Musicman announced Stingray 5 backed in the year of 1987’ and they’ve became the best selling 5 string bass in the market. 

 

 

Background:

This one from 94’ is one of the earlier release.  Coated neck, ceramic magnet, serial number on the bridge plate, Chrome plate back battery cover and the slightly different headstock shape. 

A few little things that had been changed later on, and somehow got re-introduced again when they announced the Stingray Classic line 10years ago.  

 

 

 

Specs:

 

Playability:

This blonde one was in pretty decent shape, took me a while to cleanup and setup.  The neck was straights, minor fret wears but still able to archive to medium low action easily.  The coated neck is a bit sticky compare with the oil/wax ones.  But in terms of neck profile, overall feel.  It’s very close to most modern sr5, the preamp looked more home brew but it responses very similar to current ones(not the stingray specials).  All the strings vibrates full and even acoustically, that’s always a good sign of a good quality bass.  17.5mm stringspacing is just easy and fun to play on.

 

Sound:

This guy is more on the woody end.  Rosewood fingerboard and ceramic magnet in the pickups makes this less aggressive and gives a slightly slower attack.  Not naturally bass heavy, and that emphasizes the sweeter mid.   The 3 band eq is efficient.  And I play my stringrays on in parallel mode.   The low B is slightly weak when amplified, I’m not sure if that’s why they changed to Alnico magnet later, i was still able to get it somehow balanced with the other strings, that’s probably the only negative thing I can think of.  

 

Thoughts:

I think EBMM had done most things right since day 1.  And were able to stick with them and making improvements in all kinds of small details.  

Again, no one does Stingray style basses better than Musician.  Single H pickup pretty much means chunky / punchy tone straight out of the box .   And the transparent blonde finish just gives it that perfect amount of vintage flavour.