The Music Man Sterling is a model of bass guitar designed by the Music Man company. It was named after Sterling Ball, son of Ernie Ball, the founder of the parent company.
This bass weighs nine pounds, sporting a solid body made from selected hardwoods and finished in high-gloss polyester. The bridge is the traditional Music Man chrome plated, hardened steel bridge plate with stainless steel saddles and an optional piezo feature for acoustic upright-like tones. The standard pickguard colour is either black or white. The Sterling uses a long, 34"-scale length with a maple neck featuring rosewood or maple fingerboard (pau ferro for the fretless variant). Like the other Music Man basses, the Sterling comes with Schaller tuners. The truss rod is adjustable and the neck is bolt-on type with an asymmetrical five-bolt neck plate. The electronics are magnetically shielded and a three-way switch is used for coil selection as well as a three-band active EQ with separate tone controls for treble, middle, and bass.
The Sterling differs from the famous Music Man StingRay 4-string bass in that it is lighter, smaller, has a different preamp, uses the "phantom coil" pickup technology and features a thinner neck with 22 frets than 21 actually found on the StingRay. It won 'Most Innovative Bass of 1993" in Musician Magazine. Notable users are Colin Greenwood of Radiohead, Dave LaRue (of the Steve Morse Band, The Dixie Dregs, and Bruce Hornsby), Johnny Christ of Avenged Sevenfold, Dougie Poynter of McFly, which has light up led inlays, Andy Stickel of 7 Blue Skies and Roger Manganelli of Less Than Jake, Ado Flowers of Ebony Brown and H'Edin Duranovic of Fall of Reach.
The Sterling was created as a four-string version of the highly popular StingRay 5, which also uses ceramic magnet pickups and a different preamp than the StingRay's alnico magnet pickups. New pickup configurations and five-way pickup switching debuted in 2005. Music Man has introduced a five-string version using the same body and pickguard styling as the original four-string since January 22, 2008.
Famous quotes containing the words music man, music, man and/or sterling:
“The average educated man in America has about as much knowledge of what a political idea is as he has of the principles of counterpoint. Each is a thing used in politics or music which those fellows who practise politics or music manipulate somehow. Show him one and he will deny that it is politics at all. It must be corrupt or he will not recognize it. He has only seen dried figs. He has only thought dried thoughts. A live thought or a real idea is against the rules of his mind.”
—John Jay Chapman (1862–1933)
“Music is either sacred or secular. The sacred agrees with its dignity, and here has its greatest effect on life, an effect that remains the same through all ages and epochs. Secular music should be cheerful throughout.”
—Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749–1832)
“The right man comes at the right time.”
—Italian proverb.
“The great difficulty is first to win a reputation; the next to keep it while you live; and the next to preserve it after you die, when affection and interest are over, and nothing but sterling excellence can preserve your name. Never suffer youth to be an excuse for inadequacy, nor age and fame to be an excuse for indolence.”
—Benjamin Haydon (1786–1846)