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Musicman Sabre Club
- Thread starter fourstringdrums
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Musicman sells the old stingray classic saddles and the whole set actually fits in there! Know from experience! You'll have to take out the whole saddle and replace it but it'll fit and sound the same!
Id convert it back! It sounds better with the stock pickups on my opinion. Getting the pickups is gonna be extremely hard. But if you like the sound should be fine!
Ah well if you got a 7.25 70s/early 80s neck and the late 80s pickups with no problems that's a pretty great bass to have and one of a kind! Also fwiw the stingray preamp is exactly the same as the 80s Sabre preamp that went with those pickups! My favorite bass is a 84 Sabre with a 87 preamp and a set of the 79 pickups lol. I love that thing so much and it's also probably a refinish!
Hmm, I had not thought about the radius to help date the neck. I don't have gauges to check, but eyeballing it, it looks very similar to my 2011 MIM Fender P, so 10", maybe? If so, then that points to either a replaced fingerboard, or a transition era neck with the micro-tilt puck still in it, but an EB-era fingerboard, since I understand EB used flatter radius boards than pre-EB.
The pickups are original, as far as I can tell, and sound great. The pre-amp is also excellent, and, as you said, is at least are a modern version of what was originally in it.
I'm playing it at practice tonight so we'll see how it does. Alone it's sounded really great, but this will be the first time in a mix for me. Crossed fingers!
Since you have it off, I'd put it in a small cup of PB Blaster and let it sit in there a couple days. Then get a fresh allen key and work the screw out. Or if you have a replacment screw, use pliers that bite well and get it out.
Maybe even stick in the freezer after the PB Blaster to get the metal parts to separate from eachother.
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nice! Yeah those pickups are for sure original down the the correct wire coloring. I never actually could find a replacement 80s neck pickup for my 84 and ended up just going with a 79 neck and bridge pickup, I like the sound on the 79's pickup better but the 79s pickups work better with the rounder neck radius because when they switched to the 11 inch radius the kept the pole pieces the same lol.
Iirc the fingerboard radius changes in about 1981 so it is very likely you'd have an 11 inch radius neck on a 3 bolt! Which places the neck date anywhere from 80 to 82 before they just decided to do 4 bolts.
Stingray preamps do pop up time from time though. And it is actually kinda easy to build a copy yourself if you wanted to take the time.
It's gonna sound great in a mix! Unless you're dealing with distortion maniacs with 100 watt guitar heads lol. If you have nice guitar players it's one of the best sounding basses there are, very hard to tell apart the 79 pickups and the 80s pickups in a mix!
There are several vintage spec preamps for sale online. John East's MMSR is not vintage spec but sounds very close as well.
If you want a vintage spec preamp, look for the Retrovibe Stinger or MojoTone on eBay and Reverb (though not sure if they're still being made). I believe TriumphRider99 here on TalkBass (Bud's Quality Fun Stuff on Reverb) still makes vintage spec preamps using mnats' PCB design that many folks use. I also manufacture them using a modern SMT process (Boscoe Music on Reverb).
Most out there should be vintage spec but make sure they're using the correct schematic as some have the wrong capacitor on the volume pot due to a typo in the original posted schematic. Retrovibe's website shows the wrong capacitor so I'd contact them before buying to make sure it's fixed (should be 10uF).
I know TriumpRider99's are correct spec as are mine. There may be others. TriumpRider99's will look more "vintage" since his are hand soldered so if period accurate appearance is important his is a good choice.
If you want to build your own look for mnat's PCB design in Google and you can find it as well as a component list on Mouser that's pretty decent.
I'm currently in the middle of laying out a new late 70s Sabre preamp PCB design but I'm not sure what I'd do with it as ideally I'd either buy a late 70s Sabre with a bad preamp to fix it or build a partscaster style Sabre but I don't have a line on the pickups. If anyone knows a source for vintage spec pickups for these I'd be interested. Most Sabres that seem to go on sale are the Ernie Ball ones with a blade selector and a StingRay preamp.
Anyhow, good luck and let me know if you need any help should you decide to build your own. I've been on this journey for a while now so I've managed to learn a thing or two.
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i got "a sabre pickup?" maybe actually, so the bass i bought, someone gutted all the electronics and i had to find everything, the neck pickup for sure had been replaced but the bridge one maybe not actually. it has the right size poles, the right sized casing, but its been glued in? ive seen a few like this? i just know that for sure the size on the housing on that pickup is so very very specific to that bass that it would be very unlikely that it was a stock aftermarket pickup thrown in there. the neck pickup is a kent armstrong custom build that the previous owner had done by sending the original pickup(or just the case) to their shop. I'm not sure if buried under the plastic potting is the original neck pickup or not! dont have an xray machine for that lol. i do have both of those pickups though lying around if you were interested in putting something "close" to the orignals in there. building your own preamp is pretty bad ass, that rocks! theres a website with all the impedence info and stuff and if you havent sent an email to gavin i would reccomend emailing him, hes really really knowledgable on this stuff. he probably knows the impedence off the top of his head. IMO i believe the pickup has the same amount of winding as the stingray, and that the 16 pole version of the neck pickup is wound even more to compensate for the magnet size difference on the later pickups. I also believe that the classic reiussue wound the neck pickup even further than they did in the 80s to compensate more.
the pickup in the sabre is actually very different from the stingray, even the double 8 pole piece 70s one is very different from the HH stingray setup
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Yeah I should reach out to Gavin at some point. I've gone through his entire site many times when I was designing my StingRay preamp as he has so much valuable information there. I especially appreciated how he detailed with pictures the whole control cavity.
I'm mostly trying to avoid getting myself into too big of a project. That's why I keep hoping that something will come by that's 90% the way there so I don't get myself overcommitted.
I love the whole evolution of Leo's late basses, going from the StingRay to the Sabre to the L-2000. You can clearly see the lineage. So a vintage 70s Sabre would be a great project.
But I try to keep my projects small. Thanks for the tips and for the offer, let me see what I come up with. Gotta have a body first!
I'm mostly trying to avoid getting myself into too big of a project. That's why I keep hoping that something will come by that's 90% the way there so I don't get myself overcommitted.
I love the whole evolution of Leo's late basses, going from the StingRay to the Sabre to the L-2000. You can clearly see the lineage. So a vintage 70s Sabre would be a great project.
But I try to keep my projects small. Thanks for the tips and for the offer, let me see what I come up with. Gotta have a body first!
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Can I join the club? Wanted one for many years but they are generally far to heavy for my ageing shoulder (years of playing a 11-12lb Jazz); this one (1988) weighs 8.2lb!
Can I join the club? Wanted one for many years but they are generally far to heavy for my ageing shoulder (years of playing a 11-12lb Jazz); this one (1988) weighs 8.2lb!
Did you buy that?
It would have been mine, but I just couldn't justify having a StingRay and a Sabre (I'm just too utilitarian for my own good), but no Precision - so I had to commit to the P-bass.
Honey Burst is one of my all time favourite Music Man finishes, but I still can't get that Root Beer Sabre out of my mind, that I passed over in favour of my StingRay, 33 years ago.
Yes, literally just bought it. I've searched for a lightweight Musicman/Sabre for years; I had to take this at 8.2lb. Just received it now and I need to research the pup outputs as the bridge pup seems way punchier than the neck (position 3/4 working switch back from the neck is a big lift in volume).
Lucky you!
Here's hoping it sees another 36 years in such excellent, all original condition.
Can't be many of them out there.
Have any of you switched pickups on the Classic Sabre? I was thinking of ordering an 8 pole piece pickup for the neck instead of the 16 pole that's in there. Before I do that I might experiment with switching them around and seeing how it sounds.
I also thought about rotating the neck pickup so that that in single coil mode, it uses the outer coil instead of the inside coil.
I do like how this bass sounds, but it's not quite like the pre-EB sabres I've heard. Maybe the preamp has something to do with that as well?
Any thoughts on this?
I also thought about rotating the neck pickup so that that in single coil mode, it uses the outer coil instead of the inside coil.
I do like how this bass sounds, but it's not quite like the pre-EB sabres I've heard. Maybe the preamp has something to do with that as well?
Any thoughts on this?
The neck pickup is smaller than the bridge pickup, with slightly narrower spacing.
EBMM switched from 8 large poles, to 16 small poles as a fix for the excessive magnetic pull (though why, after they claim that was the reason, they subsequently made the HH StingRay with 8 large poles in the neck pickup, is beyond me).
Maybe you prefer the sound created as an artefact of that magnetic pull?
Generally, I think the EBMM Sabres are better instruments, with better, more useful configurations than the pre-EB versions ; however the pre-EB Sabres looked way cooler. I much prefer the original bridge, and the 3 toggle switches look cooler, and are potentially more versatile than the 5-way blade switch (both the bridge, and the switches would reappear with Leo's next version of the same basic instrument : the G&L L2000).
