drTStingray

You've clearly never had to play Sir Duke in its original key!! Until I played that song I could not see any sense in Fender basses having 20 frets!! The unison riff uses the top note (played brilliantly by Nate Watts - Precison through an Alembic pre amp). Top E flat is an unusual top note choice, particular since guitar-based music is often in E and A. Of course, the standard Fender scale was introduced way before guitar based music had taken over from keyboard or brass based music, they are that old!!! 😧 E flat is useful for the afore mentioned song, and a number of other Stevie Wonder songs. Of course, the Fender does also permit playing a high F7 triad or slid double stop, if you're so inclined. The 22 fret Sterlings, Stingray 5s (and now Stingray Specials) can be useful dependent on the key you're playing in - the Stingray with 21 seemed perfect to me in 1979 or so, especially play songs in E. I've always found the Bongo 5 with 24 frets a little more tricky - probably because of playing it less often - I find I can get a bit confused exactly where I am when playing above 12th/14th fret - as I say - entirely my fault - lack of practice. I'm sure 24 frets is great for soloing as well. 😬👍

That looks like a very bad replacement logo to me on a pre EB Stingray!! The 'Stingray Bass' bit looks hand scribed!!!

Congratulations @Lozz196 I hope you're enjoying that beauty. A good tip for the EQ on the 3 band is to cut the mid quite a bit, and boost the bass and treble a bit - gets close to the 2 band sound. Then use the Mid as a tone control - it cuts through more/ becomes more prominent as you increase the mid. Best of luck anyway.

@MoJo I like your updated decal - looks great. However I won't be changing mine - and what a great Musicman it is - for those in the know it's a US made 'Sports Utility Bass' - hence SUB - classic 2 band EQ a basically a Stingray with cheaper finishes - it's fabulous!! 😏👍 @Stub Mandrel how very dare you - that's based on the original 1970s Musicman logo - definitely 70s but corny - I don't think so. That one looks a bit odd btw - here is the one on my Classic Stingray. Looks magnificent to me (as Stingrays always have as far as I'm concerned!!) 👍 Heres a modern one - Stingray Special.

Sounds and looks very nice. I've long given up on Fender naming conventions, in fact anything like colour and features. How wide is the neck on the Jazz Ultra 5? It looks quite wide from the recording - one thing that often puts me off Fender 5 strings.

Great info in this thread guys - just a pity there aren't a few more around to contribute.

This is bit déjà vu!! They don't have that logo any longer - haven't for at least a year or more. I think all the SBMM models have Stingray in the logo these days. Have a look at their website for details. The SBMM company is not owned by Musicman so the title of your thread needs changing as well. It's completely separate, making instruments (they do guitars as well as basses) licenced by Musicman.

Good luck also - it would be good to get sensible advice on these basses without endless trolling. The moderators should be able to support such a request also 😏👍

Sorry - as I said previously my memory and age ......... lol. Only 6-7 yrs. Thanks for posting the info - having read it I can't really see the problem and Mr Hall's posts are really quite reasoned and even supportive of Basschat - they've said they don't care about Basschat banning Rickenbacker sales threads although think it's a bit OTT. I really don't see the justification for all the vitriol quite honestly and each to their own, for something notable to still persist after 7 yrs is, in my book, extremely odd.... and seems to prevent any sensible discussion about their instruments. It all seems a bit vitriolic to me - but each to their own 😐

Apology accepted 👍

I think it'll need a few more action scenes - but this sounds excellent - have you any showbiz style ditties in mind as well - I think it's 55 yrs this year that one of Britain's most iconic bands of the v early 60s, none other than Cliff and The Shadows, were steered into panto in the West End (Alladin) - producing several songs which became part of their repertoire, in the process. Wild West theme is good but you need some baddies in the form of fakers and counterfeiters to get the whole dynamic 😀

Well definitely veteran at my age - if I was my 20 yr old bass playing self still, someone my current age would have been positively archaic and largely irrelevant - such is the march of time!! But this Basschat fixation - we've debated this before - Rickenbacker at the time was suffering from shops full of fakers in London - I remember asking a well known retailer in the guitar touristy part of London if they had any real ones and was figuratively grabbed by the lapel and wheeled out of the shop - not quite a slap round the face with a leather glove but not far off........ such was the Wild West nature of the market place and counterfeiting/ fakery then. So various manufacturers took strong action to protect their brands - all very reasonable in my book. However th Basschat grandees were dealt with by Rickenbacker, it fitted the same process - in response Basschat implemented a complete selling ban - decent response and move on, I'd have thought. Was this 10 or 15 yrs back? Some members have thought this a tiny bit heavy handed from time to time but it is no doubt backed with sound legal advice. However, I do think (and have expressed this several times before) that some members here, and possibly the underlying tone of the forum, is in danger of being consumed by a quantity of long out of date and stale vitriol. About time we moved on from that surely 👍 most of us seem to like the bloody things after all!!! Grudge holding is surely the stuff of the more odious of our politicians, leading businessmen, criminals and ex partners 😬

Oh dear - two pages in and only one sensible answer to the OP. We're back to the same Basschat members with the same fixations on the same CEO with the same jokes as the last Rickenbacker thread disintegration...... A shame really because they're great sounding basses if you like that sort of thing (from what I see quite a few people do but don't bother with bass guitar forums these days - I wonder why 😬).

I think you'll find you got your answer - merest mention of this manufacturer here brings out the 'basschatanythingbutaPrecisionwithflatsisverbotengestapo' - and the thread is bombarded - not many Ric owners on here anymore I suspect 😏😬

Oops - sorry about that - however looks and sounds great 👍

Congratulations - nothing like a USA Sub 5, especially a white one (I have one as well). Band sounds good as well.

This sounds really good. For a short scale, lightweight, passive bass it's very full sounding, and plenty of variation available with the pick up settings and tone control. But most of all, it does a very nice Stingray sound. Excellent demo (and Alberto's).

In my experience, even when you don't have a sound engineer or the luxury of setting up the sound in an empty room, there are many occasions when rooms have an area, frequency wise, of major resonance - I.e if you play, say an A on the bass (and it's often the bass which is heavily affected) it sounds much louder than any other note. As a result that note enters the mikes and is also 'over amplified', in the worst cases causing a feedback loop. Being able to isolate the frequency and reduce it accordingly is essential to avoid boominess (might need an adjustment of FOH EQ on the PA even if the vocals don't cause a problem). The worst example I ever heard was a club in London, the room in which we played had walls and ceiling rather like a 60s/70s design school gym - the sound was incredibly boomy and the guitarists needed to cut their bass but retain their low mid - as only vocals could go through the PA. Both guitarists had vintage style amps with only bass and treble controls, and guitars with a standard tone control they couldn't do it, other than marginally, by pick up selection - this is a time when an EQ pedal is very useful. I was able to adjust my bass sound to compensate (from the amp generally and bass on the fly song by song)

You clearly need to try a Stingray Special, especially in HH form. Light, powerful and fabulous tone. You can get them in the traditional brownish hues but also some quite spectacular colours. This is one of mine. I don't know how they do it, but the combination of neck radius and profile, and the finish give these basses the best playing neck I've ever encountered. So much better than other makes with this type of neck width.

I can assure you that is not a Northern thing - it certainly is a little odd, having had a similar experience to you, but it actually happens all over country!! My coral red Stingray graced one or two of these clubs in the south east during the time I played in such a band. They were quite warmly accepting of us - however I did have one incident where I was accused in a derogatory way by an octogenerian of 'sounding like Jaco Pastorius' - I had used a Fretless Ray on a jazzy song.....I suggested he may have been mistaking me with Pino Palladino 😂😂 Interesting that bass is ex Mark Griffiths - he's a great bass player - seen with either an FR Precision or white Burns with CR and The Shadows but he also played guitar in Matthews Southern Comfort. As stated, Jaydee will make anything you ask, and for a surprisingly reasonable price. A mate of mine had a Supernatural made at the same time as he was having a Wal made and the price differential was very significant. That one does look a little odd with a Fender style headstock. Much better IMHO with traditional Jaydee type.

Some lovely basses there and seeing a pic of a sunburst pre EB Stingray with an Acoustic 370 and rig takes me back - that was my exact set of equipment back in the early 80s. cd_david has been rather naughty here - he has replicated exactly what happened in the late 70s when people heard say a Musicman or Alembic amongst P bass sounds - igniting significant GAS for those wanting to be able to produce some nice bright sounds as well as the muted thump type of thing!! 😉 Back then quite a few of us were trying to be Stanley, Louis and Bernard all with one Bass. What sort of bass is the early 2000s P Special lookalike?

I really like the blueburst Old Smoothie - isn't that the one with the herringbone skunk stripe - I think the Old Smoothie is the only Bass EBMM does which has a rear loaded truss rod. The green Caprice/Cutlass look nice as well. Going by the comments on other forums it seems people have ordered pink Stingrays. What with these Vault specials and those BFR Stingray fretlesses, I'm finding it quite hard to resist! 😬😧

A Stingray Special HH is great for that - the neck H is very articulate but does dub reggae very well.

Possible - some became actresses, at least one in Coronation St. That song was another infliction on the population..... there have been many.

I can forgive Mr Flowers the great transgression of inflicting that on the population (and the flat wound string thing) as he is totally brilliant on, at the very least:- Space Oddity - D Bowie Rock On - David Essex Walk in the Wild Side - Lou Reed If he got a lot of money from royalties from the Clive Dunn song (CD was aged 51 at the time of recording and made to look 80), good on him - I think he only got sessions rates for at least some of the others.