NGD: 1977 MusicMan Stingray II

Discussion of vintage Jazzmasters, Jaguars, Bass VIs, Electric XIIs and any other offset-waist instruments.
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Mechanical Birds
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Re: NGD: 1977 MusicMan Stingray II

Post by Mechanical Birds » Wed Jun 13, 2018 5:04 am

Ugh used to see so many dickhead metalcore bands with music man basses and always thought they looked so lame, but I knew nothing about them at the time and appreciate the original 70s ones totally at this point.

A stingray is cool too

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Re: NGD: 1977 MusicMan Stingray II

Post by BoringPostcards » Wed Jun 13, 2018 6:06 am

Good score!
These are pretty slick. My uncle has one of these as well as a Sabre II. His StingRay doesn't have the active bits working, but it plays and feels pretty good.
I had some pretty cool instrumental stuff recorded with them, but I had them hosted on a CBC page that got shut down and I lost it all.
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Re: NGD: 1977 MusicMan Stingray II

Post by Larry Mal » Wed Jun 13, 2018 6:29 am

Stingray basses are great, I sold mine, though. I found it not to be such a great bass for recording, although it played just wonderfully. Like heaven. I'd like another one some day.

This Stingray guitar has me thinking I'd like to get one. We were talking about freshness of design and how in this era the guitar makers still thought that there was room with the electric guitar for technological advancement and more importantly they thought that the market would be receptive to new ideas.

Boy, they were wrong about that second one, and when I look at that Tidepool Jaguar bullshit on the other thread you can really see how lame the guitar market has become, just switching out the few accepted parts that the market will tolerate over and over on accepted body shapes but no real vision with any of it. Good or bad, there's just no real design vision to it.

This thing is unique, and Leo sat down and decided to build a better guitar than he had before from the ground up, using what he had learned over the years. Did he succeed? Is it the best guitar in the world? I guess not, but the motherfucker tried, which is more than you can say for anyone anymore.
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Re: NGD: 1977 MusicMan Stingray II

Post by Embenny » Wed Jun 13, 2018 8:29 am

BoringPostcards wrote:
Wed Jun 13, 2018 6:06 am
Good score!
These are pretty slick. My uncle has one of these as well as a Sabre II. His StingRay doesn't have the active bits working, but it plays and feels pretty good.
I had some pretty cool instrumental stuff recorded with them, but I had them hosted on a CBC page that got shut down and I lost it all.
Whoah, these actually work with the active electronics bypassed? How did that sound?
Larry Mal wrote:
Wed Jun 13, 2018 6:29 am
Stingray basses are great, I sold mine, though. I found it not to be such a great bass for recording, although it played just wonderfully. Like heaven. I'd like another one some day.

This Stingray guitar has me thinking I'd like to get one. We were talking about freshness of design and how in this era the guitar makers still thought that there was room with the electric guitar for technological advancement and more importantly they thought that the market would be receptive to new ideas.

Boy, they were wrong about that second one, and when I look at that Tidepool Jaguar bullshit on the other thread you can really see how lame the guitar market has become, just switching out the few accepted parts that the market will tolerate over and over on accepted body shapes but no real vision with any of it. Good or bad, there's just no real design vision to it.

This thing is unique, and Leo sat down and decided to build a better guitar than he had before from the ground up, using what he had learned over the years. Did he succeed? Is it the best guitar in the world? I guess not, but the motherfucker tried, which is more than you can say for anyone anymore.
Yeah, that's what appealed to me so much about this. It's not just a 50's or 60's Fender outline with 50's and 60's Fender or Gibson pickups and hardware in a mildly novel permutation. It's differen't, and it sounds different, from everything I own. I'm still in the "getting to know it" phase, figuring out how the controls interact and what sounds good. It'll frustrate anyone who's hoping for it to sound like a Les Paul, or a Strat, or a whatever. It can do bright, thin tones, and it can do big, thick tones, and warm, dark ones...it just does that without sounding like one of the half-dozen designs everyone tries to categorize things into.

Almost anytime you see a new design, you end up thinking, "Ah, so they took Les Paul jr electronics, and but it in a Fender-style bolt-on body, but with a Bigsby!"

This thing just makes you think, "So it's vaguely shaped like a strat ate a jaguar, but then you added two more poles per coil to a pair of Stingray pickups, and crammed in an amp's tone stack and bright switch under a giant shielded plate?"

Even now, that would be head-turning. Imagine inventing an entirely new pickup size/shape/design just for a new model of guitar, with a new shape, and a 3-band active EQ. It's 40 years later, and the guitar market would still ask, "what the fuck is this?"

Even these days, with passive pickups like Joe Bardens, or Wildes (Bill Lawrence), or MFDs from Leo himself - when you get a wide frequency response with extra treble and bass that can easily be subtracted but never truly added into a pickup that lacks them, people just run the tone controls wide open and say, "this is too bright" or "why does this have so much bass?" when things like the PTB circuit Leo designed 4 decades ago can give you full control over them passively and right on your instrument. How would that be undesirable?

I think it probably came down to the boomers first controlling demand (and demanding guitars that sounded like their teenage idols), and then supply (running the companies and producing guitar after guitar that sounded...like their teenage idols).

I've been exploring more and more corners of the pickup world - tri-sonics, Bardens, Wildes, MFDs, sticking Electric XII and 1961 Bass VI pickups on 6-string guitars, this stingray - and finding really cool stuff that sounds different. It's pretty fun.
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Re: NGD: 1977 MusicMan Stingray II

Post by BoringPostcards » Wed Jun 13, 2018 5:06 pm

mbene085 wrote:
Wed Jun 13, 2018 8:29 am
BoringPostcards wrote:
Wed Jun 13, 2018 6:06 am
Good score!
These are pretty slick. My uncle has one of these as well as a Sabre II. His StingRay doesn't have the active bits working, but it plays and feels pretty good.
I had some pretty cool instrumental stuff recorded with them, but I had them hosted on a CBC page that got shut down and I lost it all.
Whoah, these actually work with the active electronics bypassed? How did that sound?

They weren't bypassed, the pots and things were just about totally gone bad and weren't well maintained from dust and things. Volume worked, but the rest was scratchy and weren't really worth fucking with anymore, you'd just find a good spot and leave it alone. I think he's since gotten it sorted and restored. It's been a decade or more since I've seen him and his guitars. My cousin has the Sabre II now and I have seen him more recently, so I have played it and it still sounds and plays excellent. It's a mocha brown with a blackguard. Always end up GASsing when I have played it over the years.
When I first encountered it in 2001, I was floored by it. It was so familiar, yet alien to me. I got the same feeling when I played an old G&L for the first time. Grew up playing old Fenders and late 80s and early 90s Squiers.
They're not so hard to find nowadays, but they were pretty rare here in Eastern Canada when I was growing up in the 80s and 90s. My uncle was the only person I knew who owned old MusicMan and G&Ls from the Leo era until rather recently actually.
That's another kettle of fish.
cheers!

Edit: I am a 1981 kid, so it pleases me that there are plenty of old G&Ls from my birth year that are really good. Haven't found one yet though for the right price at the right time. Tricky to nail down the birth year guitar. Tried to get a good birth year SG once. Gave up after a while. 81 is tricky with Gibsons.
Last edited by BoringPostcards on Tue Jun 19, 2018 4:16 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: NGD: 1977 MusicMan Stingray II

Post by antisymmetric » Wed Jun 13, 2018 8:57 pm

Great score- strange how "under the radar" these have been (basses excluded), being Leo's designs and all.
46346 wrote:
Mon Jun 04, 2018 10:27 am
i had always wondered why so few guitar people seemed to care what Leo was up to back then, though the bass players seemed to know what was up. i'm not playing much bass these days, but i'll never give up my '79 Music Man Sabre. perhaps if i ever retire, i may give it to my nephew.
^I could have written the above, right down to the nephew in question. :ph34r: My own '79 Sabre bass is natural finish/maple neck, so would be a great match for the subject guitar of this thread.

Should someone start a "Show us your Musicman" thread?
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Re: NGD: 1977 MusicMan Stingray II

Post by 46346 » Thu Jun 14, 2018 3:11 pm

antisymmetric wrote:
Wed Jun 13, 2018 8:57 pm
Great score- strange how "under the radar" these have been (basses excluded), being Leo's designs and all.
46346 wrote:
Mon Jun 04, 2018 10:27 am
i had always wondered why so few guitar people seemed to care what Leo was up to back then, though the bass players seemed to know what was up. i'm not playing much bass these days, but i'll never give up my '79 Music Man Sabre. perhaps if i ever retire, i may give it to my nephew.
^I could have written the above, right down to the nephew in question. :ph34r: My own '79 Sabre bass is natural finish/maple neck, so would be a great match for the subject guitar of this thread.

Should someone start a "Show us your Musicman" thread?
hmmm. perhaps you're related to my brother in law? do you get many NY Italians in NZ? just a theory...

if you don't start that thread, perhaps i will. need to make some fresh Sabre fotos...
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Re: NGD: 1977 MusicMan Stingray II

Post by windmill » Tue Jun 19, 2018 4:14 pm

For those interested there is one identical to the one in the original post hanging on the wall in the in The Music Swopshop in Melbourne, Oz, for $1750.

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