LEH Offset 5 Transparent Sonic Blue #176

Ellis Hahn spent 16 years at Sadowsky Guitars in New York before moving to Portland to build LEH instruments full time. The Offset was the first design he developed with repeatability in mind - a specific answer to specific problems he'd spent years thinking about - and it remains the bass that defines what LEH is.

The body shape starts with balance. The exaggerated waist offset keeps the center of gravity exactly where it needs to be, and the partial chambering - placed in the neck side of the body only - brings the weight down without compromising the response in the lower bout. The result is a 5-string that hangs right and stays there through a full set. That combination of balance, playability, and tonal range has made the Offset the choice of players like Colin Greenwood of Radiohead and Tim Lefebvre, whose résumé runs from David Bowie's final Blackstar sessions to Tedeschi Trucks Band, The Black Crowes, Wayne Krantz, and Elvis Costello.

The neck is quartersawn maple with graphite reinforcement, finished in a thin matte nitro that gets out of the way fast. The oversized headstock is a deliberate engineering choice - it adds mass at exactly the right point to eliminate the dead spots that plague a lot of 34" bolt-on designs. The Nordstrand 3-band preamp runs treble, mids, and bass as faders with a push-pull bypass on the volume knob, giving you genuine tonal range that's readable at a glance. Hipshot Ultralite hardware, a hand-shaped Tusq nut, and a magnetic battery door (no screwdriver, no plastic tab to break) round out a build where every small decision has a reason behind it.

This is a bass made by someone who has built over a thousand instruments and knows exactly what matters.