It looks to me, from the pictures above, that on the cheapie knockoff, the stings run right across the center of the pickup pole piece magnets for all four strings. On almost none of the real EB basses do the strings runs directly across the center of all pole piece magnets (the G and E/B strings are almost always right across the very edge of the magnet; this is even more pronounced on the two pickup basses (go to the basscentral site and look at some picture of two pickup stingrays if you don't believe me). Compare the E string on the Douglas above to the gray Bongo 4 in Bovine's post. The 20th Ray 5 is pretty close, and all EB basses should look like this. You might argue that its only aesthetic, but so is a bad pait job. I happen to think that it can affect the tone and volume of some of the strings, and is part of the reason for the weak g string some experience on Stingrays.
Hey, I have a few Rays, and I love them too, but this bugs me. I'm sure the Douglas is worth about $100.00, though, and nowhere near the quality of the real thing.
