Introduced in 1987, the StingRay 5 (SR5) was the first all-new Music Man bass designed and built in San Luis Obispo by the Ernie Ball team. The five-string's styling is based on the classic look of the Silhouette guitar. Advanced active electronics combine the best of the four-string StingRay along with innovations from Music Man designers, such as a ceramic humbucking pickup with a hum-cancelling "phantom" coil for noise reduction and three-way pickup selector for series and parallel combinations. The tuners are placed in a 4+1 configuration and the six-bolt on maple neck has a rosewood or maple fingerboard with 22 high-profile wide frets. The StingRay 5 is also available with an optional piezo bridge pickup, and as a lined or unlined fretless with a pao ferro fingerboard.
In 2005, the StingRay 5 was updated with two humbuckers or a bridge humbucker paired with a neck single coil pickup and a five-way pickup switching system. The single humbucker model continues to be in production as well.
In 2006, Music Man released a Limited Edition StingRay 5 featuring a five-bolt neck plate, no pickguard, string-through body, and an ebony fingerboard. The same year, MusicMan started using compensated nuts on all their bass and guitar models except the Classic series, after having used them for the Music Man Bongo since 2003.
In February 2008, Ernie Ball switched back to alnico pickups for their Sting Ray 5s, after having used ceramic pickups for this model since 1991. The alnico pickups, which are also found in their four-string counterparts, give the instrument a sound more like a StingRay 4.
Famous quotes containing the words music man, music, man, sting and/or ray:
“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)
“We may live without poetry, music and art;
We may live without conscience, and live without heart;
We may live without friends; we may live without books;
But civilized man cannot live without cooks.”
—Owen Meredith (1831–1891)
“Thus do I want man and woman to be: the one fit to wage war and the other fit to give birth, but both fit to dance with head and feet.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“Not to be cowardly when it comes to our own actions! Not to leave them in the lurch!—The sting of conscience is indecent.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“Colleges, in like manner, have their indispensable office,—to teach elements. But they can only highly serve us, when they aim not to drill, but to create; when they gather from far every ray of various genius to their hospitable halls, and, by the concentrated fires, set the hearts of their youth on flame.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)