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Dang it....Lobster gave me gas!!!

Try the cod, but stay away from the fava beans and Chianti.
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I played an Old Smoothie when they just came out. It was a nice instrument.

Though, I disagree with Lobster’s assessment of it being “meant for flats” and “meant to be smooth”…

It was just another prototype that had a different pickup. Leo had an idea to have the strings between the pole pieces, like on a standard J or P pickup. That’s why he made that 10-pole dual coil. It just happened to sound smoother than a standard stingray. That’s all, it wasn’t meant to be anything more.
Sterling Ball said that he preferred the “ol’ Smoothie” to the Stingray we know of today, but he was out-voted when it came down to which one they should produce.

And there you have it.

oh, and they all came with roundwound strings.
 
Leo had an idea to have the strings between the pole pieces, like on a standard J or P pickup. That’s why he made that 10-pole dual coil. It just happened to sound smoother than a standard stingray. That’s all, it wasn’t meant to be anything more.
He had past experience with both having poles directly under strings (the original Precision), and not. He must have expected it to have a smoother attack - as a consequence, not a coincidence - which he evidently wanted to revisit.
 
I played an Old Smoothie when they just came out. It was a nice instrument.

Though, I disagree with Lobster’s assessment of it being “meant for flats” and “meant to be smooth”…

It was just another prototype that had a different pickup. Leo had an idea to have the strings between the pole pieces, like on a standard J or P pickup. That’s why he made that 10-pole dual coil. It just happened to sound smoother than a standard stingray. That’s all, it wasn’t meant to be anything more.
Sterling Ball said that he preferred the “ol’ Smoothie” to the Stingray we know of today, but he was out-voted when it came down to which one they should produce.

And there you have it.

oh, and they all came with roundwound strings.

I sometimes wonder as Leo's age advanced and his hearing became worse and worse, if some of the sonic choices he was making were guided by what he was(or wasn't) hearing. The stingray's treble for example.
 
It's a nice sounding (and looking!) Stingray, for sure. Hard to say how much of the tonal difference is due to the pickup vs the flatwounds, I know Lobster typically uses nickel plated rounds for most of his bass demo videos. It'd be interesting to hear a comparison between one of these and a Ray with the normal pickup using the same strings.
Agree 100%

Since we're doing requests, I'd like to hear EB Cobalts flats on both :)

@LowEndLobster, please post here if you can accommodate.