Soon after Musicman Stingray was introduced in the mid-late 70s, active bass had become the new fasion when it comes to electric bass design. High output, active EQ . Stuart Spector probably built basses that represents this thick, puchy to hell the best. that is a very distinct sound for 80s music .
Background:
Long story short, Stuart sold the brand in the mid 80s to Kramer, Kramer bankrupted, and it took a while plus lots of efforts for Stuart to get the brand back. Stuart had established the relationship with instrument maker in Czech Republic to build their instruments and introduced their Euro line. and also the legend line from Asia.
Specs:
- Alder body with Walnut block, flame maple top
- Maple neck with rosewood fingerboard
- Neck through construction
- Brass nut
- Scale Length 35"
- Proprietary tone pump 2 band boost only preamp
- EMG Pickups with individual coil split
- Controls are Vol / Vol (both push/pull for coil tap), hi/lo boost only
Playability:
Top craftmanship for Czech Republic luthiers. They surely know how to deal with wood. The ergonomical design of the body and neck makes this an easy 35" to play. Fretwork is execellent, hardwares is a little different but highly adjustable. The neck is also very stable that makes the intonation dead on. There's slight head dive when put onto a strap mainly because of the slightly small body size, and otherwise this is an execellent and fun bass to play.
Sound:
Chunky, hot, agressive . very mid focus and punchy .. the 2 band boost only EQ are efficient, and lots usable sound through whole range.
Coil split allows things to open up a bit. still thick in general with distinct flavour, but that offers alot more flexibilyty. This bass is favourited by many players in the metal / hard rock world for their crazy punch. This guy also sounds identical to the sound we heard on the 80s fushion music.
Thoughts:
I was setting this bass up for my buddy Kurt as he has decided to put this guy back to standard tunning. it was his metal bass for years. Suprisingly I enjoyed playing this bass alot and decided to write a little review. It's very different than most of my fender and ebmm style basses . This is definetly one of the classic that deserves it's position in modern music history. Stuart Spector is surely an innovator who inspired alot of people in the business such as Steinberger, Fodera, Warwick and etc ... Ken Smith is kind of close when building his instruments, but Stuart started it first.
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