Hagstrom - Viking Bass Black Gloss

The Hagstrom Viking Bass Black Gloss is a 4-string bass guitar that has everything you’d expect from a bass that catches your eye even before you’ve heard it. Its semi-hollow body, glossy black finish and trapezoid tailpiece give it that very sixties-style silhouette, evoking smoke-filled clubs, cranked-up amps and bass lines that drive a track forward. It’s no coincidence, in fact, that the Viking has such a distinctive look: its roots go back to 1965, when Hagstrom launched the Concord Bass. More than fifty years on, that spirit is still very much alive, with a design that embraces the vintage look without feeling like an instrument stuck in the past.

Once plugged in, the Viking Bass takes on a whole new character. Its two Dyna-Rail pickups offer a surprisingly wide range of tones, and the six-position rotary switch makes you want to turn it, try things out and compare sounds. One notch brings out the single-coil character, another thickens the sound in humbucking mode, whilst the various combinations of pickups allow you to find the tone that suits the track.

You can thus switch from a brighter, more responsive bass to something fuller and more powerful, without losing the instrument’s distinctive character. The two volume and two tone controls round off this palette with settings that are easy to get to grips with.

The short 30.75" (781 mm) scale length further enhances that distinctive feel under your fingers. The Canadian hard maple neck, the Resinator™ fingerboard and the H-Expander™ are among the features that have, over the years, shaped the Hagstrom signature sound. The Viking Bass therefore doesn’t try to be like every other bass: it embraces its history, its look and that distinctive voice which allows it to navigate between vintage rock and more contemporary sounds.