Music Man StingRay
| Music Man StingRay | |
|---|---|
 Music Man StingRay Redhot Edition , 2-band EQ, manufactured in 1997 |
|
| General | |
| Type | Electric bass |
| Manufacturer | (Ernie Ball) Music Man (EBMM); United States |
| production | since 1976 |
| Construction and materials | |
| Scale length | 34 in. (864 mm), long scale |
| Body | Solid body made of ash (rarely poplar , mahogany ) |
| neck | Screwed maple neck |
| Fingerboard | Maple or rosewood ; Pao Ferro for fretless models, 21 frets |
| saddle | Plastic , width: 41.3 mm |
| Mechanics | 3 × left, 1 × right; open |
| Footbridge / bridge | Fixed, one-piece metal bridge with individual saddles |
| Weight | approx. 4.22 kg |
| Pickups and Electronics | |
| Pickups |
|
| Tone control | active; Preamp : 2-band or 3-band EQ, powered by a 9 V battery
|
| Unless otherwise stated, the data come from the manufacturer's website (as of December 14, 2013) | |
The Music Man StingRay is a manufactured since 1976. E-Bass model of US musical instrument company Music Man . The design of the model comes largely from the company's co-founder, musical instrument maker and inventor Leo Fender .
prehistory
In 1965, Leo Fender had sold Fender Musical Instruments , which he co-founded in the late 1940s, to the CBS Corporation , signing a contractual clause that forbade him to work as a commercial musical instrument manufacturer for a period of ten years . Two of his employees, Forrest White and Tom Walker, also left Fender and founded their own company called Musitek, which was renamed Music Man in 1974 after several changes . The first products sold under the Music Man brand were guitar amps . The silent partner was Leo Fender, who was not allowed to appear publicly due to the contractual clause. After the clause expired in 1975, Leo Fender became Music Man's managing director.
History and design of the model
In 1976 Music Man brought out the StingRay (German: Stingray ) electric bass model , designed by Leo Fender, Tom Walker and Sterling Ball. After the Alembic Series I introduced in 1971 , the StingRay was the second electric bass with active tone control - that is, the bass has a built-in preamplifier that is fed by a 9-volt battery.
A novelty of the StingRay was the asymmetrically arranged 3: 1 ratio tuning mechanisms on the headstock , Forrest White's only contribution to the design of the model. The practical purpose of this design detail was originally to eliminate a sound problem: The Fender-typical arrangement of the machine heads in a row on one side of the headstock means that the treble strings of the instruments are guided over the saddle at a shallower angle and therefore with less pressure than the bass strings. The result is weaker-sounding tones ( soft spots or dead spots ) in some layers of the fingerboard . For this reason, earlier guitar models designed by Fender have one or two string trees on the headstock for the treble strings . In the StingRay, the fifth and sixth frets of the high G string were affected. Moving the tuning machine only the G-string to the other side of the headstock solved the problem in a new way.
Another highly recognizable feature of the StingRay is the egg-shaped plastic pickguard , which is screwed onto the front of the body . The electromagnetic pickups of the instrument are sunk into the pickguard . The StingRay's humbucker pickup with its eight large exposed pole heads has become a design classic and is still referred to in professional circles as the "MM type" to this day. Another characteristic of the design of the model is the shape of the metal, chrome-plated support plate with rotary controls ( potentiometers ) for volume and sound as well as a socket for the jack plug of the guitar cable. The outline of this plate, which is also screwed onto the front of the body, is somewhat similar to that of a boomerang .
However, the StingRay also has several “traditional” design features that have been typical of Leo Fender since the introduction of the Fender Telecaster electric guitar model in 1950. These include the group consisting of alder or ash manufactured body consisting of maple existing neck with a fingerboard of maple or rosewood , and the neck-body connection with a plurality of screws.
Modifications
Over the years, some modifications have been made to the StingRay: While the original model was equipped with a single, double- coil pickup ( humbucker ), there has also been a version with an additional humbucker (original model name: Saber ) since 1978 and one for some time Version with an additional single coil pickup. The initially two-band tone control (English: equalizer ) can now be optionally expanded by a third frequency band .
The components of the preamplifier were slightly changed in 1978, which resulted in a clearer and more "funky" sound. In addition, the preamplifier was cast in black plastic to make plagiarism more difficult. In the same year, the thin frets in the fingerboard were replaced by jumbo frets.
After the early models had problems with the stability of the neck , a model called "Cutlass" with a graphite neck was offered in 1980 . Instead of the three-way screw connection of the neck, there has been a four-way screw connection since then, today six screws are used. In addition, the "string-thru-body" construction, in which the strings are passed through the body , has been abandoned.
The bridges on previous models had adjustable dampers for the strings . These had to be screwed up individually for each string. The screws for this were directly under the strings and were therefore not easy to reach. As a result, it was not possible to switch quickly between muffled and undamped sound, which is why this option was rarely used in practice. In order to prevent finger injuries from the metal parts, this equipment was not used from 1992 onwards. She was retrofitted initially until the combination of bridge and tailpiece (ger .: Bridge was finally reduced) 1996th
In 1984, Music Man was taken over by Ernie Ball Incorporation . In the course of this, the body shape of the StingRay was made more ergonomic, and the instrument necks were initially matt, later not painted at all. In 1987 a five-string version of the model was introduced.
In 2010 the "Classic Collection" series was introduced, which is an almost one hundred percent new edition of the early StingRays. Only the neck tension rod adjustment screw at the body-side end of the neck, a 6-screw neck fastening and the string retainer on the headstock ( string tree ) on the A and D strings (instead of on D and G as before) are concessions to the Modern. The model is also available as a five-string under the name StingRay 5 .
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Well-known StingRay players
Well-known bassists who play or have played the StingRay are for example John Deacon ( Queen ), Louis Johnson ( The Brothers Johnson ), Bernard Edwards ( Chic ), Kim Clarke ( Defunkt ), Tony Levin (King Crimson, Peter Gabriel and others), Tim Commerford ( Rage Against the Machine ) and Flea ( Red Hot Chili Peppers ).
literature
- Jim Roberts: American Basses - an illustrated history and player's guide . Backbeat Books, San Francisco 2003. ISBN 0-87930-721-8 (English)
- Richard R. Smith: Fender - A sound makes history . Nikol Verlag, Hamburg 1995. ISBN 3-937872-18-3
Web links
- The Music Man StingRay on the official Music Man company website (accessed September 25, 2012)
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c d e Jim Roberts: American Basses, p. 132
- ↑ Quotation from Leo Fender from 1966: "What you need is your own company, and if CBS had not bound me by contract, I would start doing it tomorrow." - quoted from Richard R. Smith, translated by Gerhard J. Oldiges and Gerhard Michel. In: Fender - A sound makes history . P. 268 (commas added)
- ↑ a b c d evintagebassguitar.com ( Memento of the original from July 28, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved July 13, 2011.
- ↑ Smith: Fender - A sound makes history, p. 266 ff .: Chapter Leo after Fender
- ↑ a b c Website of the specialist journal Bassprofessor accessed on July 13, 2011
- ^ Website Slapbass accessed on July 13, 2011.
- ↑ Music Man website July 13, 2011
- ↑ musicmanbass.org accessed 2 November 2011
- ↑ Siphon website accessed on July 13, 2011
