My first Stingray was in 1978. I had no idea what was to come. I thought it was an odd thing, not much like a P or a J or even a Ric, which I had been playing a lot back then. Or a Kramer DMZ6000B, which I paid way too much for but what else is new.
So I feel like I have some perspective on Stingrays since that was, gulp, forty years ago. Of course, I’m not goofy enough to argue with your opinions. Stuff like, “I don’t like them” is fair enough albeit a tad on the ‘short on information’ side. There are lots of basses I don’t much care for, but you know what I do when someone posts a thread about how they DO like those basses? You already know, don’t you?
Maybe it’s like my mama used to say. “If you can’t say something nice…” but then she was long gone before the internet really exploded with subject matter experts. Really, I can’t imagine taking the time to respond to a thread about a bass I don’t really care for – or maybe just one I don’t know much about.
So it goes.
The neck thing. The baseball bat comparisons. This makes me wonder how much experience a person has with an actual baseball bat. Some of the earlier Stingrays (pre-EB) had some big old chunky necks. The radius was different, the necks were way rounder, and you can still have that experience with a vintage (50s) Precision or a decent reproduction. I have a Dirnt P with a neck like that. But I’ve never had a modern era Stingray with a clubby neck. Wide? Yeah, I guess. Wider than a Jazz bass, surely, except for the SLO versions. But not round like a bat. Nope. Maybe my big old gnarly hands make such business easier to ignore? But I have bursitis, too, so thin necks make it worse for me. Prolly a technique thing, too, but I can hardly even play 6 string guitars these days. Getting old is not for sissies.
The overt zingy nature of the original Stingray was due in part to the fact that Leo was going stone deaf and of course the first freqs to go are the high ones. Heck, even Strats are pretty zingy – go figure. Leo, since he wasn’t a player and couldn’t hear diddly-squat, liked to put a screwdriver against the bridge and have people put the blunt end of the screwdriver in their ears so they could hear the fabulous zing he was getting. Someone posted a photo of Leo and Louis Johnson here, and Leo was doing exactly that with him. Sterling was a beta tester for Leo with the Stingray and told him over and over that it was just too zingy, which is why Leo built him the original Old Smoothie Stingray. To shut him up, surely, haha! But if you have one of those basses and like it, blame Sterling for haranguing Leo about the Stingray electronics being too high-freq forward.
I assume a lot of you old guys know these things, but maybe the whippersnapperrs don’t.
It seems like common sense to me that if a bass you like ergonomically and so forth is too zingy, you might try switching strings. I was an early proponent of Stingrays with flats, and I clearly remember how many TBers thought I was a heretic. A lot of folks said stuff like, “You neutered it!” But I’m not a slapper/popper guy, so what I was getting with flats was exactly what I’d always wanted a bass to sound like. I was so unhappy with string choices in the 80s. Flats saved my life. (Not really, but close.)
For me, “presence” was always about mids. If Stingrays had been mid-shy, I would not have kept playing them. Again, strings and how you EQ the bass itself (not to mention amps and cabs) can make or break your mids. So your experience may be that Stingrays lack mids….I won’t argue with you, but can say that if that had been my experience, I’d be a Reverend endorser or something.
(Which would not suck, mind you.)
I’m really excited about the new, improved Stingrays because I liked the new improved models from Music Man. Bongos? Yeah, there’s your mids, kiddos. Same with the Big Als (RIP). I loved those basses so much that I kind of fell off the Stingray truck for a while there. I’m looking forward to climbing back on. I’m still keeping my Bongos and Big Als and no one is getting my Caprice or Cutlass, but really looking forward to rocking a Stingray again.
Scott B said earlier here that bass sales in general were down a bit, and that included of course the Stingray. I find that sad, even if some of those sales were basses I personally don’t care much for. I myself can’t get my two boys interested in playing. I blame Simon Cowell, hah. I sure hope things improve, even for the lesser known brands like Fender. Hah.
Anyway, that’s my two cents, and it’s worth exactly as much as you paid for it.
Rock on, brothers in bass.
