drTStingray

This is a wonderful post with insight. I once had a Gaylord V11 - the one without a headstock - now that was a sexy bass!! Im certain that if I was required to play on modern pop music where the bass is inaudible and the drums are mixed like a marching band I'd think about using a Precision because as we know 'all pro bassists use a Precision' and I'd also remember that no bassist worth their salt 'takes their hands off the fretboard'. I'd also remember that 'the Precision Bass has been the voice of pop music since the 60s' - but only if you ignore the fact that much of the U.K. scene (and British Invasion) was using Epiphone Rivoli and the like in the 60s. Ive never really got it - apart from loving the P playing people like Jamerson and his 70s soul and funk followers, and Kaye and Dunn - but that was surely more about their playing and the vagaries of all electric instruments of the period. I preferred their more audible early 80s influenced players like Pino. Ive never got on with them since finding the neck unmanageable in about 1969 and hearing lots of examples of them disappearing in live mixes or being less than clear. Also I heard that some of my favourite passive bass parts of the late 70s were in fact pumped up in the studio by Alembic preamps. So I've preferred to choose a bass with more definition than a Precision and I don't want to carry around an Alembic preamp (although I did think about it at one time - and a Sadowski one). So rather like the headless Gaylord V11 I think this inaudible Bass fad must use a Precision engineer can't deal with anything else is a flavour of the month and people will come to their senses again 👍😂😀 Theyve never had this problem in dance music btw and drummers are often machines, which can be a great bonus in some cases!!! 😉 However I still love Precision basses - just think that yesteryear's upright player's snooty looking down on P bass players as playing instruments that are all chrome and no tone, today the similar is true for P players being snooty. Just love the bass you like be it a P or whatever - now I must get hold of one of those Gaylord V11s again 😬

Hooray - and great to see a video from Ed Friedland (who appears to be going to do some instrument reviews for them). I like the bit where he says the ethos will be to do a magazine about bass without being told by men in suits who don't know who Stanley Clarke is (he's a pro who doesn't play a P bass btw 😏😂😂) what to do!! I shall look forward to seeing this. Great stuff. I've always thought Ed Friedland's video reviews were great.

Perhaps that's why Bass is often inaudible in modern mixes then. Too much stereotyping of instrumentation to my mind. Take funky soul - Average White Band guitar instrumentation - Telecaster; Gretch White Falcon; Les Paul. Yes, Nile Rogers plays a Strat....... Whatever happened to player skill? It's possible to get thumpy 60s sound using muting of the bass - no matter what the bass is and strings are.

Interesting that the area of music history this seems to be stuck in is the 60s, judging by Sean Healey's bass choices. I can't believe that is a totally representative sample but its nontheless an interesting perspective. So all of us who came of bass playing age in the punk, funk, disco, 80s or 90s eras are totally out of it - or those into the Rickenbacker fuelled prog era, or the active Bass fuelled late 70s on - no place for Messrs Burnel and the like! Extraordinary really!! Ive been keeping an eye on all the pros (largely British) from the late 60s and early 70s and the Precision is by no means ubiquitous - it is represented but the EB3 appears quite a popular choice for the more punchy rock (eg Bowie) - even Dee Murray appears to use one with Elton John at times in the early 70s. So im guessing some people (including the recording industry) are just hung up with a rather narrow perception of the 60s currently.... no problem if that's what floats your boat - I personally find it a bit tiresome and probably inaccurate outside of the US.

Now now - and at least one was on a Burns 😏

Musicman has announced a short scale passive Stingray today. Includes a neo pick up, rotary coil selector (series, parallel/single coil), volume control (with push pull passive tone control) Not available here until September though. http://blog.music-man.com/instruments/ernie-ball-music-man-new-for-2019/?utm_source=email&utm_campaign=newfromnamm

Musicman has just announced a short scale passive electronics Stingray (with a series/parallel/single coil rotary control). May be worth considering but won't be available here until September.

The thing with James Brown is its dance music - which generally tends to be repetitive. Some people like it, some don't but for me a band as tight and with as much groove as James Brown's had is one of the most exciting things in music - totally influences my approach to bass playing - always has since I first got turned on to it in the mid 70s - the single Get Up Offa That Thing - (I would accept - probably to the annoyance of some - I know some of my prog mates at the time thought I was bonkers - but they then also gravitated to Tom Scott and Weather Report around the same time!!)

This is correct and to answer the OP the bridge pick up (centre) on a Stingray is 13 1/2" from the 12th fret wire (see the bass plus tape measure posted in post 4 above). I believe this is the MM position the OP was after rather than some other manufacturer's interpretation. The measurement in the spreadsheet is for an SR5 but is still 13 1/2".

People willing to wait seem to get much higher prices - look through The Gallery commission sales and others - and there is such a range of models and specs - some much more desirable than others.

Yeah all good stuff 😊 I think I'd heard that Jack Stratton plays bass but interesting as you say.

I don't think Jaco touched that many pure pop fans - that he influenced people like Norman Watt-Roy to play a fearsome sixteenth note groove on Rythmn Stick and Pino to play awesome Fretless on lots of pop singles may have touched them a lot more.

This is true and there was a reason for that (which emerges in some of her videos). They used three basses simultaneously on many tracks, upright, Fender bass and Dano Bass (the latter as a click bass). Carol Kaye played the 'Dano Bass' role sometimes whilst others played the Fender - all much too esoteric and geeky for a mainstream review!!

Because they were focussing on the role of bass in music (not the role of individual manufacturers and instruments). The latter is entirely debatable anyway - someone once told me the Gibson EB1 (invented 1953) was just as popular as the Precision in the 50s (when bass guitar wasn't on the radar very much anyway - because upright ruled largely). The programme mentioned the P bass and showed at least two players who used them (Jamerson included - the prominence and role they gave him automatically elevated his bass to that role without the need to say so - and it was 40-50 yrs ago 😉)

I wouldn't sell an SR5 (or Stingray for that matter) for £850. More like £1000 or more dependent on type and spec. Agreed one of the notorious flippers of basses (or Stingrays) wouldn't be interested but if someone actually wants to buy one because they want a Stingray...... That said you are right - the dreadful currency exchange value means it's much better buying a bass in the UK from the US than the other way round. Happy Jack is quite right and those who would have us think anything else are indeed delusional!!

Couldn't have put it better myself - I thought it was great and also good to see keyboard bass covered. The footage of Bernard Edwards was great - imagine having that much groove!! And Jamerson also. I think the balance was excellent and particularly as it focussed on iconic music which will be known universally and the changing role of bass in it - was it just me or had the sound been EQd to make the bass more audible in some of the music. The Fender P did get a specific mention as did the Hofner and Rickenbacker (Beatles) but only to show the change created by moving from a focus on thump to sustained notes and potential to play higher up the fretboard. However the iconic lines covered showed a broad range of bass types, which apart from bass geeks, is the reality of how it's generally panned out. As with the drum programme I thought it was done well. Perhaps missed Fretless (Pino probably the most known to a general audience owing to hit singles with various artists) and slap (but this was covered in the double bass section) - and double bass really was ubiquitous until the 60s (with occassional notable exceptions). But generally excellent - I thoroughly enjoyed it 👍😊

This might help for a Stingray (HH version as well). The bridge H is the same regardless of pick up configuration.

Talking of Old Smoothies, I got mine out last night having been inspired by the Phil Mann video from another thread with him playing one - I haven't played any of my other (8) Stingrays since getting the Specials a few months back. However I was reminded how fabulous this bass is - the action is very low and the bass is so playable - so I'm taking it to a jam session tonight 😊

Yes you're right - I was reading the string bit. There did used to be a figure for the E side. Ive just checked my two specials (which have pick up heights as delivered) - all of the pick up cases are parallel to the pg. it's also not far off on level my Old Smoothie (never altered it).

Yes better (for him they changed the slots in the saddles to make them fit the individual strings thus reducing the possibility of highly charged players pulling them out 😂 - maybe he's a little more delicate these days but you wonder how he gets on with an early Jazz bass) but the earlier bridge was still perfectly functional (and better than the early pre EBs which are extremely difficult to intonate). They changed the string angles at the same time. I suspect the mute issue came from the same source!!

There's a measurement for each side (which you didnt say in your post) but as you say, there's nothing said about dropping the pickup cover level with pickguard. I read your post as advocating the measurement on the G side from the FAQ and lowering the E side to the pg which clearly you didn't mean, so apologies. Are you using the E height from the FAQ?

You could argue it's because they have our best interests at heart (don't want us to injure ourselves) but the more likely reality is producing something that needlessly exposes people to injury also exposes them to the risk of litigation - something similar happened, I believe, over the mute arrangement in the mid 90s (which they deleted and replaced with hex bolts). Even now since they've been reissued on the Classic and Old Smoothie basses I think there's some sort warning about injuring yourself on them (the edges of the mounts are relatively sharp but don't pose a problem unless you're in the habit of smashing your hand against the bass as part of your playing style - don't laugh but during the early 90s they modified the bridge because one well known player was in the habit of pulling the strings off the bridge, such was the force they exerted....)

I'm glad that you've got a set up you like and works for you but in the interests of accuracy, that is not the info in the EBMM FAQ on bass set up. There are specific heights for the G and E (or B) sides of the pick up from the strings (whilst noting that set up is an individual choice). This is how they come set up when you buy them new. https://www.music-man.com/faq#category2

What is it people on here say about singers and guitarists? The front man in that band had something of a reputation in the city he came from, having also been a boxer (I used to play in a band with a guitarist who had first hand experience!) I also recall reading that the lead violinist on that particular song was someone he'd met on the bus or something very similar - sounds like a recipe for conflict, with a soul band type horn section!! I can't stand playing the song either!!

Now those guys really do take the p*ss!! What's the betting the Eiffel Tower on the picture behind is a counterfeit and liable to collapse owing to structural issues - or the sofa's a counterfeit and liable to split down the middle - perhaps the chap himself is a counterfeit.... Reminds me very much of dodgy shell suits on sale in market stalls in the 1980s, which young ladies were in the habit of buying only to discover they ripped across the backside the first time they bent over 😧😂