NBD Sterling Stingray 5 Sub

[xgsjx]

I’ve been looking at getting a cheap 5er for a wee while. 
 

Earlier this week I decided to get a Sterling Stingray 5 as I’d heard a lot of praise for them. 
 

It arrived today & I have to say, it sounds pretty good for a cheap bass & looks rather tidy too.

 

Its a bit of a lump compared to my Ibby SR1000 & the neck looks huge. But once I start playing, it feels really nice. 
 

Here’s a couple of pics. I’ll let you know more about the sounds once I get more familiar. 
 

[xgsjx]

Spent a bit of time giving it a set up, trying to get the neck relief & intonation set correctly.  The action is about 3mm, but I'm getting a little fret buzz off the B, E & A strings around the 7-12 frets, so maybe needs a bit more of a concave?  The D & G strings are fine.

 

I'm gonna replace the strings as I believe the ones on it are just cheap Asian strings & that might be a big contributor to the fret buzz.  But that might have to wait until next month as the house has taken my spare money for bathroom renovations.

I like the bite of the roundwounds & the range of tones I'm getting is huge, but I might go with a set of flats on it.

 

Speaking of tones, I'm loving the sounds this thing can produce, even with the EQ just left flat.  The Humbuckers positions have a great sound.  Neck Humbucker is fantastic, with an almost P bass type sound, but different.  The Bridge H has a more honky sound, but still with a good depth.  Both together has a deeper mellower sound, which I was surprised at, as my Ibby (which is PJ) has the deep mellow from the P, the honk from the J & mixing the 2 together to get a mix of deep & honk (donk?).

 

Moving on to the other 2 selector positions, we have the outer 2 single coils or the inner 2.  These both sound great too & sound more Jazz bass like, but there's a bit of a volume drop from any of the H modes, so I back off about a 1/4 turn of the volume for H modes.  The knobs have no markers on them, so I've combatted this by putting a small marker on the volume pot with a square of coloured tape.

 

So after the strings, I think I'll be changing the pots to something similar bit with a marker on them.  Following that, I'll probably do further mods.  Maybe a better preamp or better pickups, but I'm liking the sounds so far.  The majority of what it'll be doing is studio work, with the occasional church session about once a month or so.