Sting Ray and weak G string, is it the pre-amp?

[polokojo]

So, I got a nice deal on a 2008 EBMM Stingray, rosewood board. I got it because I missed my '98 (maple board) that a I sold a while ago.
And of course I quickly noticed that this one too, like the 98, has a weak G string. Except this time I took some time to experiment with different settings on the pre-amp, whereas in the past I just turned the bass all the way up, all the time. The G string volume is much more balanced when the bass knob is only moderately boosted and it speaks clearly and evenly with bass in flat position.
I always thought it was a neck problem, but this neck is different and has different woods than the 98, so now I'm starting to think it has something to do with the 3 band preamp, or at least it's a combination of both. Boosting the bass seems to have a canceling effect on the frequencies the G string needs in order to sing clearly. Bringing the mids up also seems to help.
Your thoughts/experience?

 

[jim nolte]

Legend has it that that Leo designed it that way because of the popularity of slap bass technique in conjunction with a noted pioneer of that style, whose name escapes me at the moment, since the G string is being pulled upwards the idea was to balance the output to the rest of the strings so my guess it is the preamp, never noticed it on my ‘99 SR5 though but I wasn’t doing much slapping on it. Edit: ‘94 SR5, don’t know if has a different preamp than the 4 strings and the bassist was Louis Johnson.

 

[silky smoove]

I’ve played many Stingrays with different preamps and even some that were fully passive. I found more than half of them had the weak G string issue. In my experience it cannot be isolated to the preamp as the lone variable causing the issue.

 

[jeff62]

Not my experience at all. I’ve owned 5 Rays… including one 5er. None had a weak G.

 

[DWBass]

Raise the pickup on that side.

 

[Eneade]

I have had a Stingray with a weak G. Strings did not make a big difference.
I somewhat managed it by paying particular attention to strings height relative to each other and pickup height.

 

[Geri O]

I’ve owned only SR5s and 5H Stingrays and for whatever reasons (I suspect I know….), they’ve all had good G strings. We should all be so lucky…. (oh, come on, somebody else as gonna say it!…..).

The SR5s were all 3-band preamps and ceramic pups, except for the 2011 I have which came with alnico pups. A little tamer, but still sounded great and had a solid G string tone.

However, I have a buddy with a regular Stingray 4-string bass w/ the 2-band preamp. I replaced the output jack on his bass I few years ago. He has never mentioned the G string, but honestly, if it were my bass, I’d want a little stronger G string action with it. Not a lot, but compared to the SR5 I owned at the time, 4’s G string was a tad down.

BTW, no recordings, no measurements, no documentation, just me and my ears going back and forth.

I dug into playing it and listening closely on a few different platforms and came up with some ideas (as have a few hundred other owners, I’m quite sure), but not being my bass, I didn’t pursue my theories to see which one, if any at all, would result in improvements.

I kinda want to find a 4-string Stingray to have as a test bass for these ideas, but as I play only 5s, there’s not a big need on my end to explore this phenomenon.

BTW, understand this….

Theres no bigger Stingray fan on the planet than me. Read that again.

But I do feel there’s a little something going on here. If anyone thinks I’m wrong or crazy, that’s totally fine. I’ll not engage anyone arguing, debating, or otherwise taking me to task over my thoughts. This is my little project. I may not ever bring it up again. My attitude should be, it’s not my little red wagon and I’m loving my new Stingray Special 5H.

 

[birminghambass]

It's a combination of pickup placement and the preamp IMO. Raise the pickup on that side, don't touch the bass knob, add some mids.

 

[humbuckaroo]

I like a weak G string. This is both a euphemism and a fact.

 

[ToddB1963]

I have an '05 SR4 that had the 'weak G' syndrome.

Damn thing was virtually inaudible on a gig.

Here's what I did:

1) Strung it with medium - heavy gauge flats,
2) Raised the pickup on the G string side, and most importantly...
3) Levelled the pickup poles so the response of the G was more even with the E, A and D strings.

The combination of those three things solved the problem.

 

[aprod]

Not my experience. I boost the bass and the mids and cut the treble slightly. The g string is perfectly audible both when slapping and fingers. Maybe your technique is the problem.

 

[PrimitiveMan]

Luckily Stingray 5s never seem to have this issue. I've experienced it on some of the 4 strings though, but seems to be resolved on the Stingray Specials

It does seem to be a combination of factors

 

[ToddB1963]

Not my experience. I boost the bass and the mids and cut the treble slightly. The g string is perfectly audible both when slapping and fingers. Maybe your technique is the problem.

Technique is not the problem:

• The G string is thinner and sits near the edge of the pickup’s magnetic field, so it induces less voltage in the coil.
• The pickup is close to the bridge, where string vibration amplitude is smallest, so the G string, with higher tension and lower mass, moves even less, reducing output (higher sting tension and lower linear density = less energy and smaller displacement compared to thicker strings).
• The sensing area of the pickup favors the E, A and D strings. The G string’s higher frequency and edge position reduce magnetic interaction and volume.

Stringing the bass with medium-heavy gauge flats, raising the pickup on the G string side, and levelling the pickup poles so the response of the G is more even with the E, A and D strings, solved it for me at least.

 

[winston]

@polokojo - please post a pic of your bass front straight on (not from an angle).

I had a ‘92 3 band ash/rosewood StingRay, I bought it from someone in the newspaper classifieds (remember those?), only was able to play it thru an itty-bitty battery amp. I took it home, plugged it in, and handed it to my roommate Lee who was the other funkiest bassist in town . He said, “I love the way it plays and sounds, but the G string is way quieter than the others.” Lee was in no way a gearhead, he played one bass, one brand of strings, and one amp. But he knew what he heard.

That was indeed the case…and due to misalignment at the factory, the polepieces were barely under the G string. When I bent the string toward the center of the polepieces it was as loud and present as the others. Due to the super-solid EBMM construction with threaded inserts for both the bridge and pickup screws, there was no easy way of just scooting the pickup over a little bit. In retrospect, bridge saddles with adjustable spacing would have solved the issue, too bad EBMM doesn’t offer these, could also help with the “G string up against the fingerboard edge” on StingRay 5 strings.

I struggled with this bass - I tried all sorts of different strings and setup…it had the loudest and fullest acoustic tone of any bass I’d owned, but the pickups and electronics just couldn’t reproduce that sound. After considerable expense and a butcher job by the tech at my local store, a Bartolini replacement with blade polepieces totally solved the G-string issue, but then I realized I hated the sound of the preamp - boom & click.

As others have noted the preamp voicing can contribute to this. The original EBMM 3-band is my least favorite preamp of any I’ve ever used, boomy but not full on the low end (years later I discovered it has a built in HPF-***?!), the mids only filled out the tone up to about the 9th-12 fret on G string, treble had to have been spec’d by a geezer with total hearing loss above 2K. That said others have been able to get great sounds from these so it’s just my experience with this one bass, but it’s kept me away from EBMM since.

 

[FirewalZ]

I have a 98 3 band I bought new way back than and still have. It had the weak G string issue bad, this was before Internet, etc, and it was real noticeable. I ended up doing the nuclear approach and replaced the pickup and preamp with the alnico SD Basslines when they first came out.The issue went away and the bass sounds great. I eventually remember reading that it had something to do with the preamp voicing on the 3 bands from that era. My 2018 Special does not have that issue at all.

 

[Swamp_Ronin]

Of course the G string is gonna be that way. This is well known and well discussed, and even Sterling Ball has talked about this. It's because of pickup position and comb filtering. It's a tradeoff of the design, and can't be mitigated by raising the pickups or etc. And any EQ tampering will also effect the other 3 strings. @micguy Can explain this thoroughly if you don't take my word for it.

People are saying "my Stingray doesn't have a weak G!" but, and I hate to break it to you, it does. Go pick up your Jazz Bass and A-B them. I love Stingrays, but the clarity, punch, and tone it gets is balanced against some other setbacks.

There is a reason Bernard Edwards favored a different neighborhood on the neck than Marcus Miller does, because different instruments sound better in different places. As an artist, you make it work.

 

[Marc valero]

I have a 1990 Stingray 5 and back ln the 90s I used to turn the bass eq all the way up, but I found turning the bass half way up, from mid point gave a more balanced sound string to string. Playing with a light touch and then moving my right hand closer to neck when playing up the neck helped fatten things up.

 

[LadyLoveStingRay5]

I did notice mine was slightly weaker on the Old Smoothie that I owned. I ended up replacing it with my Short Scale Tim Commerford Active StingRay. That bass has Neo pickups and Special 3 brand preamp. Absolutely no weak G string on it. It is my only 4 string.
I have previously owned 2 other passive short scale StingRays. No weak G strings on those either .

I currently own 4 other StingRay5 Specials. Two are 5H, two are 5HH. I have owned 2 others. Not a weak G to be found .

 

[micguy]

Stingrays place the pickup close to the bridge, which means there is less low end on every string. The preamp boosts bass to make up for that*.

That sounds simple, but the eq necessary to restore the low end is different on every string. The pickup mixes all the strings’ outputs, so you can't correct every string - you gotta pick one eq curve and live with the (imperfect) results. One string can be "right", with the adjacent ones not too far off, but the string that's not adjacent? I'ts going to be noticeably off. Either the E or the G is gonna be noticeably wrong - you can either make it so the D is "correct" and the E string is boomy (too boomy), or you can correct the A string, and end up with a weak G. To most folks, getting the E string right is more important than getting the G right, so we have what we have - an OK compromise.

The Stingray is an interesting design - it uses pickup positioning and eq to make a decent result. It’s just not perfect, nor can it be.

*It also boosts treble, but that's not the issue at hand here.

 

[agplate]

Every USA Stingray I’ve owned (several) had this issue, and this advice via YouTube below was the 100% fix in my experience. I very carefully adjusted the pole pieces on my most recent Stingray purchase, and it was like a miracle.

It was the only thing that really worked for me.

PS: if you want a Stingray without this problem, I recommend the Sterling Ray34.