couple questions about music man bases

[marchisgonebass]

i was almost positive i wanted a EB MM stingray untill i was checking out their site and noticed their line of sterling bases and i started wondering...

whats the difference between the EB MM stingray and EB
MM sterling? how do they differ in their tone, quality, and elctronics?

and are there actually two different types of sterlings? i think i heard that theres the actual ernieball musicman sterling and then a a budget line of sterling by musicman basses to replace the olp basses.

and i was also checking out the stingray5's and sterling5's but i heard that the stingray5's actually sound ALOT different than the 4string stingrays. and i also read that the sterling5 sounds really similar to the 4string stingray? is any of this true?

if anyone could help that be great,
thanks

 

[RFord04]

From what I understand, the Sterling is a smaller, slimmer necked Stingray, with relatively similar tone, quality, and electronics.

And yes, there's an entire budget line of those guitars named Sterling by Music Man. Dumbest decision ever to name the brand Sterling...

 

[waynobass]

SINCE YOU WRITE WITH NO CAPITALS, I WILL WRITE IN ALL CAPITALS.

 

[snapple]

RFord is right, sterlings are smaller with a more slim neck but also feature a toggle switch so you can configure the pickup to run in series, parallel and single coil (i think).

The stingray 5 features the same toggle switch. I don't know squat about the sterling 5 or the Sterling brand of budget models...

 

[eyeballkid]

there is now also a line by Ernie Ball that is "Sterling by MusicMan" that is there overseas cheaper models... that is not to be, but is continually confused with the US model Sterlings that are the slightly smaller bodied, jazz necked bass with a bit of a different sound than the stingray.....

 

[king_xanadu]

ed freidland talks a little about it here.