Here she is. The new StingRay. Sorry for the crappy low-light cell phone photo. I'll be taking better pictures later.
This is my second StingRay. My first I bought in 1987 after I saved up my money working at a coffee shop. It was $700 at Guitar Center - my first "real" bass. Honey Burst with a bird's eye maple neck. I never liked the color, but it was all that they had in stock. I played, gigged and recorded with it for almost 20 years. Countless hours of playing - in fact I wore a hole in the wood above the pickup where I placed my thumb.
In 2006, I relocated to SoCal from NorCal. I left my bass, along with some other belongings at my dad's house. I figured it would be safe if I left it there while I got re-established down south. I wasn't playing music much at the time and I was going through a big career change, so I didn't have a lot of time. I came back a year later and it was gone. My dad let some drug addict stay at our house for a while and he gave the bass to him when the druggie asked if he could borrow it. I was pretty livid, but I realized there was a bigger problem; my dad was suffering from early onset dementia.
A few years later, I started playing gigs again and decided to go another route and play a Jazz and then a Precision, but I kept missing my StingRay. Every time I tried one out, I walked away disappointed because it wasn't my StingRay.
I finally bought this one a week ago on an impulse which is really unusual for me. I walked into a music store on a whim and I played this one and I instantly loved it. My dad had passed away recently and he didn't leave me much, but he left about enough to pay for the StingRay, so I said, "What the hell, I guess this is what this money was meant for." I never liked black basses too much either, but I realized that MusicMan's colors mostly suck anyway.
In conclusion, this bass plays way better than my old one ever did. I strung it with Sadowski Black Label flats last night and it thunders proudly. I brought it to rehearsal last night and it really delivered. Saturday, I'll be playing it at her first gig. The new one doesn't sound quite as good as the old one, but she'll do.
Just an observation about MusicMan in general, and I may be wrong, but it seemed like back in the 80's StingRays were kind of an unusual bass. If you couldn't afford a Fender or whatever dayglo shred machine or tiny-bodied headless monstrosity was cool that minute, you'd buy a StingRay. They were real meat and potatoes instruments! Flea played one, and I used to see a few punk rockers in the Bay Area rockin' old, really thrashed 'Rays. Nowadays, they're kind of boutique-y with the various amenities like the multi-finish necks, the six bolt plates and such, and now they're more expensive than Fenders! Maybe that's just my impression.
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