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Given the rather, ahem, “variable” quality of Fender basses, I’d rather not have the logo, even if it is a genuine Fender 😁

Personally I’d rather own a bass I can play before committing to pay for it. The problem with a custom build is that you can spec the perfect bass for you, but you won’t really know whether it’s the bass you always dreamed of, or if you’ll hate it. I’ve only done it once and I hated the end result, even though I thought it was the spec I’d love… then had to pay for it and sell it shortly afterward at a massive loss. If you’re willing to take that risk then go ahead. But as others have said, there are plenty of off the peg J style basses out there to suit, and if you can get to a shop, you can have a good long play before committing.

I thought the whole thing was an obvious pi** take? It's a passive bass with one pickup and a volume only, obviously it doesn't have the range or versatility of different sounds of an active bass with multiple pickups, but it does what it says on the tin very well. Whether it's worth over £2K is another matter - but when the likes of Ibanez charges 2 or 3 times the price for an Adam Nitti or Gary Willis signature, it's not that bad, is it?

It’s a simple enough bass line but the tempo makes it a real challenge. I heard this years ago and never realised it was Darryl Jones. For some incorrect reason I thought it was Gary Grainger. I’m not normally much of a Schofield fan (great player, just not my thing), but this is a cool track. Thanks!

I recall an old quote along the lines of “I grow potatoes in my garden. Now if my neighbour comments on the size or quality of them or the suitability of the variety of potato, I quite rightly tell him to mind his own business. However, when I start exhibiting my potatoes at the village fair in the hope of winning prizes, I should accept that I may be in for some criticism and that’s a part of life”. Fact is the entertainment industry is founded on image and (sadly) some degree of prejudice. Take Allan Holdsworth for example. Highly regarded innovator on guitar who was instantly recognisable and even to this day spawned few decent imitators. However, he lived on the edge of music and was quite prepared to accept that his music and playing wasn’t palatable to the majority of listeners (including musicians!) It didn’t mean that his music was less valuable, and nor did it invalidate any of his choices. But it is a niche. The same goes for any instrument not in the mainstream of its family. In reality it matters not one whit what instrument you have, but what you play. But it does matter to a lot of bands and a lot of situations what you and your instrument look like. No different than turning up to a roots or trad blues gig as a drummer with a massive kit on a rack, 9 toms, an array of cymbals and electronic drum kit behind you a la Neil Peart. It doesn’t mean that drummer won’t sound fantastic with the band but there’s immediately prejudice there from other musicians (if he/she has that big a lot are they going to be playing all of it all the time? How come two thirds of the stage is taken up by the drum kit? What message does it send out to the punters?) I don’t think anyone on this thread is saying that 6+ strings isn’t a valid bass, just expressing their preference. I have a 6 but don’t use it much because I like to play a lot of older music where I don’t really have a need for the extra top string, but I do play 5s mostly out of habit. It all depends on what you want do with it - if you’re a solo bass player like Steve Lawson or Michael Manring then you can do what you like, and pretty much anything goes in that sphere.

It’s a historical thing. Bass guitar in its current form began with the Fender. It had 4 strings for a long time (ignoring experimental Fenders like the Bass V and the guitar tuned down an octave, whose functional design wasn’t primarily aimed at playing bass lines). A lot of great music was made and continues to be made on 4 string basses. So a lot of bands and musicians expect to see and hear that. 5-strings really came about due to necessity rather than fashion - keyboard bass became popular from the early 80s and again there are a lot of great keyboard lines that go below a low E. That, together with improvements in amplification meant that low notes could be heard. But the first proper production 5 wasn’t the Stingray in 1987, even if players like Jimmy Johnson were using fives years before this. 6-string really gained popularity in the bass world, as a solo and bass instrument with John Patitucci, again in the late 80s with his Ken Smith. Anthony Jackson is considered a pioneer with Carl Thompson much earlier than this, and IMHO his vision of it as an extended range instrument for playing bass lines and ensemble parts makes sense. What I like less is a six being used primarily as a solo instrument - it’s OK but chords don’t sound great because the register is too low (and there’s a reason why guitars are tuned as they are, makes chords easier to play). The challenge with a 6 (and to a degree a 5 as well) is not to play extra stuff all the time, just because you can. Scott D did a video on how the extra range makes you prone to noodleitis - you can overcome it, but I guarantee you’ll suffer from it at some point on a 6 The main reason for objecting to a 6 is a cultural thing - it’s not a Fender so either you’re no good, you’re not not a true musician or you’ll overplay all the time - and to be fair I’ve seen a few people on YT how suffer from this malaise. But there’s nothing inherently wrong with a 5 or 6.

To be honest there wasn’t a massive difference between my Sterling and the Stingray Special I briefly owned. Each of the 5 pickup positions were similar, just that the Sterling has a slightly more aggressive low mid punch. The one thing it doesn’t quite get is the classic Stingray sound. It’s very close, and I’m a track or live you wouldn’t hear a difference, but solo’ed I can hear it. Now @drTStingray a Big Al would do very nicely as a second MM, but a 5 SSS seems are rare as rocking horse poo

I think that video is a perfect example of all the right notes in the right order, but it just doesn’t groove. I’m no Vulfpeck fan but Joe Dart nails the timing and length of each note perfectly, which is what gives it that feel. Double thumbing sounds great in small snippets but IMHO it just doesn’t work when playing complete bass lines. I think perhaps it’s because it’s a percussive, staccato technique and the sound doesn’t have the same bottom end or warmth. Victor Wooten, Alain Caron and host of other very talented players do it much better but as with @4000, I’d much rather listen to a great pick player like a Bobby Vega.

@drTStingray I checked this when I bought it - if you look at the wiring diagrams on the MM site, the SR5 HH is parallel at the bridge and the Sterling 5 HH is in series. Position 3 is identical on both basses - all 4 coils in parallel. Interestingly the single H Stingray has parallel, parallel with “filter” and series. Yes, on and SR5, you could have ceramic, alnico or neodymium humbuckers, but AFAIK the 2-pickup versions are always wired in parallel. Now you’re making me want to add a single humbucker Sterling to get the single coil and parallel sounds

I have one. They’re my favourite MM bass. The 2 humbucker has a 5-position humbucking-only switch that gives you both coils of bridge PU, outer coils, inner coils and both coils of neck PU, all wired in series, and the middle position - all 4 coils wired in parallel. The single humbucker model has a 3-position switch with series, parallel and single coil options, so the sounds will be quite different. Whichever one you choose, it’ll be quite an aggressive tone. The Stingray 5 is a bit warmer and more traditional, which is why it may be more popular. I prefer the more edgy series wiring and ceramic humbuckers on the Sterling. The only other thing to budget for is some Hipshot Ultralites as the smaller body tends to make them rather neck-heavy. I can see why they spec these with 3-band eq. The double humbucker positions can be quite scooped so it’s nice to crank the mids. It’s the kind of bass where setting treble and mids to maximum boost still gives a very musical tone without hiss. You may not like the tone initially so don’t be afraid to use the EQ

Given how ridiculously easy it is build a P bass it’s frankly shocking that their QC remains so hit-and-miss. I briefly owned a US Pro P bass 5 (which was a replacement itself for a Mex P bass special that had loads of issues and went back), all good except for the double business card gap on the bass side of the neck pocket. I’m aware a bit of expansion space on a painted finish may prevent lacquer cracks but how that passed quality control beats me!

Nice. Black looks much better. My Teambuilt Corvette Ash 6 came with chrome hardware. I did a quick shop on the Warwick site for gold hardware as it would look much nicer - but changed my mind after the total came to about £230 😲

I think I meant bass endorsers. I don’t pay attention to the guitar side of their business, mainly because a lot of them are IMHO hideous

Ironically MM didn’t “do” endorsee models a while back and was proud of the fact. Tony Levin, one of the biggest proponents of the MM basses and particularly adoption of the SR5, only got a cheap OLP as a signature instrument (although to be fair they did make him a 3-string bass that was destroyed in a fire IIRC).

Drum solo?

Do they really? I haven’t bought or sold on eBay for a couple of years and I haven’t missed it, in fact until reading this thread I’d forgotten all about them. There are always alternatives.

“Can anyone hear a cracking sound?” 😀

Interesting idea. Far too skinny at the nut for my mitts and the huge pickguard spoils the body shape for me but well done for trying. As has been said - much better than another P/J clone!

Just don’t bother asking for any hardware on discontinued basses, even if it’s in their Japanese catalog. I tried when I had an SR3006E, headstock weren’t interested and pointed me to a parts supplier who could apparently request such stuff from Ibanez. It turned out to be a one man band who was “busy”, sent one reply and then ignored me afterward. I gave up after 6 months.

I recently briefly owned the 5 string version of this. It was just way too heavy and the neck and fingerboard finishing and fretwork wasn’t great, so it went back to Anderson’s, but it sounded just great - real punch and depth, and very different to (for example) a Stingray. BYW the colour above is very different than in the flesh - it’s a nice honey colour, much less red than the photo. Andertons have a lovely CLF-2500 but a) I can’t justify buying a fourth new bass this year and b) I also cannot justify two basses in a sparkle lake placid blue

I know what you mean. I have a Sterling 5 HH and thought the same as you regarding tones, until I cranked both mid and treble to near max - all of a sudden positions 4 and 5 (outer coils, and neck PU only) came to life. Strangely this did not seem to be the case with the Stingray Special HH I (briefly) owned. I’d probably attribute that to my preferring the series wired sound as it’s a bit more aggressive..

It’s an interesting point. I’ve done the whole 9 yards - music college, theory, sight reading gigs, turning up at a big band gig doing a dep to be presented with a 400-page book, turn to page 220, it’s 5 flats and the tempo is fast. 1..2..1.2.3 TBH I never really enjoyed that sort of gig. Fact is you can’t really enjoy the music because you’re reading it. If it’s a regular thing then after the second or third run through you’re probably not reading anymore anyway. But setting aside me playing the music, would I actually want to sit and watch the gig. I know we’re all different, but for me, no. I’ve come to realise that there is a place for such music, but the vast majority of music I like is made in bands rather than with hired musicians. There’s just something about it that elevates it above a lot of session musician music. That’s not to say there’s not great music in that sphere - the funk brothers, wrecking crew, muscle shoals etc - but these were units that behaved as a band, and their success was more on the quality of feel and interpretation/improvisational skill as a unit rather than individual theory knowledge. Sure, some reading ability meant they may have got those opportunities in the first place, but this was a long time ago, when nearly all recorded music involved instruments. Even when I was an active pro 25 years ago such opportunities had almost entirely vanished (at least the ones that paid well). I know it’s all about personal choices, but I’d much rather listen to Mark Knoplfer than Pat Metheny or John Scofield. Someone like Steve Cropper is an interesting one - fabulous player with some of the most delicious guitar parts ever played. Was it theory or just ears and intuition? Hard to say. Anyway, back to the point. Each instrument has its unique challenges, and for stringed instruments it’s the variety of places a given line can be played. It’s entirely logical to relate what you hear to what you see as a result, and it is how thousands of musicians across hundreds of years of stringed instruments and many styles of music have communicated. It doesn’t require written knowledge as in reality these are just terms or hooks to hang on a given sound - and many instruments don’t have written music, or easily understandable written music, particularly outside of western classical. What did Jeff Berlin say - if you want to learn to rock, go and rock, don’t bother with music college? Not sure I agree 100% but I kind of understand where he’s coming from. So, having done it, rather than speaking from a perspective of ignorance, my view is that by all means investigate theory if it interests you. But For me it is in no way indicative of a great all round musician.

Define “loads”? And what are they paying? And is that sight reading a complete written part of comping on chord/melody charts? I’ve been out of the game a while and just curious.

As a musician playing a stringed instrument, being able to relate the shape of what you’re playing to the sound it makes is an essential skill. Sure, knowing what the intervals mean, how chords are built and the theory behind it helps, but shapes matter on a bass and a guitar - particularly given the amount of places a given line or snippet can be played. A good ear for music, and the ability to relate it to what’s happening on the fretboard is what opens doors. Very very few musical situations nowadays require sight reading or a conservatoire-level of musical theory knowledge.