Modding an SBMM Ray4...the quest for the classic sound on a budget! (Now with Youtube Video!)

[funkle]

So you all likely know my propensity to modify or tweak what I buy. This thread follows my tendency in that...

 

I recent years, I have found that a lot more is about the player than the instrument (to a large degree, anyway), so I might as well buy a cheaper instrument and tweak it to my liking than hack up an expensive bass. Though I do own expensive instruments, increasingly I am getting a lot of joy from cheaper ones. 

 

Now. I became quite entranced with the sound of the Stingray in my youth, but always found they sounded worse in my hands than in someone else's. At least, until I spent about 6 months working on my right hand technique a while back. I bought and sold 5-6 Stingrays for this reason. Now, I am happy with how they sound when I play them, but it turns out I really dislike the 3EQ versions, and eventually I realised the sounds I liked best were 'older' Stingrays. I also favour Jazz width necks over Stingray or Precision necks; getting an SLO Special Stingray looks a very expensive affair. 

 

Not to be mean, but I happen to think Stingrays are mostly a one trick pony, and I can't face stumping up huge amounts of money for that, much as I like them now. So the goal became getting 'the sound' without forking out for a Stingray Classic or a vintage Stingray. 

 

So, in many ways, a Ray4 fit the bill. I bought a Ray4 a year and a half ago - the videos by JuliaPlaysBass on Youtube giving me confidence in doing so. It got about 80-90% of the way to the sound I wanted, and I played it stock for about a year. Good value for money, although I did get the frets levelled and get a new nut installed. (The original nut needed filing down to be properly playable, which I did at home, but a proper fret level by a luthier made the instrument feel just great to play). 

 

Eventually, I replaced the tuners with an old set of Hipshot Licensed Ultralites I had lying around, because the original tuners were not that great, and it felt like I was invested in the instrument after a while. That was a nice upgrade. 
 

 

I had to shim the Ultralite tuners to fit the holes, but it was worthwhile. I just used electrical tape, worked fine. I quite like the very practical ethic of not filling the old tuner screw holes, gives a kind of industrial look. 

 

So. As I continued to play the instrument, I realised I wouldn't mind putting more into it, as it had taken on something more personal to me. I did a lot of research using Low End Lobsters series on modding his Ray4s (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CrGKPGOKp9M and the Mold Smoothie Project https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LRkzMzjkD58) and ended up purchasing the John East 2 band MMSR EQ (without plate to make it cheaper) and the Aguilar AG4M. 
 

 

That got me 'the sound' plus a bit more, as the EQ has a slightly bigger range than the original. The install was easy - John's products are brilliant in my opinion - but I got a bit of hum out of the Aguilar, which I did not expect. I ended up shielding the pickup cavity, which seemed to do the trick. I do have a fairly electrically noisy household, so it's good at picking up issues like this. The Aguilar is a 'vintage style' Stingray pickup, so perhaps it wasn't surprising to get some vintage aspects to it, lol.  

So, now I had the sound. 

 

However.....the bridge had been a subtle annoyance to me that I tolerated for a long time, because the instrument was inexpensive, but replacing the bridge felt a bit wasteful to me. It's a perfectly good bridge, and I have never found the magic in a bridge change that many people talk about, though I have swapped plenty in my time. 

 

Eventually, I realised that I could try to fit an old Stingray mute set on there, which would allow some flexibility if I desired it, and also look a lot better. Bass Direct sells them for £28 shipped...so, I bought a set. 
 

Turns out, the long metal plates of the mutes fit perfectly under the existing Ray4 bridge without having to modify the bridge or bass in any way. Sweet.

 

I spent a long time looking for inserts to put into the wood under the bridge for the mute screws to fit into, but I could not find a supplier here or in the USA for the right size. Strange, but there it is. I bought a few of different sizes just to try them, but the screws never worked right in them - either too small or too large.

 

I dug out old pics of vintage Stingrays with the bridges and hardware removed, and it turned out that it looked like those screws simply went directly into the wood, not an insert.

 

I also messaged Low End Lobster to ask him if that is what he had done with his bass, and he said he simply screwed them directly into the wood as well, and it worked fine. 

 

So, one 4mm drill bit and a lot of measuring later, this is how it ended up...

 

 It's not perfect - the hole I drilled for the screw through the bridge under the G string was 1mm off where I wanted it to go, even though I used a centre punch - but it looks right, and furthermore, the mutes are totally useable and the sound is very cool. Even with some candle wax to lubricate the screws when I screwed them in to the bass, they are a slow turn, so it's not instant adjustability, but a minute or two will allow me to return it to the 'non-muted' sound. 

 

The finished article. I need no more mods. 
 

 

This has been a real labour of love, over a long period of time, and I am really happy with it. It's cheaper than any of the options I might otherwise have had to consider given my requisites, but it's difficult to recommend it if you're not as picky about necks/EQ etc as I am. A secondhand SBMM Ray34 or similar is better value, though those don't have the forearm contour that I think is critical either. But you get the gist. 

 

I think I spent around £600 all together, and it looks and sounds great. This is now, finally, my 'Stingray'.

 

Pete

 

 

Edited March 24, 2023 by funkle

[Romeo2]

Wow. Great work and what a brilliant write up of the project. Thank you.

[Jus Lukin]

-

Edited March 12, 2022 by Jus Lukin

[funkle]

Agreed. Getting the details right is key.

Although, I will say...some of the issues I have gotten into in the past has been obsessing over some details that were less important than they turned out to be. Living with a bass for a while before doing anything to it was pretty instructive. 

Edited March 7, 2021 by funkle

[Owen]

Oooooooh! Aftermarket mutes! Oooooh! I did not know they existed. 

[funkle]

They do, and they work great! How cool is that. I bought them for the look but the sound is really cool. 

[Owen]

Possibly too wide for my 5 stringer. But when it comes back from a respray I will measure up. 

[LukeFRC]

On 07/03/2021 at 10:38, funkle said:

Now. I became quite entranced with the sound of the Stingray in my youth, but always found they sounded worse in my hands than in someone else's. At least, until I spent about 6 months working on my right hand technique a while back.

while it's a lovely bass this caught my eye - what did you change? 

[funkle]

5 minutes ago, LukeFRC said:

while it's a lovely bass this caught my eye - what did you change? 

I did the SBL ‘Technique Accelerator’ course, and just did what I was told. About 20 mins per day for 6 months just working on getting a good sound, learning how to pick, work on articulations, and similar. It’s light on music content, but I have plenty of that elsewhere. Jeff Berlin would not approve - but it did focus me on working out some flaws in technique that I have.

Biggest change for me was improving my tone with finger style - absolutely ensuring that most of my strokes are ‘rest stokes’, not free strokes. This hugely improved my tone and my happiness in my own sound. 

Edited March 11, 2021 by funkle

[LukeFRC]

13 minutes ago, funkle said:

Biggest change for me was improving my tone with finger style - absolutely ensuring that most of my strokes are ‘rest stokes’, not free strokes. This hugely improved my tone and my happiness in my own sound. 

having googled that I am now off to pick a bass up and work out what iI do!

[funkle]

My honest advice is that the SBL course was worth it. I periodically revisit it still. It was far cheaper than any amp, bass, pedal, etc, and did much more for my tone than any of those. 

[Murphy]

On 07/03/2021 at 05:38, funkle said:

So you all likely know my propensity to modify or tweak what I buy. This thread follows my tendency in that...

 

I recent years, I have found that a lot more is about the player than the instrument (to a large degree, anyway), so I might as well buy a cheaper instrument and tweak it to my liking than hack up an expensive bass. Though I do own expensive instruments, increasingly I am getting a lot of joy from cheaper ones. 

 

Now. I became quite entranced with the sound of the Stingray in my youth, but always found they sounded worse in my hands than in someone else's. At least, until I spent about 6 months working on my right hand technique a while back. I bought and sold 5-6 Stingrays for this reason. Now, I am happy with how they sound when I play them, but it turns out I really dislike the 3EQ versions, and eventually I realised the sounds I liked best were 'older' Stingrays. I also favour Jazz width necks over Stingray or Precision necks; getting an SLO Special Stingray looks a very expensive affair. 

 

Not to be mean, but I happen to think Stingrays are mostly a one trick pony, and I can't face stumping up huge amounts of money for that, much as I like them now. So the goal became getting 'the sound' without forking out for a Stingray Classic or a vintage Stingray. 

 

So, in many ways, a Ray4 fit the bill. I bought a Ray4 a year and a half ago - the videos by JuliaPlaysBass on Youtube giving me confidence in doing so. It got about 80-90% of the way to the sound I wanted, and I played it stock for about a year. Good value for money, although I did get the frets levelled and get a new nut installed. (The original nut needed filing down to be properly playable, which I did at home, but a proper fret level by a luthier made the instrument feel just great to play). 

 

Eventually, I replaced the tuners with an old set of Hipshot Licensed Ultralites I had lying around, because the original tuners were not that great, and it felt like I was invested in the instrument after a while. That was a nice upgrade. 

I had to shim the Ultralite tuners to fit the holes, but it was worthwhile. I just used electrical tape, worked fine. I quite like the very practical ethic of not filling the old tuner screw holes, gives a kind of industrial look. 

 

So. As I continued to play the instrument, I realised I wouldn't mind putting more into it, as it had taken on something more personal to me. I did a lot of research using Low End Lobsters series on modding his Ray4s (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CrGKPGOKp9M and the Mold Smoothie Project https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LRkzMzjkD58) and ended up purchasing the John East 2 band MMSR EQ (without plate to make it cheaper) and the Aguilar AG4M. 

That got me 'the sound' plus a bit more, as the EQ has a slightly bigger range than the original. The install was easy - John's products are brilliant in my opinion - but I got a bit of hum out of the Aguilar, which I did not expect. I ended up shielding the pickup cavity, which seemed to do the trick. I do have a fairly electrically noisy household, so it's good at picking up issues like this. The Aguilar is a 'vintage style' Stingray pickup, so perhaps it wasn't surprising to get some vintage aspects to it, lol.  

So, now I had the sound. 

 

However.....the bridge had been a subtle annoyance to me that I tolerated for a long time, because the instrument was inexpensive, but replacing the bridge felt a bit wasteful to me. It's a perfectly good bridge, and I have never found the magic in a bridge change that many people talk about, though I have swapped plenty in my time. 

 

Eventually, I realised that I could try to fit an old Stingray mute set on there, which would allow some flexibility if I desired it, and also look a lot better. Bass Direct sells them for £28 shipped...so, I bought a set. 

Turns out, the long metal plates of the mutes fit perfectly under the existing Ray4 bridge without having to modify the bridge or bass in any way. Sweet.

 

I spent a long time looking for inserts to put into the wood under the bridge for the mute screws to fit into, but I could not find a supplier here or in the USA for the right size. Strange, but there it is. I bought a few of different sizes just to try them, but the screws never worked right in them - either too small or too large.

 

I dug out old pics of vintage Stingrays with the bridges and hardware removed, and it turned out that it looked like those screws simply went directly into the wood, not an insert.

 

I also messaged Low End Lobster to ask him if that is what he had done with his bass, and he said he simply screwed them directly into the wood as well, and it worked fine. 

 

So, one 4mm drill bit and a lot of measuring later, this is how it ended up...

 

 It's not perfect - the hole I drilled for the screw through the bridge under the G string was 1mm off where I wanted it to go, even though I used a centre punch - but it looks right, and furthermore, the mutes are totally useable and the sound is very cool. Even with some candle wax to lubricate the screws when I screwed them in to the bass, they are a slow turn, so it's not instant adjustability, but a minute or two will allow me to return it to the 'non-muted' sound. 

 

The finished article. I need no more mods. 

 

This has been a real labour of love, over a long period of time, and I am really happy with it. It's cheaper than any of the options I might otherwise have had to consider given my requisites, but it's difficult to recommend it if you're not as picky about necks/EQ etc as I am. A secondhand SBMM Ray34 or similar is better value, though those don't have the forearm contour that I think is critical either. But you get the gist. 

 

I think I spent around £600 all together, and it looks and sounds great. This is now, finally, my 'Stingray'.

 

Pete

 

 

Just so you know...I am pretty sure my old 78 Stingray mutes...which were missing.....But the bridge is shaped to raise from the body where the inserts go..and had threaded inserts for the thumb screws...without damaging the body.....I would just leave your screwed down, as it looks so authentic,,,,Now I believe there is some way to achieve the hex screw bolts on the bridge sides

Anyway....i LOVE what you did,,,and must say I am envious

[funkle]

Ah, good to know, I spent ages trying to research that and find threaded inserts for the mute screws to go in to. If you ever find some that fit, I’d love to know, I’d fit them. 
 

And if you like what I’ve done..well…you can probably do it cheaply yourself if you wait for stuff to come up secondhand…there are no shortage of secondhand Ray4s out there…

Edited December 7, 2021 by funkle

[Bunion]

On 04/06/2021 at 15:31, funkle said:

 

Ah, good to know, I spent ages trying to research that and find threaded inserts for the mute screws to go in to. If you ever find some that fit, I’d love to know,

 

While there are many different kinds of inserts you could go with, possibly an easier way (too late for your bridge, you’ve drilled the holes) would have been to drill and tap a thread into the bridge and just have a clearance hole behind it in the wood 

[funkle]

Great idea! I wish I knew how to do that. I’m still on the lookout for correct sized inserts….

 

In the meantime, I eventually filled the holes for the tuners with wood filler and helped some of the natural ageing of the wood by Kiwi’ing the neck a little. It’s getting even better now…

[horrorshowbass]

After having the ray4, ray34 and US classic, I'm back to wanting a Ray4 and a stinger pre.

Edited May 29, 2022 by horrorshowbass

[funkle]

If anyone is interested, I finally got around to documenting this project and recording sounds on Youtube. Enjoy, I hope!

 

 

[linear]

I'm interested, as I'm in the process of (very slowly) doing a similar thing so that I can have a slim neck Stingray without selling a kidney to buy an SLO.

 

I agree about the stock bridge.  It's perfectly functional, but IMO one of the ugliest bridges in existence, second only to the oval abomination on Lakland Skylines.  It was the first thing I changed.

 

Did changing the tuners to licensed Hipshots change the neck balance noticeably?  I find mine neck dives a touch if I have it on one of my thinner, slippier straps.

 

 

[funkle]

It already balanced pretty well, so the change made only a subtle difference. But the old tuners felt really cheap and rattled. So these ones are a joy. 

[nbpartnership]

I watched your video and read your description here - thanks, both were really helpful.

 

A short while ago I bought a 1993 US Musicman Stingray bass for a really good price - it is all original except the bridge ... it seems the seller dismantled the bass to refinish it (which, thankfully wasn't done!) and mislaid the bridge - the bridge would have been the one with string mutes. I took it all apart when I got it and it is legit - it even has holes in the body under where the screws for the string mutes would have been. It really is a lovely bass to play but the bridge was the Sterling type just like yours. Unfortunately it's not possible to get an authentic bridge from Musicman (if anyone knows different, please let me know!).

 

Taking confidence from your YouTube video and this article, I decided to buy the string mutes (from Bassdirect) and fit them. I had to drill holes in the bridge as you did, but also used a tap to create a screw thread in the holes in the bridge for the screws that came with the  kit - I bought a tap and die set from Amazon for under £30 (US units rather than metric) and had to do a bit of testing before I discovered which was the correct size. The screws fit perfectly and it now look pretty much like the original bridge would have looked.

 

It now looks great - and it plays and sounds superb!

 

Thanks for your video and post here.

[funkle]

Brilliant, that looks (and I bet sounds) amazing. Great job!

 

[horrorshowbass]

On 24/03/2023 at 21:32, funkle said:

If anyone is interested, I finally got around to documenting this project and recording sounds on Youtube. Enjoy, I hope!

 

 

This is my life 😆 

The stingray finger funk sound is my favourite sound on bass. Unfortunately I don't get on with the neck and position of pickups and have had half a dozen rays and always moved on. Kind of settled on a G&L L2000 as close enough but still have a stingray hankering. Some day I'll find one i can play.....

[horrorshowbass]

The best options i have found were Ray34 and the US subs by the way. Still sold em......

[funkle]

2 minutes ago, horrorshowbass said:

The best options i have found were Ray34 and the US subs by the way. Still sold em......

I think those basses are a great price/value point. Would have bought either if they had the right neck! 

[horrorshowbass]

Yeah I hear ya. Never understood why someone wouldn't want a J neck😁