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NBD: Sterling by Music Man Sub Ray 5


BassApprentice
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RING THE GAS BELL!

First new bass I've bought that is fully built and working in years!

I was in the market for a 5 string and I hummed and ha'ed over various ones, namely Yamaha BB's then this came up on a Facebook group for £150. I'd tried one the week before and gotten on with the neck really well which is a large part of the battle with 5 strings.

There's barely a mark on it and the action is set beautifully low by the previous owner. Might just be a touch low on the G but a wee tweak will fix that. The G string also comes out the Nut slot quite freely so might need a wee file there too. Apart from that it's great!

This sounds like a Stingray, plain and simple. EQ isn't awful but a tad limited. I bought this over others due to the wealth of upgrades that can be applied at a later date. The fit & finish of the bass is pretty darn good as far as I can see. I'm thinking of changing the hardware to gold if I get on with it as my first port of call.

Colour me very happy :D

[attachment=237637:Ray5.jpg]

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Got one of these fairly recently (different colour though) and they really are very good for the money. The output from the pre-amp is a bit excessive though particularly if you boost the bass at all but I just use the pad on my compressor pedal to tame it a bit and it sounds really good.
Congrats!

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Yes I'm very pleased. EQ is a bit disappointing so far but I haven't tried it at proper volume yet so that could be the key to getting a tone dialed in.

Just looking at replacement bridges. For all intensive purposes this looks like it should fit [url="http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/150295089370"]http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/150295089370[/url]

Any reason this shouldn't drop right in?

EDIT: Although it might make the string spacing unnecessarily tight, apparently the SUB has a 16.25mm string spacing and this bridge is quoted at 16mm. I have no idea but will this make a noticeable impact?

Edited by BassApprentice
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[quote name='BassApprentice' timestamp='1486735511' post='3234221']
Yes I'm very pleased. EQ is a bit disappointing so far but I haven't tried it at proper volume yet so that could be the key to getting a tone dialed in.

[/quote]

I found the eq to be fairly okay but wasn't quite getting what I wanted from it. Combining it with my MXR M80 pre-amp pedal though has worked really well for me. If I didn't have the pedal already though I'd have just put a Retrovibe Stinger pre-amp in it as has already been suggested.

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[quote name='stingrayPete1977' timestamp='1486555952' post='3232696']
Pop one of those £30 stinger preamps in and you've got a great bass for less than £200, nice work!
[/quote]

Those £30 Stinger preamps are now £50, but nonetheless a good upgrade to your SUB Ray. The factory preamp is a wee bit on the weak side.

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