Sterling ray34/5HH, Any Good?

[Hazza2004]

I'm currently looking around at basses to make a shortlist for when shops open again (optimistic I know) and was thinking about the sterling ray 34HH or 35HH. Does anyone have any experience?

[andruca]

If you're asking plain quality, they sure are great. I own 2 USA Stingray5s (ceramic era) and I've owned a Ray35 H. Only aspects I could tell they were cutting corners were:

1) Pickup are screwed directly to wood, not thru' threaded inserts as the EBMM ones.

2) No compensated nut (not that I cared much, my old Rays also don't have one).

3) Had to go thru' the truss rod wheel in mine with a drill as the holes were sketchy, a nail/screwdriver/whatever you use to adjust wouldn't go all the way in.

My Ray35 was great. I even did some experiments with its coil selection wiring (so I could use real single coil, each on its own). Still I didn't like its weight. It was a black one, presumably mahogany, still heavier than any of my (ash) Ray 5ers. Before buying it I had tried some SUB Ray5s. Found them equally playable, but lacking in the preamp dept (clear preamp clipping going on), and noticeably lighter, of course (basswood).

After owning that Ray35 I wouldn't go Ray35 HH but a SUB Ray5 HH. IMHO the difference in price isn't justified by a consequent increase in quality nor functionality, plus the weight issue (personally, after putting up 2 very nice sounding cheapos I don't fear basswood at all). I'd just try powering the preamp with 18V first to try to get rid of these basses' endemic clipping (have done this a couple times in the past, most preamps do accept a wide range of supply voltage, so that manufacturers can use 9V or 18V depending on how hot their pickups of choice are, also a variable resistor before the preamp can work, if the bass is hot enough that losing a little output wouldn't suck too much). If that doesn't work you can swap the preamp for cheap. I feel spending too much would defeat the purpose in a 400€ bass, but there are still many options. There's 20€ Artec preamps from thomann. I've used some of those (3 band version, for a couple active Yamaha BB-615s, stock Q-Mix onboards were awful -lows control too high, also lacked headroom-) and am sure they're a hell of an upgrade for the stock Ray5 preamp.

Here's a nice review of the Ray5HH (stock clipping and all)...

 

Edited January 27, 2021 by andruca