Bought one in White. The fit, finish, sound and playability exceeded my expectations. I did a minor fret-end filing and now it feels like a custom-shop. Got a Fender Rumble 100 Amp and I am loving-it. I'm a guitarist so it was a seamless transition.
Awesome! Guitarist to guitarist, dive right in to technique, both plucking and fretting hands. Muting unwanted strings is *vitally* important and the plucking hand plays a huge role in that. Good luck!
Got the exact same base, no tooling marks on the neck or scratches on the body as you mentioned. Same fret issues and intonation was off. Had my guy to set it up, polish and smooth the edges on the frets and now feels and plays great. I got it with a freinds and family store discount so I'm still way ahead. Would have a hard time parting with it now.
Awesome! I love mine. I fixed up the fret work, put a new pickguard on it and it's beautiful. I have Ernie Ball Cobalt Flatwounds (which are almost as bright as roundwounds) and I love love love it.
Thank you for your review. I have been researching these and finally got to play one. Was not impressed with the knobs. Falling off and very cheap. That said, I still want one! Sorry to hear about your L.C. issues. Hang in there, the world is catching up with the research. Be well.
The knobs! Yes, they have set screw knobs on split shaft splined pots, which is never great. I cut a 1 mm guitar pick into pieces (with a large wire cutters) to fit into the slot of the pot shafts. Stops the shafts collapsing when you tighten the screws. It’s much better now!
I ended up buying one, same color. I like it! Although has room for improvement: nobs, pots maybe. Definitely needs new strings. But, its a great little bass. Light, feels good on a strap. Thanks!
I know nothing about Delano pickups. I have no current desire to switch to anything else for a few reasons. First, I like it the way it is and if I do change I will be the only person who can hear the difference without doing a direct A-B comparison. Second, the Neodymium pickup was designed by Music Man for the passive circuit, other pickups may be a little weak because they were designed for the 2-band or 3-band preamp which in the centre detent positions have quite a bit of bass and treble boost.
Tool marks is a guess on my part, as I said, could be the edge of a table, or yes, maybe even a hanger. But no matter, they are not acceptable on a brand new instrument being sold as brand new condition.
OK! I'm confused right off the bat. There is a lot of confusion over the various grades of MM models. The title says this is a review of the "Sterling by Music man short scale stingray" but you start in early comparing it to the "Sterling by Music man short scale" (ie. better bridge / also passive). what model exactly is this bass?
You’re talking about between four and five minutes in? This is the Sterling by Music Man StingRay Short Scale (RaySS4). It has the same bridge that Sterling by Music Man use on the Ray34 (standard scale) models. Their cheaper standard scale basses, they Ray4 models, have the lower quality bridge. This bass also has a similar electronics package to the US-made Music Man short scale stingray, i.e. passive circuit with neodymium pickups.
@@DrKevGuitar Thanks, I wanted to be sure this is the same one I am looking at. I am looking for a good shortscale to continue learning to play due to limited fret hand reach (Motorcycle crash, full rotator cuff tear). I shipped in a Blackstar carry-on (23" half scale) from the UK and am increasing my reach to where I hope to move up to a 30". The Stingray is at the top of my short list along with Gretch G2220 Junior Jet, Hofner Ignition Pro Club, and Ibanez AGB260 Artcore. I don't see any of these on your channel. Do you have any advice?
@@greglisk9408 No, I can’t comment much on those. I’ve seen the Gretsch, a client has one, seems nice. And another client has an Ibanez TMB30, and they love it. But it seems to me that the Stingray style bass is very different to the others you’re looking at. You’ll get a wider range of sounds from the others by virtue of the two pickups, and those body shapes will have better upper fret access than the SBMM Short scale Stingray too.
@@DrKevGuitar Thanks, I am just learning to play, I am not familiar enough with sounds and styles to know what I'm looking for yet, but the Blackstar has a P style pick-up so I'm looking for a quality bass under $800 CND with a different sound to the P-bass. I think the Jaguar/Mustang/TMB30 body shapes are hideous. They look like somebody took the cutting board from thier mom's kitchen and slapped a neck on it. I looked at the Danelectro Longhorn , but discovered you have to remove the neck to adsjust the truss rod, that was a deal breaker. I love the stingray trussrod adjustment at the bass of the neck, where it belongs. As a mechanical designer, stuff like that gives me the impression that the designer has thought about what they were doing. Also the reviews I've read say that because of the way the stingray is set-up and balanced, it feels shorter that it is. If that translates to less pain shooting up my arm reaching frets 1 and 2. That sounds good to me too.
@@greglisk9408 I'm about to pull the trigger on a short scale Sire U5. It's about 300€ less than this awesome MusicMan, I'm looking for something primarily for Blues & old-school tones, & I already own two Stingrays :-). I'm looking for a P/J pickup setup, or something old-school. I played a few of the short-scale options out there: Hofner Ignition: felt like a toy. wooden bridge & plastic switches are not for me. Tuners are crap. Ibanez TMB30: not bad at all for the price (half the cost of the Sire), but felt like a beginner bass. If I had a very limited budget, this is what I'd get. There's also a shorter-scale (28.5") Soundgear P/J if your injury won't let you move up to a 30" bass yet. Gretsch Junior Jet II: this was what I was originally hunting for: single coils, old-school looks, & the Gretsch brand. Felt better than the Ibanez, but it also felt a little overpriced (in Europe) as it's not much more for the better Sire U5 (In the US these go for $300, that's a good deal & leaves some budget to mess with it). It generally felt pretty solid. The single-coil pickups are pretty noisy, & the pickup selector switch felt kinda cheap & a little wobbly, & basswood isn't alder or ash. I generally felt like I'd need to do quite a bit of work on it to get it the way I want it (upgrade all the electronics). I thought about a short-scale SG-style bass too but they all have heavy mahogany bodies with a lot of neck dive. If you want two pickups in short scale, the one to get is the Vintage VS4, which is nicely outfitted with Wilkinson hardware for a good price. In the end, probably not for me, but I think I'd buy this vs. the Gretsch if I wanted something old-school. There are pros that use the Gretsch (though I'd wager not in stock form), but in the end I decided to go with the Sire U5. I've always wanted a P/J, the string-through-the-body option adds sustain, the alder tobacco burst is jaw-droppingly gorgeous, it sounds & feels great, & it's 500€. If I were to get a hollow-body it would be the Warwick Star or SklarBass; they're in the same price range as this MM Sterling & the Ibanez Artcore.
Import duty, distributors costs (who supply the stores and take care of warranty issues on behalf of the brand), and 20% sales tax. Basic economics, the same up charge is seen for most other brands too.
You can get many SX basses for the price you said not to buy and they are the boss and people love them. You really shouldn’t make blanket statements like that because people miss out
I don’t doubt that there are a number of SX bass users out there that are very happy with their instruments, as is the case for Squire, or Ibanez, or Harley Benton. But the simple fact remains that no instrument can come out of a factory for retail below 200 and have proper fretwork or set up done. The lower the price the more likely there are to be major problems. In my professional experience as a guitar tech who has seen many thousands of instruments working for a large music store, and a guitar teacher who has seen hundreds of students come to me with their own instruments, 200 is my number. The brand on the head stock doesn’t matter. If you like your a SX bass I’m really happy for you. But I think would be irresponsible of me to tell people they can buy the cheapest level of instrument and get away without having to spend more money to fix the problems that shouldn’t be there in the first place.
