Replace Stingray 4 pre amp???

I, and several others, have swapped out the stock pup and preamp to put in the Seymour Duncan Alnico MM pickup and SD MM preamp.

Since both were swapped at the same time, I can't say for sure what result you would get only changing one of them. But the results I got were excellent - warmer lows, and the slap contour (pull the volume switch) on the SD MM preamp is great.

The Alnico pickup is described as giving a warmer sound than the stock ceramic magnet pup. Personally, if you have the money I'd say swap them both out. I know this violates the 'change one thing at a time' rule, but I've yet to hear of anyone doing this and not loving the results.

 

I replaced the preamp first, and the pickup a few months later. Changing the preamp is IMO an improvement but I have to point that you have a ground problem with your stock preamp (or your amp), maybe one of the wires is loose inside the bass or maybe the amp is not properly grounded. My StingRay had no noise or buzz with the stock preamp unless the amp wasn't grounded.

keep groooovin'
Fran

P.S. You can read a review of the SD system in http://www.bgra.net/reviews/seymourduncan-musicm-2-rvw.html

 

I bought a '95 Stingray and play it through the same setup (nice rig, BTW!!). i don't appear to have any buzz or ground problem, but new pre and pup would be something I would do if it means better tone. I love the 'Ray now but improving is always cool.

Any idea about hou much this would cost?

David, how much did you pay for what you described?

 

I think just under $200 for 3 band MM preamp and alnico pickup. I got mine from Black Rose Custom - best prices I saw, plus the guy there is very helpful. If something's not in stock, he'll get it for you fast.

You'll see his price of, say $115, for the preamp. It'll then have shipping and handling of -$8, so it costs you $107. It's his way of getting round Seymour Duncan Minimum Advertised Prices.

 

Right, that's a good site, prices seem reasonable.

Thanks!

Sorry to bother, but is this just a simple change out? any issues??

Thanks again

 

Pretty straightforward. I didn't actually do this install, I got a tech to do it. That was one of the last things I paid for someone else to do, I generally do these things myself now. Looking at the wiring diagram, should be easy enough.

 

The soldering is quite simple. The trick is how to put the preamp into the body cavity. The space is really tight. I followed a guide that Bill Bolton wrote and that saved my life:

Fitting the pre-amp to my '94 Stingray 4 knob fretless was not without
it's moments (it is not as easy as Basslines or the Bass Player review
suggest - see below) but once installed I'm very pleased with the
sonic results. My Stringray is a lot less "brittle" sounding on the
upper mids and highs while the lower mids sounded a lot "cleaner". To
my ears there wasn't a great deal of difference in the bass end, which
suits me fine, as the bass end was the aspect of the original Music
Man electronics I was already happy with.

The factory default on the "slap" switch isn't a great deal of use to
me for my fretless styles, but I haven't yet had a chance to play
around with the presets for it to see if a "useful to me" alternative
fretless tone is achievable. There's 20db of gain on the boost side
of the treble control, so fully cranking it does bring in a fair
amount of hiss, but more modest amounts of treble boost were
adequately quiet.

One nice thing about the standard Music Man electronics is that nearly
everything is on a Printed Circuit Board, so there is relatively
little wire clutter in the control cavity. In comparison, by the time
I'd finished with the Basslines electronics installation, there was
and pretty much unavoidable mess of wire in the control cavity.

The Basslines electronics consists of 4 pre-wired pots and a small
circuit board with surface mount electronic components on it. The
wiring between the pots and the circuit board goes through two colour
coded multi-pin connectors but there are still half a dozen or so
solder connections that need to be made between the overall Basslines
electronics package and the fixed wiring in the Stingray.

I started the installation by unscrewing the control plate and
snipping the existing 5 wires attach to the Music Man circuit board,
leaving just enough attached to the circuit board so I could tell
which colours went where, if I ever decide to reinstall it. I then
unbolted the pots from the chrome cover plate and put the old
electronics assembly aside.

Next, the new pots were mounted on the control cover plate. Basslines
provides a lock washer, flat washer and nut on each pot, but if the
pot is mounted using only those components, the knobs stick up a long
way off the cover plate.... much higher than on the Music Man
electronics. I ended up using the nuts from the original pots on the
new pots, below the lock washers, so I could control how much of the
pot thread poked through above the control plate. The original nuts
were a slightly larger size and were a loose fit on the Basslines pot
threads but were still able to grip adequately to work.

Basslines provides set of black knobs to fit to the pots, but I
elected to reuse the original chrome knobs and they fitted onto the
new pots shafts OK. The Basslines knobs are noticeably lighter than
the Music Man knobs, enough that over 4 knobs it does make a
difference, so if Stingray weight is an issue for you, then the
Basslines knobs could be useful.

Having finished mounting everything on the control plate, I turned my
attention to the new electronics. The circuit board has a velcro pad
on the back and Basslines provide a matching strip of self adhesive
velcro to stick inside the control cavity to hold the circuit board in
place. The circuit board is just the right size to fit on the bottom
of part of the control rout, but I found when I tried to mount in
there, it was not possible to plug the connectors into the board.
After a bit of head scratching, I hit on the idea of mounting the
circuit board on the side of the cavity and this turned out to be the
only practical place. The connectors now fit, but the preset pots are
not adjustable while the circuit board is mounted. It has to be
unvelcroed to adjust the preset pots. I'll have more to say about the
Basslines instructions shortly, but the complete absence of specific
instructions on where to mount the electronics in Music Man basses is
a serious shortcoming, given the narrow focus of this product onto one
brand of bass.

Finally having everything mounted, I soldered the remaining
connections and insulated them with heatshrink tubing. This left me
with a control plate with mounted pots, a circuit board on the edge of
the control cavity and a mini-tangle of wires. Even a quick lacing
job on the wires only tidied things up a little.

When I went to remount the control cover, it would not sit snugly down
against the body at the neck end. Investigation showed that the
switch pot used for the volume control is very nearly as deep as the
control route and the extra couple of millimeters I had set the pot
back from the cover (to make sure the knob didn't sit too high above
the cover) meant that the bottom of the switch assembly did not have
any clearance above the bottom of the control cavity. Rerouting the
wires from the pickup to go around rather than under the switch fixed
that and I was able to mount the control cover snugly against the
body. All up this probably took about an hour and 15 minutes to
complete, rather longer than the 30 minutes suggested in the Bass
Player review.

The instructions supplied by Basslines are, frankly, rather
rudimentary and do not cover the installation an adjustment of the
electronics package in anywhere near enough detail. I've done a lot
of this sort of work on guitars and basses over the years and still
found myself wondering what to do next on several occasions during the
installation. While I was able to solve the various problems I
encountered along the way, a few extra sentences and a diagrams in the
instructions could have saved me a lot of time and some frustration.


keep groooovin'
Fran