Patrick Francis

It’s refreshing to see so many others frustrated with their Stingrays - I had 4 of them, along with a Sabre and a US Sterling, Back in the late 80’s and 90’s I had very little understanding of tone and gain stages. 87-91 I was using a Trace Elliott sold state amp, (the one with the black light) I used a pick and a chorus pedal. I had terrible tone but I didn’t even know it. When warmer more organically produced rock music kicked in with the grunge stuff, I moved on to a precision and an SVT. I found the Stingray NEVER sounded good with a pick - unless I went for the over the top Cure, Simon Gallup, Disintegration pick tone. They never took to drive as well as passive basses. They had a thin ‘snock’ sound that didn’t fit in a mix. They’re prohibitively heavy. I wasn’t aware of their weight in my 20’s, now I’m 64 it’s a deal breaker. The most recent Ray I had was over 12 pounds, I never picked it up. I have to admit the Sterling was a nice reprieve, fabulous sound, lovely weight, it just felt a little small on me.

I'm coming to the conclusion there is not a Gotoh Res-O-Lite lightweight tuner replacement for Ernie Ball basses - and the Hipshot lightweights will leave visible screw holes on your headstock. Correct me if I'm wrong, I'd prefer to be wrong. This is for a USA made Ernie Ball Sterling which has a bit of neck drive due to the lightweight smaller body. What I soon discovered is a bit of neck dive can be fixed not necessarily by a wider strap, but a more "grippy" one at the right height. Spend a bit of time and try raising your bass a bit. Let the top horn of the bass reach up to about halfway across your sternum. What I soon discovered is what I initially thought was unrecoverable case of neck dive, turned out to be quite manageable.

More on the Nate Mendel - I bought one in 2020, returned it because it had a kink in the neck at the 12th fret - sometimes called a Ski Jump. I loved everything about the bass except the colour red - and of course the Ski Jump. Then last year I bought a NM neck from the Stratosphere in N.H. with the same Ski jump. For some reason I didn't return it. I laboured through fixing it. (nice bass necks are so rare in Canada) I had to come up to speed on fret sanding above the 16th fret and creating a fallaway. I also heat clamped it. Due to my inexperience in this area I had to do both (Frets lowered, and heat clamping) SEVERAL Times. The user "Turnaround" on Talkbass is incredibly knowledgeable in this area. Now I'd say it's as good as a vintage radius neck can be, and it's become my Number One. Since having read three or four more posts about the ski jump on the NM's, I'm thinking this is a concern. I wouldn't buy one sight unseen.

Does anyone know what the truss rod Hex key size is for the S1000?. There are countless restoration posts... but the actual size eludes me. I have bags of hex keys but the cavity isn't very deep/long and requires a "Shorty".

I can now confirm the neck pickup does work. I replaced the shanky black and white leads. When I reassembled everything still a no go. Everything is so old and brittle that even gentle investigation seems to be causing more issues. I don’t have the skill to clean up this preamp. From what I understand the stacked volume knob comes from the UK. I’ll wait for the EMG’s.

True, after looking at another repair of one of these where the owner was looking for the stacked volume pot which had died, it occurred to me the pickup might be fine. It’s really hard to poke around in this without causing more damage. If I can’t sort it out I’ll install the EMG’s but keep all of this intact for a later date. If I recall the Status pickups have a fairly unique aggressive tone. I noticed the tone knob has a centre notch, when I thought that would be the blend knob(?) And the volume does spin the wrong way. I don’t think the white pickup wire going into the channel is broken, just the insulation scared up by a soldering iron (I’ll try replacing it today). Here are a couple more messy forensic photos…

I found one in Hamilton Ontario (Facebook Marketplace in an acoustic instrument group) for $459 Can. I’ve been looking for one for years. Even found it in Black. It’s seen some damage though, looks as though the tone knob was bashed into the body with a bit of a failed cosmetic repair. The volume knob runs the opposite way, and the neck pickup is dead. It’s also 9 pounds 6 ounces! Everything else is fine. I have some replacement EMG’s arriving next week.