Ernie Ball Music Man Stingray Special: Lighter and more refined?
New refined Stingray bass for 2018
In the mid-1970s, Leo Fender changed camps and developed the Stingray, one of the first basses with active electronics. Ernie Ball/Music Man has now developed a Stingray Special for 2018.
Ernie Ball Music Man Stingray Special 2018
The new Stingray Special has a light swamp ash body, paired with new lightweight tuners on the roasted maple neck. This bass allegedly weighs around 8 pounds, that’s about 3.6 kilos. You can order models with either a maple or rosewood fretboard and there is a wide range of colours available too.
Music Man Stingray H 4 2018 · Source: Music Man
New Features
Its neodymium humbucker has been updated and the 18V preamp provides more headroom than the usual 9-Volt pre. The design retains the 3-band EQ, so shaping your tone should be easy enough. These basses will be available in either single or dual humbucker formats, listed as H or HH on the Music Man site.
Music Man Stingray 4 HH 2018 with rosewood fretboard · Source: Music Man
Steel
The Stingray Special comes with 22 stainless steel frets and a new, more rounded neck joint. The lower cutaway was adjusted and now goes a little deeper than before, aiding upper fret access. This amounts to a subtle revamp of the design. Hopefully, this will all add up to a great playing experience.
Special 2018
The Stingray Special is already available in the US and Canada, while the rest of the world has to wait until 3 September. I’ve added a link to the Thomann page below for those of us in Europe that may want to order one. I think for the money it looks like a good buy, the older versions are used by some great bass players and have a solid reputation. So with these new tweaks, these basses could might stand out from the crowd.
RRP – EUR 2429
More Information
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