drTStingray

I think you'll find punk happened for a lot of reasons but mainly because a group of kids got the opportunity to perform for a load of other kids - aherm just like the fab 4 and others did in the 60s - and a couple of scallies from Manchester and Messrs Albarn and co did in the mid 90s. The fact punk was pretty aggressive and had its own fashion is no more seminal in my view than other genres over time - maybe a reflection of aggressive times in the mid to late 70s - a couple of my haunts as a early 20s youth were blown to bits, complete with packed crowds at that time - and I doubt a punk gig was any more aggressive than a Slade one in their skinhead era - although communal gobbling was a punk trait only...... The fact is Fleetwood Mac and their late 60s audience had developed musically so that's why the music changed - plus all the other influences of the time. It is very true that many of us do turn into our dads in terms of musical tolerance (I do remember mine being outraged - and I mean seriously and vocally so - by the JH Experience on TOTP doing Purple Haze and demanding to know why people couldn't play guitar properly, like Hank Marvin. I used to play in a band with people a few years older than me and some of them, excellent musicians, were firmly of the belief that music died at the end of the 60s and anything after is rubbish - they too are Hank Marvin fans. I like to think I have a fairly open mind when it comes to music and indeed I like playing bass across all genres and eras - having two children who are also big music fans and also play instruments is a tremendous way of being exposed to a lot of excellent music I wouldn't otherwise have heard or known about, whilst they grew up and developed their own tastes (spookily also varied in genre but slanted towards the dance/R and B side of things). i think we are in danger of being grumpy old men in this thread without maybe realising - and of course that's exactly what Mr Daltrey is!! A track off his new album came on the radio last night whilst I was driving - I have to say it was damned excellent - a pity my mind has him down now as a bit of a b*ll end as far as musical views are concerned - but I do recommend a listen - for such an old git he sounds bloody excellent!!

Musicman (2, 3 or 4 band versions)

Yes he's completely wrong - actually horrendously wrong - maybe his memory's gone a little - just a few post 1971 tracks:- 1) Kashmir - Led Zeppelin - in fact the whole album Physical Graffiti 2) Schools Out - Alice Cooper - just seen it on bbc4 - what a killer bass part - totally blues rock 3) Frankenstein - Edgar Winter Band 4) Anything by Bad Company 5) Anything by AC/DC Ok some of the blues rockers from the late 60s had changed somewhat - indeed Fleetwood Mac is a good example but there's any amount of good post 1971 rock music. I was thinking Black Dog - Led Zeppelin as an archetypal classic rock track - but Led Zeppelin 4 was released in December 1971 so he's just about right there. Who's Next is a great album btw!!

I'm presuming you value the craftsmanship, design skill and fabulous tone of a bass at this level, produced by one of the top makers of basses as worthless then? Not to mention the input to the instrument of one of the most revered of electric bass players ever. I too don't care for the bass personally but to describe it as rather nice wood and strings rather misses the point by a country mile if not an entire world 🤔 😐 unless you were joking of course.

This is the one you need - I guess a used one could be called mid range price (£1000 ish) - they don't come up often - has markers on the top of the fretboard.

I only caught a couple of acts - Ed Sheehan I thought was excellent - the look of delight on the faces of the audience was quite infectious - to the extent I used a bit of I'm in Love with the Shape of You in a song at my gig later - so stuck in my head was the chord sequence - damn, how can he wrote such catchy songs!!! Saw Rita Ora and a bit of Taylor Swift - Rita Ora's outfit a bit puzzling but that's probably my age. Music ok though. And then Liam Gallagher - what more can you say - vocals a bit off key at times but there you go - typical post 1996 Oasis-like stuff. BBC to be commended imho for such a feast of live music even if some were using quite a lot of backing tracks.

I have to say that I never noticed the slab body or weight of my pre EB Stingray at the end of the 70s - probably because I was a young chap with a flat stomach at the time - and more worried about pressing things like, can I stand up after this much alcohol on a rotating stage...... unlike now - however I still don't find the slab body an issue these days and 14lb monsters are definitely a thing of the vintage era......

One things for sure, mine won't be one of them!! But I also don't think you'll see many appearing on the market. That mint green, unless the colour's been changed slightly, looks a lot paler, almost blue with the black pickguard and pick up cover. I quite like the butterscotch - that was a custom colour in the early 90s - incredibly rare, like peach (as Tony Levin's SR5). The chocolate burst is the nicest IMHO. Has the mint green one got the epoxy covered period correct preamp as per the 40th anniversary chocolate burst version?

I also have no problem with this format - however I believe one has to be very careful with drummers - they can be a strange beast - I play in a band where we once had an excellent and very technical drummer who has moved to better things - the last number in the set has always included a drum solo but whereas the previous drummer did exactly that - and then changed to a groove to allow the guitarist to do an extended solo after and return eventually to the original song our replacement has a different approach - he plays a drum solo - usually too long - but after it plays a groove which no one recognises and then proceeds to get so busy that no one can actually understand what he's doing - oh and at a ludicrous volume - so much so that at the last gig the guitarist took his guitar off and laid it on the floor with feedback emanating and walked off to leave the drummer to disappear up his own derrière with volume and increasingly busy fills - and me literally not having a clue what to play. Effectively making the drum solo last for the whole song.......slightly different from the fours mentioned by the OP but seemingly a similar end result with a drum fest. i now understand why Ginger Baker and Jack Bruce allegedly used to come to blows on occasion. So don't give a drummer fours unless he's a musician rather than a latter day John Bonhamesque but of the shed building fraternity with a large ego (small continent size)!!!

I once played a 1959 Precision in a jam session for about half a dozen songs. The bass looked nice and played and felt quite nice but for its value, was decidedly meh! And secondly I tried a 1976 Stingray in a shop specialising in vintage instruments - which meant playing it through a flip top Ampeg thingy as all their amps were vintage as well. Once again a nice enough bass but not spectacular and I couldn't get that legendary zing - however when I tried a 'party trick' on it, the unison riff breakdown from Stevie Wonder's Sir Duke, imagine my surprise when none of the notes above the 14th fret actually worked - basically wall to wall fret buzz - played fine everywhere else 😧 the shop guy didn't seem to think it was a problem and could be sorted. I'm afraid I was sceptical and left. A complete contrast to a lone 78 walnut finish Stingray I tried in a shop in Denmark Street full of Fenders - now that was a superb bass - beautifully smooth finger style sound, great slap sound - and unlike the 76 wasn't limited to 14 frets!!!

I continue to watch this thread with interest - I have three or four questions/points- 1) Whilst understanding that speaker response has a big role how much does the amp voicing play? So my LM3 has a bass control centred on 40 hz - there are two filters (which I've tried but never use). However a Little Marcus of the same power has its bass control centred on 65 hz - presumably to his spec and bass type - I'm curious to try one if these if only to hear the difference - but the LM3 seems to work great with my Musicman basses 2) the three band Stingray has a filter - to cut boomy bass sounds - some people prefer the 2 band because they like the fatter bass response - others think parts of that response can be boomy. Presumably this built in filter does part of what a thumpinator does??Would the 2 band be helped by a speaker with 30 hz reproduction though? 3) when my 5 strings have new strings they have a piano like sound - in fact you sometimes hear people wax lyrical about basses with such sounds - so why would this turn to mud unless to somehow scramble it with either too much onboard Bass EQ, too much amp Bass EQ, or a muddy sounding speaker? Just curious and I'm sure I've got the physics all wrong with this but it's sort of from a practical rather than theoretical viewpoint. 4) is all this 'mud' issue more to do with people trying to use passive basses with little EQ control for low frequencies and ending up with ill defined mud unless they boost the mids? As I say just curious but the subjects seem inter-related to me.

Sorry to butt in to this but I can confirm that my mighty LM3 with 2 X 10 Markbass Traveller cabinet handles my MM Bongo 5 (which incidentally has a hugely powerful onboard EQ) perfectly well. The whole process produces a tight and focussed sound (bass and amp set flat). With a Markbass 2 x 10 HF as well it's even better and obviously louder as you're getting the 4 ohm output. How do I know? I've stood at the back during sound check and listened. Whilst all of the technical talk in this thread about theoretical speaker performance, frequencies and characteristics of the human ear - and much as I'm a fan of Barefaced cabinets, the Markbass and Bongo 5 (or SR5) simply works in my band situation - without cutting bass frequencies.

I start by setting the input on the amp to avoid clipping other than on absolute peaks - usually between 9 and 11 o clock dependent on the overall output volume I want - output usually set somewhere between 9 o clock and 12 o clock also, bass guitar volume about 75% (leaving some headroom). The output settings are also influenced by whether I'm using one or two speaker cabinets. Amp starts flat for me also - slight tweaks to suit the room/hall if necessary - final tone controlled from the bass - either EQ or playing intensity/position. For 3 band EQ I generally do fine adjustments using the mid range control and with 2 band EQ sometimes boosting mids on the amp a little. I have sometimes cut the bass on the amp and boosted bass on the guitar (very effective with EBMM 2 band where the sound of the bass EQ is v nice!)

Interesting stuff - my Stingray was £350 new in 1980 - without hard shell case or gig bag!! The arrangement from 1976 until 1979/80 was that CLF produced the instruments under contract to Musicman - part of the cause of the breakdown of relationships between them was the failure of manufactured instruments to pass Musicman's quality requirements. There's a guy who has the production records up to 1979 or so - a number of instruments were factory refinished owing to the quality issue.

I'm a bit surprised at the advice to cut everything below 100 hz and leave that to the bass drum. That leaves a very wide frequency band for it - maybe that's why I hear bands sometimes where the bass drum is the only prominent bass instrument. The bass control on an LM3 is centred on 40 hz - on a Little Marcus 3 on 65 hz - are you guys really saying cut that to -10? If so I think this is quite unnesessary. I tend to have mine set at centre throughout with variation for room/hall issues - I then control minor variation for song style from the EQ on the bass guitar and especially the mids. I get a tight and focussed bass sound. The other thing is variation caused by the guitars people use. Some basses are better at creating a tight and focussed bass sound than others - as indeed are some playing styles - it's essential in my mind for instance, for Tower of Power type material - judging by the sound on some recordings these days though a woolly and indistinct sound would seem acceptable if not desirable for some genres (the bass drum providing the focus and the bass guitar being a sort of background drone). I guess a lot of this comes down to the type of music you play and the band you are playing in.

Well I don't think it's bs but you can think what you like - I did carefully say a lot of it and not all of it. If you haven't before, have a listen on the Live at Montreux video of AWB and make your own choice. They are both playing Stingrays through Acoustic stacks. Clearly there are a lot of variables in a bass sound but one of the biggest and least predictable is the player and how they play the bass (IMHO of course). Hamish and Alan have subtly different ways of playing R and B bass.

There are plenty of live recordings with Hamish Stuart playing a Mustang and on other songs, Alan Gorrie playing a Precision. They do sound quite different - Hamish Stuart often played with a pick and a phase effect also in AWB. They even sound quite different playing Stingrays - which goes to show a lot of it is down to the player, not the bass. Examples of songs with Hamish Stuart on bass (definitely live, probably in studio) are Schoolboy Crush; I'm the One; When Will You Be Mine. The first is probably on a Mustang - the others may be Stingray. There are quite a few.

The difference is Bingo - usually in the interval - and if you're playing at a holiday camp club - that even more esoteric of activities - linked Bingo - where all the sites around the country are linked by tv to play massive games of bingo with big prizes!! The biggest challenge Ive come across with these is when the whole audience leaves after the Bingo.......

Blimey - how's it sound? PS when EBMM bring out the 5 string version of the Cutlass and Caprice basses you'll be able to buy something very much like this.

Blimey when did you last go to one - it's all iPads these days!! I play bass in the house band at a couple of jam sessions and yes, some of these stock numbers occur but we get asked to back jazz singers on standards (keyboard player pulls them up on iReal and away we go). Examples of what we played last week - Girl from Ipanema (including being asked to play a bass solo..... 😧), Purple Rain, Albatross, Gravity, Dock of the Bay, Johnny B Goode, Flip Flop and Fly, Our Day Will Come, Hey Joe, Fire, Smooth Operator, Simply the Best. So quite varied. I understand the feeling that these events sometimes feel cliquey in fact I have felt that when going to some of these. I think it's down to the skill of the house band to include everyone who wants to play as much as possible - for the two I play in i'd say the success of that can be variable.

They both play bass and also guitar but I've never seen them both playing bass at the same time. There are tracks with two basses on (on Soul Searching IIRC). They both played Musicman Stingrays after about 1977.

The Bongo is quite a complex shape and although that bottom horn is closer as you say, it is only so in plan view - the real one has a complex curve to it. You should get a real one - reasonable price used and you can always sell it if you don't like it - really very unlike a Stingray - super powerful EQ and with pick up blend, there are lots of tones available although I tend to run mine with the EQ flat mostly. Its a revelation ergonomics-wise particularly standing up - the lower horn gets in the way a touch when sat down. Those cheapo tuners stick up miles beyond the headstock on the Aliexpress copy - prime candidate for getting bent!!

Here's the Mini if you fancy one!!! The rear aspect is even worse!! The problem is these fakes do take real business and do also trick people - there being a story recently of Guitar Centre inadvertently trying to sell a used fake Musicman bass.

Extraordinary!! Here's my actual Bongo for you to compare - somewhat different shape for starters....😀 That Aliexpress Bongo puts me in mind of the Chinese bootleg version of the BMW Mini - as featured on Top Gear - similar comical shape reproduction!!

Looks great - congratulations. Tony Levin has said he cuts the mid range on his 5 string Stingray quite a bit, also. I've tried that setting on my 3 band Stingrays and it works well.