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S.U.B. Club

#381
Also, the reason folks don't just grab a ray 34 or modern sub is because they're not the same thing as ebmm sub basses. And why folks don't just grab ebmm sub basses instead of stingrays is because they're really hard to find now (only used when someone doesn't know what they're selling or dislikes stingrays) and because of the immense confusion about the term sub bass in the music man lineup.

I actually did grab two and use them as real stingrays because, truly, they are. And both sellers didn't have them setup well and didn't want or know how to get stingray tone from them.

A situation of not knowing what you have till it's too late, possibly.
 
#382
REME7178 said:
I have a Stingray, and although the SUB Ray may come real close after a couple hundred dollars of work it will never be a stingray for all intents and purposes. Although I wish it were so, but then everyone would just get a hold of a SUB Ray 4/5 and preform the upgrades. Even with the upgrades the craftsmanship would still not be the same as a Stingray.
Click to expand...

I own a ray and a sub. They sound very similar except for the 2 band vs 3 band eq.
Of course by Sub I mean the US made Sub built on the same line by the same people and tools as the Stingray. Not the import Sub built with different tools and parts by people that may never have seen a bass guitar until they applied for the job. Of course you can be excused for the mixup. Musicman shouldn't have named the import budget series after the domestic budget series.
I've tried the import Subs and they are about as unimpressive as most Squiers and Epiphones.
Good enough for beginners but thats all.

I will concede that the painted neck is nowhere near as cool as the finished necks from teh old days or the oil and wax necks on current production basses.
 
#383
I play a passive 2003 SUB4, and I love it to pieces. For the longest time I had it strung with Rotosound 66's or DR's, but I just got the electronics looked at yesterday and had the tech set up my bass with Oasis Flex-Core strings (baltimore made! Even though I just moved I still wanted to support the local business).

These strings are absolutely amazing sounding. Coupled with the fretbuzz and truss rod adjustment and electronics being fixed up, this bass sounds completely fresh. While I never actually "tried" to cop the Stingray tone (I prefer to play clean) these adjustments make the comparison undeniable. For the longest time I was just making the best of the SUB and coming to terms with my ignorance of its flaws but an entire new arsenal of tonal options have just opened up.

Link for the strings, if you're interested: Invalid Link Removed

Also, has anyone changed their stock bridge to improve sustain? I've seen a few SUBs in this thread with bridges I didn't recognize.
 
#384
The bridges on my subs are stock and every bit as good as on older stingrays. Sustain is just fine IMHO. They're better than on vintage fender basses from the 50s through 80s so I don't see a need to look for badass aftermarket bridges like fender guys sometimes choose to do. Sustain isn't lacking nor is setup adjustability.

I believe the metal in our bridges is high quality compared to in the import sbmm basses and that's one of the places where our American instruments excel... The quality of the parts.

I AM however not comparing it directly side by side with a stingray... So I can't offer an a-b comparison of sustain length. It's better than any other 34" basses I've played since I got these, however.
 
#385
Action
I'm continuing to play with action setup on my basses in an effort to get ease of playing and the ability to get the good fret-compression tone I like when playing hard. My own term LoL.

So I found that with the typical slight bow in the neck my fretted sub would actually back bow slightly around the octave area or slightly higher. This is typically a sign, for my preferences at least, that the bass will take a flatter neck setup followed by raising the action at the bridge. So I tightened the truss rod yesterday to remove much of the bow from the long part of the neck. Truss rods typically do nothing at and above the octave frets, and this is what I was counting on.

Today, sure enough, it worked! Uber low buzzy but consistent and even action up to top frets! So raise it at the bridge I did and voila....

Really easy to play and super responsive to how I like a fretted bass to play with aggressive right hand playing. Not clunky at all because I lowered the pickup too... The obvious solution to clanky pickup noise.

I'm in love with this thing :-)
 
#386
My refined and re-fin'd SUB active 4-banger.

DSCN7352-1_zpsebf7a4e3.jpg


Number please. Thank you kindly.
 
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#391
mcnach said:
but this colour may grow on me!
Click to expand...

I'm against refinishing instruments, but I wasn't, this wine-vomit purple would be candidate #1 for it. I detailed mine a week or two back. It's now clean, but still ugly.

Still a great recording bass, though. It's one of the rare passives with the Stingray pickup's coils wired in series rather than parallel. Sounds huge with big flats. Very surprising instrument!
 
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#392
I still like wine vomit purple better than most other solid bass finishes.

I'm so tired of Surf Moss Green and Placid Baby Blah and Look I Bought A Bass Red... Wine Vomit Purple is comparatively my favorite solid colored bass by a mile.

I'm sure it has a more official title from Sterling Ball himself than "Wine Vomit Purple" though.... But that tag is starting to grow on me LoL
 
#393
Bongolation said:
I'm against refinishing instruments, but I wasn't, this wine-vomit purple would be candidate #1 for it. I detailed mine a week or two back. It's now clean, but still ugly.

Still a great recording bass, though. It's one of the rare passives with the Stingray pickup's coils wired in series rather than parallel. Sounds huge with big flats. Very surprising instrument!
Click to expand...

Are SUBs wired is series rare?
My white one is wired in series, and so is every other I have been able to check, so I assumed that's how they all were. I think series works very well with the 2-band EQ.
My SUB5 was wired in parallel, though.
 
#394
mcnach said:
Are SUBs wired is series rare?
My white one is wired in series, and so is every other I have been able to check, so I assumed that's how they all were. I think series works very well with the 2-band EQ.
My SUB5 was wired in parallel, though.
Click to expand...
In Pickups & Electronics I was told only the passive SUBs were wired in series for a higher net Z for passive out, and the regular actives were wired in parallel (low-Z) because they were impedance-matched through the active circuit into a hi-Z output.

I have no idea if this is true, but it makes perfect electronic sense.

On the other hand, the actives could have just as well been wired in series, too -- but supposedly weren't. There was some bonus mojo attendant to the parallel, low-Z configuration into the active circuitry.

If you find any authoritative info to the contrary, please let us know. I'm not an EBMM guru. :hmm:
 
#395
Bongolation said:
I'm against refinishing instruments, but I wasn't, this wine-vomit purple would be candidate #1 for it. I detailed mine a week or two back. It's now clean, but still ugly.

Still a great recording bass, though. It's one of the rare passives with the Stingray pickup's coils wired in series rather than parallel. Sounds huge with big flats. Very surprising instrument!
Click to expand...

The maroon/burgundy color is actually my favorite SUB color after the white.
 
#397
Bongolation said:
In Pickups & Electronics I was told only the passive SUBs were wired in series for a higher net Z for passive out, and the regular actives were wired in parallel (low-Z) because they were impedance-matched through the active circuit into a hi-Z output.

I have no idea if this is true, but it makes perfect electronic sense.

On the other hand, the actives could have just as well been wired in series, too -- but supposedly weren't. There was some bonus mojo attendant to the parallel, low-Z configuration into the active circuitry.

If you find any authoritative info to the contrary, please let us know. I'm not an EBMM guru. :hmm:
Click to expand...

I'm not an EBMM guru either, just talking about what I have seen.

The MM pickup, in series, is definitely found on active SUBs and sounds awesome. I have not seen a passive one, I guess they were not so popular in this part of the world, but every 4string SUB I have been able to check (all three of them! :p) were wired in series, so i assumed that was the norm.
Anybody here has a SUB wired in parallel? My SUB5 was, confusingly... go figure.

I meant to rewire my SUB 4 to parallel, for maximum Stingrayness... but it sounded so punchy that I kept it as it was.

People have installed series/parallel and preamp bypass switches together for a long time and it doesn't seem that any combination is "bad". The electronics info may make sense... but when it comes to guitars, it doesn't have to make sense. I mean, who would have thought in the early 50s that distortion would be a desirable feature in an amp? ;)

My new SUB will be with me early next week... I will check that one and report back. If it makes any difference, the other SUBs were all early models, all 2003 in fact. This one is a late one with the compensated nut. We will see.
 

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