SOLD! Stingray type custom build... Musician, Bartolini £350 Leeds

[LukeFRC]

Pains me to do this - but thought I would see if anyone was interested in this labour of love of mine. I just can't justify the amount of basses I have currently.

It's a bitsa of a kind...

Tuners= Gotoh 
Neck= Musicman USA Sub neck. In good condition, with brass inserts in heel.
Body= built by myself from a bit of Ash John Shuker sold me. The build quality is ok. Things like the neck pocket are nice and tight. The finishing is ok but not professional level.  
Pickups= Bartolini MCM (original bass) in the bridge and a Bartolini classic bass model on the neck it's actually a 5 string pickup in a 4 string case but works for this purpose too!
Bridge= ABM in aluminium (some scratches when the screws went in) 
Knobs and the furrells and string holder = by grainger guitar parts. Good stuff
Preamp = clone I built on a PCB of an early stingray preamp, including tantilium caps
Strapbuttons = either schaller or dunlop - I forget! But good ones

Controls - volume, 5 position pickup selector switch, bass, treble. Series/Single coil/Parallel for each pickup. 
Pickups selector is either" neck /100% neck 90% bridge/ both / 90% neck 100% bridge / bridge

The idea: I wanted a stingray - the circuit of a stingray is quite interesting as the pickup goes straight into the preamp and the volume is on the output stage of the preamp. Most other basses tend to use a passive volume and blend and then use the preamp as EQ and buffering afterwards. This affects the loading on the pickup and are why things that aren't stingrays sometimes don't sound like stingrays. By using the switches I could avoid this. 
The bridge pickup is in the correct place for the musicman sweet-spot, So with the selector in neck position, set in parallel, it is essentially, and electronically a stingray (except with a Bartolini pickup). 
The neck pickup is a wee bit forward of the P sweet-spot - but switch to the neck and it's very similar in setup to my G&L L1000, it's got a kinda precision vibe going on. 
Switch to single coil and use both and it uses the outside coils of both pickups - the neck one is in the jazz neck position, and the bridge is slightly forward. It gets kinda close to approximating a jazz bass. But you know that thing with jazz basses where you turn both pickups up and loose some of the mids, so roll off one of the volumes slightly to get them back? well that's what the other two pickup selector settings are for...
So a Stingray and approximate precision and jazz sounds all in one bass! Plus loads more options! 33 pickup options before you've touched the bass and treble.
The negative to this setup I designed is that the preamp is the old stingray style you very much set by ear - and the different settings change the loading on the the preamp and I found myself changing the tone controls a fair bit for each setting. 

So there you go. I have no idea if this is of any interest to anyone, or if the price is right or what, I sunk a load more money into this in parts (mostly secondhand) and won't see that, or the time back again. Any questions fire them my way, again no idea if it's of any interest to anyone, or if it will be better to be parted out. No gig bag for it. Due to the threaded inserts the neck will come on and off it fairly easy to post.  
yeah....

 

 

full build thread here 

 

 

Edited December 3, 2019 by LukeFRC
it sold

[LukeFRC]

No one then!

[Bassbandit]

Actually a very nice build mate tbf 👍. Once you delve a bit deeper its a very well thought out build,not just some guy who,s thrown some spare parts together and with an interesting story. I,ve just picked up my ratty status s3 otherwise i,d be interested. So just going to give it the forrest bump 👍

 

[Oopsdabassist]

I remember following the build thread at the time, lovely stuff.

Good luck with this Luke.