New bass(es) day - Stingray & Ibanez content

[Graham]

Recieved my new Stingray 5 Special yesterday, and boy is it great

 

I'd been selling my Lakland DJ5 to fund an ADHD assessment for my youngest, but as it took so long to sell, shortly after we got a letter telling us she would have one on the NHS, which freed up some money. That coupled with being 40 soon meant I jumped on this, I've never had an instrument of this quality before, it's just brilliant

 

The neck is so comfortable, I found my hand dancing over it, easily playing things I'd found more challenging before.

 

The tone is clear, articulate and punchy without being thin or clanky; I'll need to spend a bit more time with the onboard pre-amp and my practice set-up to get the best out of it, last night I was pretty much running it flat

 

The low B is excellent, articulate and big sounding, but still well balanced with the other four strings - something I've been searching for in a five string for ages

 

That 18v pre is a monster though, a little goes a long way and you can get into clipping very easily.

 

It seems a bass that's very responsive to your playing, the tone shifting a fair bit depending on your hand position and how much you dig in. I wasn't running any compression last night, but I'll experiment with that too.

 

All in all, I'm a bit smitten and very glad I've bought it

 

Technically, I received two basses yesterday as I also paid my colleague for the de-fretted Ibanez SR505 he leant me *ages* ago, so whilst it's not new to me, it is newly mine. I'd been having a lot of fun playing the fretless, I definitely need to work on my intonation though. Looking forward to dropping the tuning down a tone to play some Death and Cynic

 

Anyway, I know you're mostly here for pictures, so

[uk_lefty]

Lovely Stingray!!

[BassAdder60]

Lovely Ray 👍

[Merton]

Lovely basses both, but that Stingray is 😍

 

I now feel I *need* a Stingray in my life too 😆

[Graham]

I set my pedalboard back up last night, so I could use my TC Spectracomp with the Ampeg SGT-DI which I use for practice and found some really interesting results - got a lot more out the Ampeg pre-amp and didn't need the compressor; which is quite different to my experiences using other basses - Lakland DJ5 and a Sterling Ray25CA

 

The Sepectracomp was a key part of my live tone for years into an EBS amp, but (at home, on headphones) it was too much - just swamped the Ampeg pre and made everything sound unwieldy. I found there was no need for compression, the Stingray sounded better without it. Now I don't play live much at the moment, so I've left the Spectracomp on the board to see how it translates in a live setting at some point in the future, but I found that very interesting.

 

Also, I found the two channels of the Ampeg sounded much more distinct from each other - the SGT channel was more driven, whereas before I'd just found it bigger sounding. So now I have "pop" and "rock" settings to go with what I'm playing, which is very useful.

 

I assume this is function of the output level of the bass, but presumably also which frequencies are enhanced/diminished compared to my previous instruments

 

[Merton]

Would be ace if you do get a chance to play it live! Hopefully an option will appear for you