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Gimme an A! (Cliff Williams Stingray)


Doctor J

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On 03/10/2020 at 17:03, Jack said:

 

I'd strongly encourage you both to see past those beautiful American pearly whites and give Goldfinger a go, one of my favourite bands. Feldman is a great frontman and there's some nice bass parts too. Punk rock is a lot prettier than proper punk. 

Mate you must have been a teenager in the 90s (like me).

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I'm not that keen on this bass, but Cliff Willliams is a much underrated bass player, for sure. A  couple of years go I had to learn a couple of AC/DC songs exactly as they are on the record, and they were far from simple and straight forward. They play some really clever turnarounds , and make them slightly different each time.  Check out the bassline on tracks like Riff Raff- quite unusual and really busy.  Cliff makes it sound easy, but there is a lot going on .

The timing is pretty tricky too, especially if you want to make it swing like AC/DC do. The whole band are really clever. Superb musicians who feel no need to draw unnecessary attention their chops.  Big respect from me.

Edited by Misdee
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On 04/10/2020 at 00:07, Lozz196 said:

Well just to update re this, have managed to score a 1987 2eq in my favoured black/maple colour scheme on the ‘bay. 

And received it today. And it’s true about the 2-eq having more grunt, much more to my taste, looks like I’ve a whole lotta (had to chuck that in) AC/DC songs to learn now.

image.jpg

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On 30/09/2020 at 13:56, kyuuga said:

Personally I dislike signature basses. I think they're just marketing moves and having someone's "signature bass" doesn't make you play or sound like them. And it's certainly not very different from having a regular bass of the same kind (which is what exactly the signature bass was before it touched the player's hands).

I loved Musicman's approach of "no signature pieces" when it came to their basses, it really struck out to me because everywhere I looked (*ahem* Fender) there seemed to be a ton of signature basses which provided virtually nothing new from normal basses.

HOWEVER, I do understand that companies need to make money and signature basses for them are almost "guaranteed" sells, especially when it comes to a giant band like AC/DC which has millions of followers. And I think MM took a first step into the signature world with their Joe Dart Musicman Bass which was quite refreshing (different from any Stingray/Sterling bass) and they made few copies - very overpriced, but still...

I just hope they don't go the same way as their guitar deparment which is bloated with signature models from players who I had never heard of (nothing against them, just saying) and they offer virtually nothing different.


All the power to Musicman though, it's their company and I'll support them as long as they don't go out of their way to create signature pieces just for money and leave the original basses behind (ex: Fender between the late 2000's and now...the Mexican Precision bass was severely left behind while they kept creating innumerous signature models for no reason).

99.9% of the audience won't know it's a signature model.

 

Even when I had an Ibanez Jem Blue Floral - not once did a non-guitarist know it had anything to do with Steve Vai. To them it was just a guitar with a blue floral pattern on it.

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34 minutes ago, kyuuga said:

Musicman pulling a Gibson on this one - pretty sure it'll backfire, bass players are usually way more conservative money-wise than guitar players...

They are only making 30. I am sure there are 30 AC/DC fans with deep pockets. Well, I am not one of them 😉

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This bass looks great - massive attention to detail when you read through the specs and see the photos - also interesting this pre EB Ray is a three piece poplar body. However I still haven't found out the price. Anyone? 

This is on a par with the Pino CS P bass so I would expect it to be expensive - I'm also curious what else may be in this icon series as I can imagine myself being tempted more than once in the future.  

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3 minutes ago, drTStingray said:

This bass looks great - massive attention to detail when you read through the specs and see the photos - also interesting this pre EB Ray is a three piece poplar body. However I still haven't found out the price. Anyone? 

This is on a par with the Pino CS P bass so I would expect it to be expensive - I'm also curious what else may be in this icon series as I can imagine myself being tempted more than once in the future.  

$7,000.00

https://shop.music-man.com/cliff-williams-stingray-bass.html

 

Hope the next icon series entries will be Louis Johnson, Bernard Edwards and Timmy C 😀

 

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Seven grand is a bit much. I’m sure it’s a great bass, and also sure the rarity bumps up the price but I think it’s a tad shortsighted. Mass produce them and add a few (maybe five) hundred extra on top and watch the money come through the doors.

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13 minutes ago, Lozz196 said:

Seven grand is a bit much. I’m sure it’s a great bass, and also sure the rarity bumps up the price but I think it’s a tad shortsighted. Mass produce them and add a few (maybe five) hundred extra on top and watch the money come through the doors.

Providing they are confident they can sell all 26, that argument makes no sense. Far easier and economical to make the 26 and rake the cash in from them than say making 52 @ $3,500 each. I do agree though that $7k is a bit much. In fact. I would go as far to say for what you get, it's taking the gypsy's kiss. Don;t get wrong, I'll happily spend $7k, just not on a Stingray.

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I understand from another thread by a fella in Dirty DC an AC/DC tribute band that found one with a EU dealer and the retail over here is around £9,000 !!

He said... Very interesed in buying one of the new Cliff Williams signature basses released in November. I inquired with Ernie Ball they said there was only one bass coming to Europe and gave me the name of the dealer in the UK. Contacted them asking for a price and tech spec and after several emails finally got back to me with a price of £9k...WTF.....When I told them I paid £2500 for a genuine 1977 boo series bass exactly the same bass as Cliffs they came back and said OK how about £8500...has anyone anymore info on how this is?
Surely at that price they don't expect to sell many!

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1 hour ago, hiram.k.hackenbacker said:

Providing they are confident they can sell all 26, that argument makes no sense. Far easier and economical to make the 26 and rake the cash in from them than say making 52 @ $3,500 each. I do agree though that $7k is a bit much. In fact. I would go as far to say for what you get, it's taking the gypsy's kiss. Don;t get wrong, I'll happily spend $7k, just not on a Stingray.

Yeah but what if they mass produced 10,000 at $3500 a piece, that was more where I was heading. They could even do it like Gibson did with the Slash Les Paul, have a tiered range and keep the original 26 high priced ones but introduce the mass produced/lower priced ones as well. Would make a lot of people happy and generate a lot of coin in the bank.

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32 minutes ago, Lozz196 said:

Yeah but what if they mass produced 10,000 at $3500 a piece, that was more where I was heading. They could even do it like Gibson did with the Slash Les Paul, have a tiered range and keep the original 26 high priced ones but introduce the mass produced/lower priced ones as well. Would make a lot of people happy and generate a lot of coin in the bank.

I’m not convinced 10,000 would sell, but I take your point. Fender are still punting Pino’s out to order, so I guess it could work. It doesn’t seem to be the way of things at EB though. This seems to be more of a Fender Phil Lynott P affair than anything else.

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I enquired with EBMM Customer Service and there's only four of these coming to Europe - one each for Germany, Italy, France and the UK.

There's some excellent info on the website from the Project Lead Engineer about the build process. Apparently he spent two years working on it, the attention to detail is amazing, and with the very limited numbers I'm not surprised it's expensive. 

All proceeds going to charity, so what's not to like!

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