why doesn't Ernie Ball do signature basses
 

They do plenty of signature guitars, John Petrucci, Albert King, Steve Morse. I was just thinking about this. Not sure why.

I don't even know that I'd necessarily want one, but you never know.

They don't need to, beside, where would they start?

I would pose that question on the EBMM forum
http://forums.ernieball.com/music-man-basses/

I had no idea they did an Albert King sig. :) (I know, he meant Albert Lee)

Whoops, yes, Albert Lee.

I thought about the Ernie ball forum. But I was here. :)

The list of Music Man players is quite extensive. perhaps with one of their famous endorsers. ;)

He ought to get a warm reception with that question over there :)

They dont need to. Their bass guitars speak for themselves.

I believe the answer given on their forum relates to Flea asking that the StingRay become his signature line. Sterling felt it would be unfair to other SR players who came before Flea (Tony Levin, Louis Johnson, Bernard Edwards, John Deacon, etc.) to do that, and since that was their only bass line at the time, they may have decided to simply do away with sig basses. Lately though, there has been talk about a John Myung sig Bongo, but not sure where that's at now.

I'm not sure that is the real answer -- it's not like Fender needs signature models to sell Ps and Js, after all. For EB, I think the only bass it would make sense to offer in a signature would be some type of Stingray (none of the other models would sell well enough), but EB got into a swivit with Flea years ago and drew a line in the sand about a Stingray signature.

Today they have the "Sledge" stingray. which is essentially a Tony Levin model to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the Album "SO".

Well the reason they have so many signature guitars is because there wasnt much awareness about them.

Maybe, but aside from Petrucci, The other guys had been friends with Sterling Ball a long time, and probably aren't really selling that many guitars. Out of the guitar signature models, I have only ever seen one Steve Morse and one Petrucci in the wild. The best two names (from a marketing standpoint) EB ever had were Eddie Van Halen and Flea. I'll bet Flea sold more Stingrays (and continues to do so), without even having a signature model, than all of the other signature guys combined).

Uhhhhh..... Isn't there an actual guy named Ernie Ball?

I would submit that they are all EB signature basses.

How many people mod their EBMM basses? I think this is part of it. Most of the Fender sig models are slightly different than stock, or something otherwise currently not available.

Lol, good point. Actually the egomaniac that owns the company today has the only signature bass -- the Sterling model. :)

that's funny right there. ^

The flea situation is interesting, wasn't aware of that.

I've lurked and posted over at the EB forum for years, I'm not necessarily afraid to post this question there, just figured I'd pose to the mass audience here and see what I could learn.

A John Myung Bongo6 would be interesting, except with the knobs not sunken into the body ;)

He's got a whole signature import line too. :smug:

What bassist who uses MM's has modded one that it would warrant being a different model from a stock one?