I bought a new Sterling one in March of this year. After 3 days the pickguard started to wear off it's red color, and now has a white spot there. Fully reliced within a week... ha ha.. don't like that at all. What is actually missing, in this review, is that it is quite easy to swap out the places of the pickups, if you want a single coil in the neck, because they'll fit right in. And this is what I have done. The boost works better with the HB pickup in bridge position and you can crank the amp without getting excessive hum. All kinds of boost boost the noise and hum too regardless of humbucker pickup or not. On the MM model it's kind of moot to swap the pickups places because the HB in neck has a coil split (or tap) function anyway. I do have come to like the push push method on the knobs better than the push/pull variant. On the old push/pull you have to remove your pick from picking fingers, but with the push push, you just push with ANY finger on the top of the knob, you don't have to "grip" it, so to speak. It's faster. I also like the form factor very much, it's almost just one size above the travel guitar. Perfect balance and no neck dive. Now, for a little bit of raining on the parade... 1. Me, don't like ANY of the nut widths on any Sterling or Music Man guitars. 41 mm is way too narrow for me up there. Always has been and always will be. Which is a damm pity because otherwise, they've thought of everything. Sounds great, feels rad. 2. Which means that I do slip the high e-string out from the neck edge ever so often, it gets stuck on the edge of the frets, and can't seem to re-learn of that bad habit. All other guitars, no problem. 3. Black dots as markers on a roasted neck ? : No, no, and again no. Major gaffe. White PLUS illuminating (self, not by batteries leds or something) should it be. Period. You could just as well have left them off altogether. Barely detectable in any light. The roasting renders the neck much darker than any untreated maple neck, but not so dark as a rosewood, or ebony. Perfectly in between, but ends up neither nor...sort of. Some invention is waiting to happen, dots that turns pitch black in broad daylight, and turns illuminating white, on the darkest of stages.
My Sterling Valentine felt great but the pick ups couldn't power a gain channel and the boost just highlighted the poor pick up and electrics quality more. Saying that, it now has Suhr Thornbucker (bridge) and SSV (neck) and the boost circuit now powers a bridge piezo. The frets had a trim and all the wiring has been replaced. It now rivals my Musicman Stingray for sound, and getting there on feel. Having played the Musicman Valentine trem, I'd probably change the bridge pick up too
There is also a fixed bridge version of the sterling. Would have been cool if you compared it to the musicman too. I guess there would be even less differences between them as far as you can tell on a youtube video.
Nice job chaps. I bought a Sterling Valentine which felt so much better than some Fenders at a certain guitar shop. It holds tuning better than my PRS and has a great mojo about it. I gutted the electric as the bridge pick up could drive an overdrive pedal, it had a 23k pot !! Now re-wired with a Seymour Duncan Alnico 2 in the bridge and the boost power pack now powering a Fishman under saddles piezo, its a fantastic guitar. Saying that, I still might buy the Musicman version with trem when I've saved up for it and will switch the Sterling pick ups to 2 x Suhr Thornbuckers soon. Both guitars feel great
You didn't compare them at all! You played the US version way more and didn't compare the finger picking riff with both. Disappointing to see a side by side that wasn't even!
Neck pickup on the sterling has more balls to it. Not better or worse... maybe the night can be compensated on the music man to make it comparable... MM will be more versatile with the coil tapped neck PU. Sterling is an excellent guitar for not a lot of $$$
