original pickup signal, the less amplification you will need, and the less noise and mud will blur your sound.
What is high output? Pickup output is defined as the voltage generated by string oscillation in the magnetic field of a pickup, it is measured in millivolts. Bass builders and pickup manufacturers mostly do not advertise their output for the simple reason that average output is nothing to write home about. What they often do advertise instead is DCR (direct current resistance) which is a pretty meaningless parameter as it ignores pickup magnets. Two pickups can have identical DCR readings but wildly different outputs and sounds.
Our BITE 1000mV pickups deliver a record output of 1000 millivolts. Let's put that in perspective: in comparative measuring the industry average of passive single or split coil output is ard. 300 millivolts. High-output pickups, some call them 'hot' pickups, typically deliver up to 700 millivolts, this is usually achieved either through an active design with a preamp or through large-diameter pole pieces, both of which alter the sound.
And why passive? A passive bass has no on-board battery, and that's the traditional bass design. An active bass has a battery for preamplification which intensifies but also alters the audio signal, whereas a passive bass has a natural and undistorted signal which is only generated by string vibration: pure, bassy, no preamp, no delay, no doctoring of your sound.
What's unique about the BITE 1000mV sound? We achieve 1000 millivolts of output without any preamp, purely passive, and without large-diameter pole pieces. Normally, high output is achieved at the expense of definition, this means powerful pickups usually sound muddy. At BITE you're getting a super-powerful but still well-defined natural bass tone that will cut through the mix with little amplification. This pickup performance is unique.
What's a 1000-millivolt sound like? It's not that your house will come crashing down, it's not three times as loud as your average 300mV bass but it's noticeably more assertive. We liken our sound to a roaring motorbike where you can feel the power thundering out of the tailpipe: chunky, crunchy, punchy, that's the BITE understanding of bass fun. For sound samples, you best head over to our youtube channel where you'll find tons of videos of all our different BITE pickups (single coils, split coils, humbuckers) in all sorts of recording setups, played by many different artists.
BITE Youtube channel
Pickup design is not all in BITE sound design, there's more to it. Firstly, BITE basses have special passive circuit components and, secondly, we pay explicit attention to structural stiffness.
Stiffness matters. The stiffness of your bass between the bridge and string posts determines the vibration behaviour of your strings. Imagine a limp bass where the whole structure is kind of weak and flexible. Will your bass have a strong and powerful tone? No way. Will it have attack and sustain? No, it won't. A tuned 4-string set exerts a pull of 1000 newtons (100 kilograms). If your bass structure gives in to that pull, your tone will be weak, no matter what strong pickup you have.
BITE basses have a fortified structural stiffness. We've put special considerations into the bridge, the neck-body joint, the neck itself and the headstock heel (that's the thinnest and weakest part of any bass). As explanation gets a bit technical, there's a separate link below.
And what's with strain in the fretting hand? Here the strain comes primarily from high string action, that's the leeway underneath the strings, the distance between strings and frets. We measure it in tenths of millimeters when we set up a bass. The higher your action, the more tiresome your playing.
If high action is the reason for strain, why doesn't everybody just lower the strings? Strings can be lowered easily by lowering the bridge saddles or - not so easily - by reducing neck relief at the truss rod (you better let this do your local guitar shop). But the lower you go with your strings, the sooner you will encounter fret buzz: your strings rattling against fret tips. Fret buzz happens when some fret tips are higher than others, when they're not precisely on the same level.
BITE has a double levelling process: first, we level the fretboard, then we install the frets and finally we level the frets. This requires skills, it is done by our experienced luthiers, most factory basses are not levelled. Only this double levelling process makes sure that your strings can oscillate buzzfree in a comfortable and strainless low-action setup.
Bottom line: a soft stroke is enough on a BITE bass. No need for playing hard, no strain in your plucking nor fretting hand. Mind you, playing effortless does not mean playing emotionless! You can still bassface all you want and act out every single tone. In fact, the less effort your playing requires, the more fun the facing and acting.
If you put too much effort into your strokes as you feel not heard enough, your timing can easily get messy. Some bassists want to force it eagerly, they strike a bit early. Others have a more restrained playing style, their suppressed urge to be heard and felt results in a tendency to strike late. Either way, what messes up their timing is the excess amount of effort.
The BITE remedy once more is 1000 millivolts of well-defined bass power plus our fortified structural stiffness. No need to play hard, a soft stroke will get you through the mix, and your timing will be just fine.
Your low bass frequencies by nature have a hard time against the higher frequencies, the voice, the guitar, the snare, they all drown your bass. And turning up the gain again often makes it worse as it also amplifies the unwanted noise creeping into your signal chain and blurs your bass signal.
With 1000 millivolts of articulate passive BITE bass power plus our fortified structural stiffness your tone will bite through the mix and you'll find your way around the groove precisely.
On the fretting hand, the culprits for hurting fingertips are sharp fret ends. A BITE bass goes easy on your fingertips, our fret ends are smoothly rounded and undercut. This means we manually remove the fret roots, called 'tangs', which often protrude on fretboard egdes of factory basses. As a result, your slides are a smooth pleasure.
On the plucking hand, it is once more insufficient pickup output which makes players overdo it. No need on a BITE bass, a soft stroke is enough to generate all the bass power you want.
Rough strings make it worse on both hands. By default we install D’Addario® EXL170 strings, the smoothest roundwounds in widescale testing. If you prefer flatwounds, our standard is LaBella Deep Talkin' for the genuine fat Motown sound.
However, we're also happy to install any other strings you prefer, you can select them from the world's largest string assortment at Thomann on our website. We will individually file your nut slot and set up your bass according to your string choice.
Your bass hums? No wonder, electromagnetic radiation interferes permanently from all sides. That mess of cables on stage, the neon tube in your rehearsal room, the notebook on your desk. Or, here in Vienna it often is the overhead lines of the electric tramway, Vienna is full of it, good luck if your rehearsal basement is in a tramway street. All of this can cause disturbing noise.
What can you do? You can try your luck with installing a so-called notch filter in your signal chain, it removes a narrow band of frequencies but this will amputate your sound.
The real reason why your bass captures noise very often is simply poor shielding and grounding. Shielding means that your conductive parts need a protective barrier that catches unwanted signals. Grounding means diverting these interferences to the ground where they can do no harm. This is the 101 of bass building, all the more surprising that poor shielding and grounding is still quite common in factory basses.
There's a simple way of measuring the quality of your shielding and grounding, a continuity check with a multimeter. The lower the resistance, measured in ohms, the better. The most common shielding variant is graphite paint in the electric cavities. Resistance typically ranges from 200 ohms to 2 kilo-ohms. Will it surprise you when noise from such a bass drives you mad? No, it won't, these are poor readings.
A typical BITE reading will show a single or lower double digit resistance. We use a high-performance shielding paint that was developed for airplanes and life support equipment in hospitals, it is way more conductive than conventional graphite paint.
Let's look at the grounding.Shielding and grounding always go hand in hand. The best shielding is useless if it isn't properly connected to the ground. Are the strings connected to the ground? The shielding paint? The control plate or pickguard cover? On a BITE bass you can be sure of that, every one of our basses is checked against 83 quality items before we release it for dispatch. Shielding and grounding are indispensable for us.

-
Bulky body shapes in electric bass building go all the way back to its origins. BITE bodies are downsized to make them light and handy. We took away some wood in the waists, slimmed down the horns and we also took some fat off the butt, the so-called lower bout. The overall smaller frame lets our Punch and Jawbone basses rest snugly against your body, especially when seated.
-
The BITE premium 24-fret Evening Star model was designed ergonomically from scratch.
Trying to set up a bass can be a traumatizing experience. At first you're proud of the perfect intonation you've reached by shifting your bridge saddles back and forth a while. (Intonation is the accuracy of pitch across the fretboard)
Next, you try to get your string action a bit lower for comfortable fretting. You do this with the setscrews in the bridge saddles and maybe by tweaking the truss rod. (If you do this by yourself, do it in eighth turns or let your local guitar repair shop do it.) But as soon as you slightly change your string action you're getting fret buzz and your fine intonation will also be gone to make things worse.
Trying to balance intonation, neck relief, action and fret buzz resembles a whack-a-mole. If you change one paramenter, another parameter is bound to rear its ugly head and you will end up shouting at your bass. Ultimately, many just give up and play with high action or fret buzz or a sloppy intonation or any combination of these.
That's why at BITE we take extra time to set up your bass precisely, this can take us up to an hour or sometimes even longer. We let your bass rest for 72 hours and repeat the setup as often as it takes so you can plug & play it straight of the box.
What's the use of a perfect setup, if it doesn't last? Tuning instability can be the result of low-quality tuners or other adverse factors: If your neck is made of weak wood, has a weak truss rod or a small cross-section at its weakest spot, the headstock heel. Your setup will lack autonomy and you will need to retune your bass several times during your show, whenever temperature and humidity change.
Our tuners have not caused a single complaint in all the years. We install a compact design made of lightweight fine zinc alloy. Its die-cast precision gear has a 1:17 gear ratio and sits well-protected inside a closed casing, where it is lifetime-lubricated. You can individually adjust the ease of rotation by an adjustment screw at the tip of the tuner button, as some prefer easy turning with little resistance, others prefer to feel more resistance.
Our neck construction is all about our fortified structural stiffness, we give you the ins and outs here:
BITE manufactures without the use of tropical wood unless you have some specific wood requirements, in which case we are happy to procure from FSC certified sources. We also care about carbon neutrality. Your BITE bass travels quite a distance until it reaches you. Wherever possible we ship carbon neutral or contribute to adequate carbon compensation.
For our dark fretboards we mostly use roasted black locust (robinia pseudoacacia) from the Vienna Woods as an ideal rosewood substitute (hard, beautiful red-brownish and machinable). We've been using it since 2019 and never had a single manufacturing problem or customer complaint. Alternatively we also install roasted hard maple fretboards upon client request, mostly in beautiful flamed or birdseye variations. Also roasted hard maple necks are quite a popular choice we are happy to make.
We've all been there: after months of hunting for the next great bass love, we finally spot the perfect specimen ... well, perfect, if only it had a different finish, weight or scale. Looks like there's always one wayward feature that we wish would be different. Stop wasting your time. BITE offers you several ways to your dream bass, either with billions of choices or with reduced choices to keep it short and simple.
Punch & Jawbone Configurator: 16 clicks to build your 20-fret Punch or Jawbone model from billions of choices in under 1 minute. Each click is visualized in real time. If you can't find any desired option in the configurator, chances are that you'll find it in our More Options menu. Click to add left-hand, 5-string, short scale, thousands of sound configurations or many other options to your configurator build.
Evening Star Builder: 18 clicks to build your 24-fret Evening Star premium bass model online, billions of 'modern bass' configurations with hundreds of unique passive sound options.
The Effortless Bass Series offers a curated selection of the most popular custom bass choices for your convenience. Build your perfect bass from thousands of possibilities in just 6 clicks and invest another 2 minutes to complete your order.
Amazing Basses Showroom: Our virtual showroom displays a selection of over 100 basses including in-stocks, in-productions and discounted models. Order your dream bass or get inspired by basses we built for others.
Thousands of additional choices
5-string, 2734 sound options, shorties, lefties, lightweight, hand-painted and digital artwork ...
The BITE Effortless Bass Series additionally tackles the problems of weight and range extension. While lightweight builds and Hipshot D-Tuners are available for all BITE models, the Effortless Series offers them as a package deal:
A heavy bass can be tiresome. What is considered heavy? The industry average of P or J-type basses made of alder, the most common body wood, is a sturdy 4kg/8.8lbs. Add a humbucker or two, heavy tuners and replace alder with ash, and your bass can easily exceed 4,5kg/10lbs. Good luck for your 3-hour rehearsal!
Then again, if a bass is too light, say ard. 3kg/6.6lbs, you constantly have to hold up the neck against gravity. This is called neck dive, playing with nekc dive is no fun either.
BITE necks are made of North American hard maple, that's the heaviest and densest neck wood, and our necks have a double dual-action steel rod inside. Hard maple plus a double truss rod, that’s what a powerful bass needs for all its attack, sustain and tuning stability, but that's what also adds weight to the neck.
The ideal bass weight is ard. 3,4kg/7.5lbs, that's as light as it gets but without neck dive, we call it 'balanced light-weight'. How do we get there? We use light compact tuners and our bodies are downsized and weight-reduced, either alder-paulownia composites or chambered alder. The composites have an alder tone block in the middle and superlight paulownia wood at the wings, while the chambered bodies have an internal honeycomb structure for weight reduction.


There’s a couple of songs you’ve been meaning to play for ages, but they require you to buy a 5-string bass? Maybe Stevie Wonder’s Superstition or anything else reaching down to Eb, D or even Db?
Don't rush to the bass store just yet. No need to fork out for a second bass if one alone can do the job. Your 4-string BITE Effortless Bass carries an optional Hipshot® D-Tuner, also called drop D-tuner or bass extender. What is it good for? By flipping the lever at the backside of your headstock, your E-string will become a D-string, you can simply extend your bass range down by a whole note (or even one and a half depending on your note lengths - the string gets floppier the more you tune it down).
If, on the other hand, you don’t need the D-Tuner activated, it won’t disturb you and your EADG tuning, you’ll never notice it’s there.
Bass Problem #17: Overpaying for bogus quality - the 3 bass categories:
How to cheat bass buyers. To make a low-cost factory bass look like the valuable premium thing, the brand is going to throw all sorts of dust into your eyes. Signature this, vintage that, custom, roadworn and probably some mumbo-jumbo about the tone wood. In reality they'll order a whole shipping container of identical basses from the same OEM factory where they also order the 100$ model.
So what can they do to cheat you? There are so many corners to cut. Neck wood can be cheap soft maple instead of costly hard maple, which will leave you with poor attack and sustain, and you'll never know what the real deal can sound like. Finishes can have a cheap clearcoat, your bass will collect another scratch every day. Electronics can have sloppy shielding and grounding, you'll have a noise problem. Your band will make fun of you: Hey, here comes our bassist, buzzing Bernie.
What else? Necks can be crooked, fret buzz without end, it's gonna be buzzing Bernie all over. Fret egdes can be sharp, your fingertips will know first. Pickups can be weak and faint, your audience will never know there's a bass on stage. Solder joints can be sloppy and break, you'll be left on stage toneless. And so on.
It's all about so-called asymmetric information, that's a concept in economics that has been worth a few Nobel prizes. The seller of an item has an information advantage towards the buyer. The car dealer knows the hidden defects in his cars, the insurance agent knows what the small print really means, it's easy for them to cheat you. But fear not, the next tab (C) is gonna give you some easy ways out.

CAN WE PROVE ALL THESE BITE BENEFITS?
We've had two backstage handovers in the past. What's that? If we make a bass for a noted player touring with a big star, we take the opportunity to directly hand over the bass when they have a tour stop nearby, it's typically backstage a few hours before the show. We have no idea what will happen. Someone might politely say thank-you and our bass will disappear in some corner.
Here's how it played out with John Garrison, bassist with James Blunt. On a world tour which took them from the O2 in London (20k) to Qudos in Sydney (21k), they had a tour stop in nearby Krems in Lower Austria. Our team went there, handed over the bass to John. The band did their sound check, John first on his regular bass that he'd been playing for years, then he swapped it against the BITE, just out of curiosity. You could see his eyebrows going up in disbelief. He switched back to his regular bass and then again back to the BITE. And their jaws dropped. John, their sound engineer and James, they all gave our bass whole-hearted thumbs-up and John performed that very night on our bass and continues to do so all the way around the world.
The year before, we handed over a bass to Jerry Meehan in Zurich, Switzerland, where he was on a tour stop with Robbie Williams. It was exactly the same story. Will they just ignore our bass? No idea. - Turns out they loved it so much that it performed on that stage that same night.
Just so you get an idea of what this really means. Imagine you have a show touring the big stages of the world, 20k venues. Everything is precisely rehearsed, the sound, the light, there's so much money at stake, no room for error. And then, just on a whim, let's have that new bass on stage tonight. Without rehearsals, without building up trust in this new instrument. How does it perform, is it reliable at all? None of that, we want that bass on stage tonight!
Bottom line. To us at BITE. this is the ultimate proof that our 1000 millivolt sound and our build quality rank among the best in the world, and bass professionals on the highest level appreciate the effortless playing experience on a stressful world tour. They notice that when on a BITE, something is different, the sound is more articulate, attack and sustain are there, everything feels easier, effortless and precise playing with 1000 millivolts of passive bass power at your belly.
Subscribe to our newsletter and win a custom engraved neck plate.
We engrave your text, logo, etc. Our plates fit all standard 4-screw basses & guitars. Mount it on your instrument, give it to a loved one or keep it for good luck. You can also buy your custom engraved neck plate here.
Thanks for subscribing!
QUICK TIPS
- Build your bass online, add to cart, also add your additions if any, and insert your delivery address at checkout to see your tax-adjusted price incl. shipping costs. Export prices (USA, UK, CAN, AUS, etc.) are tax-free.
- Happy to send you a technical drawing if your configuration is not available in the configurator.
- Pay securely via Paypal, VISA, Master, AMEX, Apple Pay, Klarna or bank transfer in €, $, £ or 25 other currencies.
- We ship worldwide within weeks, mostly via UPS. Shipments are insured against damage or loss until safe delivery at your doorstep.
- Mail or call us if you're lost, we'll guide you to your dream bass.
BITE PERKS
- In case of questions just select Risk-Free Dummy Order at checkout. No payment data, no commitment, no hustling (we're not selling cars nor insurances) we'll get back to you.
- Return policy: Build your bass in our configurator, cancel your purchase up to 14 days after delivery, no questions asked. Yes, return an individually built custom bass. This is unheard of.
- Greenlighting: We seek your OK before dispatch.
- Hold for pickup: We send your bass to a parcel shop near you for pickup.
- Making-of: We send you pics and videos from our workbench to keep you informed of the manufacturing progress.
WHY A BITE BASS?
0% blah blah, we prefer facts
ARTISTS
Stage, studio or bedroom - BITE's 1000 millivolts take artist ground by storm
"Superb, we all love it!"
"OMG!!! Our soundman loves it!"
MARTY O'BRIEN, USA
Grammy-winning credit
Celine Dion, Kelly Clarkson, Tommy Lee, Chris Cornell, Disturbed, Daughtry, Phil X
TONY NEWTON, USA
Motown legend
Stevie Wonder, Jackson 5, Marvin Gaye, Temptations, Aretha Franklin, Diana Ross
"Absolutely amazing!!!!!"
ULI SALM, Germany
World's No. 1 Bass Collector
Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee Lewis, Bill Haley, J. J. Cale
"You guys gained a new fan!"
BOBBY SCHNECK, USA
Aerosmith, Slash, Green Day, Weezer
"What a TONE MONSTER! Plays like butter, sounds just killer."
KLAUS VOORMANN, GER
2 Grammy wins, "5th Beatle"
The Beatles, Eric Clapton, Bob Dylan, Manfred Mann
"Clever, great, nice work!"
GREG DELCORE, USA
Grammy-winning credits
Britney Spears
"So impressed! Absolutely gorgeous and sounds amazing!"
SIMON FRANCIS, UK
Ellie Goulding, Kylie Minogue, Lee Rogers
"Loving it! Went straight into gigs and studio sessions."