drTStingray

I've read about one other on the Internet - I think they replaced the bass as it was brand new (had a small hole appear in the body). No wonder they stopped using ash and will definitely keep an eye on my recent ones.

Wow that looks great 👍

I bought it for a blingy blue dawn Stingray but after about 12 months I put the original black one back on and it's been in the box it came in ever since - it is nice though - would look great on a black or white bass - neither of which I have in 4HH form 😩

Those of us into dance or R and B orientated music, or even the Madchester scene had quite a lot from 1990 to like. I've just realised that (I've got) The Power by Snap was released in 1990 - as well as a classic rave track it's also memorable for me as when it came on the car radio my then 5 yr old daughter, sat in the back, would excaim 'No you haven't' every time the words 'I've Got the Power' came out of the car radio!!! I always thought 1977 was famous for such seminal disco greats as Chic and a multitude of others whereas the NME proclaimed punk was THE thing in 1977 - for some it was but I'm willing to bet that Chic, Abba and others touched more people than bands like the Radiators From Space ever did!! AND I'm sure you could find the usual UK studio novelty stuff in the charts (the Grandad - Clive Dunn type of thing - though he was probably not 1977). And we had Weather Report crossing over with Birdland etc etc followed by Herbie Hancock and others. I always thought punk was Dr Feelgood (and other similar high energy pub rock bands) + gobbling + dear old Vivienne and Malcolm's fashion input, perhaps with slightly less musical aplomb than Wilco, Brillo and co. As others have said, views on the validity of music in particular years tend to be based to an extent on musical taste - presumably by 1990 not only had (some of) hip hop mellowed but punk had passed, Weller had mellowed - was ska still alive as a genre outside of its Jamaican origins?

More confusion for you - white ice, abalone or even tiramisu (on my Bongo) - all used to be options on a Stingray and can still be had (I think) from Chandler. Mind you they're a slightly different size on the SBMMs. No pickguard was touted by none other than Tim Commerford with RATM at one time. Id stick with white pearl as per your SR5 👍

Well if you exclude such classics as Step On (Happy Mondays) (in fact their album Pills, Thrills and Bellyaches), Fools Gold (Stone Roses), Soul to Soul (Back to Life etc), Killer (Adamski), Nothing Compares to You (Sinead O'Connor), Sacrifice (Elton John), Vogue (and album Immaculate Collection), Madonna and various other seminal or reasonably seminal music, along with the famous World Cup in Italy with Bobby Robson in charge (and England ejected in a penalty shoot out) and loads of other stuff maybe. The Rave scene was big in this period. For me it's a pretty memorable year!!

Cheers - the first incarnation of a Cruz Teal I saw (pre NAMM announcement, 2018) had a black pg and that combination was the basis of ordering - by the tube it turned up they'd changed the standard to white pg... I got a black one from someone with a spare in the US. YourSR5 looks great with the white pearl - my natural has had a white pearl (in place of its 'as delivered' black) since about 2003 - I think they look great so maybe your mint green should have a white pearl. On the question of tort, it's not my cup of tea and I have several spare pickguards for my orange Bongo - notably the tort looked awful (to me) and I swapped that one with someone in Germany for a white ice one. As people are saying, it's fun to swap pickguards around - as with new strings, a changes of pg can feel like a new bass. What do you think of the Sub 4 - the couple I've heard sound really good in a live band setting?

@PlungerModerno I may have misrepresented people in my characterisation which is possibly an exaggeration, so apologies - however I've certainly read posts with that view, as the extreme of the spectrum of views on this subject. Yes I agree re the piezo addition on a solid bodied electric bass - I think the point I was getting at was the resonance of the body etc will be important with the piezo, but conversely my view that body resonance (and everything else in the system eg bridge, neck, strings) influences the variation of sound transferred to the pick ups. Ive only once heard a piezo equipped bass demonstrated in front of an audience - it was a standard 3 band Stingray H fretless (with the optional piezo and additional piezo/magnetic blend knob) - the with piezo sound created more string sound (think upright) - was quite different - it was demoed by that chap with very prominent side burns whose name completely escapes me.....great player though. My own bass with it soloed creates a sort of lighter, airier sound - very interesting especially on the low B string. Brings a different flavour to hip hop type lines.

White and white pearl look great (I voted plain white) - that's what came on my SR5HH special - however curve ball for you (or Googly in English parlance 😏) - have you thought of a black one - that's what my 5 er now has (comparison below - Cruz teal is a bit darker than mint green - note the way it makes the body colour look slightly different)

A one off hickory Stingray was produced in the 80s, for a country artist I think - not sure if it was only the body that was hickory though - there are some photos on the internet somewhere - natural finish and looks vaguely similar to ash in appearance. I have a basswood bodied higher end bass which has inserts for the pg screws at least (the bolts for the bridge have also got inserts) - given the rate at which people seem to swap their pickguards (well at least those who discuss it in on line forums seem to 😏) - presumably those people making basses and guitars in, say 1960, hadn't learned the lesson of strap buttons coming loose (which i'd wager most of us here have encountered - often fixed by a broken match stick inserted in - but hardly the thing for a high end instrument). This is demonstrated by the fact the same companies are still selling instruments without inserts........whereas many high end manufacturers do. And another thing - I haven't heard any response from the 'the electronics are the only thing that affect sound in solid bodied instruments' camp regarding my solid bodied bass with piezo, which works very well in piezo only mode........ any comments?

They were both piezo I think but I can't really remember - however the song (which was arpegiated on an acoustic) started on the Gibson and when the Martin was introduced it sounded completely different - a much fuller sound altogether and I think because of the guitar construction - same amp and I think, piezo system (some sort of Fishman?) From this angle, I have a solid bodied electric bass guitar with both magnetic and piezo pick ups. Generally they're mixed together but I have used just the piezo before now and it sounds rather good - surely that must only pick up vibration from the body, strings and bridge. The body is basswood. Not all pick ups are magnetic.......but I think there's clearly vibration transfer with magnetic pick ups as well - unless it has absolutely no (or very little) resonance like concrete - or a bass with so many wood pieces glued together to make the body it's virtually solid and thus not very resonant.

I'd been playing a few years before them - struggling to hear myself with 50 watt valve amps!! The Carlsboro/HH sounded great but I went into considerable debt over the Acoustic set up - Carlsboro cab plus Acoustic (near 400 watt) plus new Stingray (another source of debt...) sounded pretty well excellent!! (And they all fitted in my Mini 1275 GT)!!! I was in quite decent soul/funk bands at that time having started in rock/blues/prog, and moved via jazz/rock and then jazz funk. The point is in my experience virtually no one stocked them - and if they did, just a couple of packs. In that golden age of bass (bear in mind any Fender in any of the colours available on the right hand version could be had new left handed then - and even then shops were probably 80% guitar), and at a time when we had Wal, Alembic, Musicman, Yamaha, Ibanez, JD fairly new on the scene why would anyone want to effectively neuter their lively bass sound with flats? They also tended to have appalling tension comparatively (even now I will only use things like TI or EB Group 3 or Cobalt for flats - they are similar in tension to rounds). So I suspect in the UK there weren't a lot of packs gathering cob webs at the back of shops. As others have mentioned, a pack of bass strings was a big investment - I for one only changed mine if they were very dead or we were doing something more special like a video with recorded sound or similar - mostly I replaced individual strings as they broke (usually D or G) and you could buy individual bass strings everywhere then. I once had an A go mid gig on my Stingray on a dark stage at a uni I think - getting the string off via the strings through was tough - but trying to play disco without an A string really scrambled my brain Hahahaha!! Only surpassed by the drum stool breaking in about the third song in a set in a night club and the drummer disappearing head first, in reverse with legs in the air over the back of drum riser and stage - and no he didn't have a spare either........ used a chair from the club!! And if you want another sign of the times, one of my group of mate's father was a bit of a hoarder and amongst one source of great mirth amongst us, was him keeping a box of NOS valves 'just in case'!!' These were actually for radios and teles but you get the drift regarding anachronistic and out of date stuff at that time.

So by the same analogy as for solid bodied instruments are we saying that when acoustic instruments are fitted with some form of pick up the construction plays far less of a part? If so I know that is not the case - I have heard an electrified Martin D45 and a Gibson J200 played on the same track - totally different sounds. Its similar with electric solid bodied instruments - different wood (even pieces of wood of the same type) resonate differently - that resonation transfers to the strings, to the pick ups. Clearly the electronics package plays a part in the final sound but then so does every other part of the system that makes up a bass guitar. I wonder whether one of these plywood bodied basses would keep up with, say a traditional ash or alder bodied one at stadium gig volume?

Many of us using roundwounds discovered we had to learn decent muting technique to stop strings from ringing which weren't being played and to control note length - that in turn led to successful extension of muting technique controlling over tones and mimicking that thuddy flats sound - whilst still having available the bright bass sound and searing slap sounds when wanted. Nothing like a brand new set of Rotosound Swing Bass (although my nickel frets probably didn't share that love)!! 😯

I think it highly unlikely virtually anyone other than maybe a handful of sessions musicians doing recording all day would be using flats. Every genre I can think of (rock, prog, punk, funk, disco etc etc) was using a brighter bass sound in the late 70s and 80s. You are definitely right about the amplification - I couldn't hear myself until I bought a used HH 100 watt amp and Carlsboro 1 X 15 cabinet. Later I bought a used Acoustic 301/370 - I used the head with the Carlsboro on all but the largest gigs but I could definitely hear myself with those set ups. The use of round wounds was not only because of hearing your self though. The thuddy flatwould sound was about as far removed from everything you might hear from Louis Johnson, Stanley Clarke, the guy in Rose Royce etc etc and other bassists influencing people at that time as you can imagine. Notice there were no 10 inch bass speakers mentioned above either - those really became popular and widely available a bit later but facilitated that Mark King type sound. Flats have only really been popular again in the last 20 yrs or so - I know if I only had one bass, there is no way it would be fitted with flat wounds - as it is I have a couple so fitted and really enjoy them - maybe it's my early influences and the fact the earlier 60s were less of an influence on me owing to my age whereas the 70s and 80s were (and a golden age of bass and its importance in music), but the flat wound sound is more of a fun luxury than a necessity for me. PS what colour was your Woodroffes' P bass? My natural one mentioned was in Yardleys.

@Romeo2 if you haven't heard it check out the You Tube live concerts with him in the Paul Young band - absolutely brilliant playing and groove. A particularly good one is the Paul Young band playing the song Sex on the 80s TV programme The Tube.

Whatever you do don't quote Richard Van Dyke or Richard Emery 😂

Possibly the handful of people playing in recording studios and some jazz dance band players. Most rock bands and prog bands were after a far more lively sound. The use of flatwounds has really only become popular in the last 20 yrs or so with the 60s vintage throw back popularity - the first use I can think of that may have been influential was Pino with D'Angelo in the late 90s. NB he appears to have been content to rip the board of his fretless Ray to bits with roundwounds in the late 70s/80s!! These days he was using flats (EB Cobalt) on it. Things may have bern different in the US but even there the livelier bass sound was a requirement in the late 70s - Jamerson's reluctance to do that is quoted as one part of the reason his work dried up.

I actually meant the general public seeing them as opposed to retailers. Life was very different then - they'd generally sell you something from their stock - in fact it wasn't that different 20 yrs ago although centralised distribution has improved things. A few years back I wanted to buy an MM Sabre in a specific available colour - there were none in the country but every other available colour was - I was unable to get anyone to order one.

It just shows how wrong the calculator is. If you consider actual salary or wage for say a 19 yr old - I had quite a decent job in 1973 at just under £1000 per annum. A new Precision was £252 (without case) in a particular shop (natural finish). So this is more than a quarter of that annual salary. A quarter of say £15000 now gives you a new US P bass at £3750 - so they are now relatively cheaper and should be around £3k. GHS did flatwounds in the mid/late 60s and a new Musicman Stingray came with them fitted. A sign of the times is they changed to GHS rounds in early 78. I do not recall anyone in my local scene who played bass even considering using using flatwounds and the normal replacement string (in the UK) was Rotosound. You have to remember that in the 70s stuff from the early 60s era was very deeply uncool - this extended to pastel coloured instruments, liking the Shadows, and in the later 70s, passive Fender basses even (unless you were a punk band) and even then there were as many people playing Rickenbsckers and the like (The Jam for instance). The idea anyone ever saw a Fender catalogue in the UK was also a misnomer - you bought what was in the shop - I'm doubtful anyone would be able to get a retailer to make a special order (I.e something not in stock). Times were different - we'd never heard of Jamerson, even less what make of instrument and strings he used - although his bass lines were, of course very influential to some people (rock fans would probably not listen to Motown in the same way that punks would not listen to Genesis and Yes!) So flatwounds were really not something of the 70s at all - I don't recall them being on sale in the music shops I frequented and of course there was no mail order or Internet. You have to question why would people stock something virtually no one used - and even if they did they didn't change them!!! I don't think I was unique in wanting that first two or three weeks lasting sound of a new Rotosound set of strings but wasn't wealthy enough to change them that often. Remember amplification and speakers were not what they are now also. Although things were changing over to solid state (Acoustic for the very wealthy; HH for something more affordable) the standard available now is light years away. The chances are with flatwounds you would have even less chance of hearing yourself than you had. For valve stuff, Marshall and Ampeg stacks were the preserve of the super rich!!!

I have the D'Angelo album (Voodoo) - I really quite like it and the bass is excellent R and B style. I got it a few years back when I decided to revisit Pino (having been a fan when he first became famous) - as well as that album I got Gary Numan (I, Assassin) and Paul Young (No Parlez) as Christmas presents - encouraged me to re-learn songs like Music For Chameleons (always reminds me of Alan Partridge....) - great bass part though! As well as +1 on the David Sanborn and other jazz artists mentioned by @Doddy there's also a version on You Tube of him playing with Jeff Beck on Star Cycle - a very fast sequencer type bass part on his Stingray fretless

I really liked that - quite Weather Reportesque at times. Thanks for posting 👍

You obviously can't have been playing loud enough!! (Or their hearing's impaired!) But no - I'm saying they notice bass tone and comment on it sometimes (it's happened with the mahogany Sabre several times). The orange Bongo is another that has generated very favourable comments, people asking me what make it is and how refreshing to see and hear a bass that isn't one of those boring brown things you can barely hear!! I couldn't possibly comment 😯 Regarding other musicians I've had similar experiences sometimes - an example was a drummer who, talking to me in the break was waxing lyrical about a fretless on an album - I said 'oh I'm playing one tonight' - he said 'I hadn't noticed'....... it's not surprising as he was playing as if he was building a shed and probably couldn't hear much of the rest of the band anyway!! So I said 'hmmm I'd better turn up in the second half so you can hear me and we can become a rythmn section'..... 😬 Conversely ive had the singer come up to me in a sax and guitar solo and say the bass sounds great 👍😊

Afraid not!! I did wonder about the gothic Victorian church pew style chair with turned legs but stuck with something more modern haha!! 😂👍

I have a mahogany bodied Musicman Sabre and it sounds subtly different from an ash bodied one to me. Bass tone does make a difference and people (non musicians) do notice it. Similarly a maple boarded standard Stingray (light oil and wax finish) sounds different from a rosewood board one (same neck finish, construction and body attachment - same body wood, pick up, hardware and EQ. Im firmly in the camp of body and neck wood types make a difference - along with strings, player etc etc. Just my take on it.