Sterling Ray 34 electric bass guitar – Review
Wednesday, December 23rd, 2009Over the past several months I’ve been struggling with my bass guitar tones when recording, fighting with amp sims and trying out every combination of preamp and DI, finally coming to the conclusion that it was largely the bass that was really holding me back from getting the sounds I’m looking for. The bass I had been using for the past year or two was an Ibanez SR 500, a mid level bass, Mahogany neck and body, rosewood fingerboard and active Bartolini pickups. A nice easy to play bass, but what it was missing is some excitement for lack of a better term.
I guess I can define excitement in a bass guitar as plenty of punch, growly mids and highs, a controlled low end and dynamically responsive. When I’m recording I want as much excitement as possible.
One of the characteristics of Mahogany and Rosewood (read all about guitar tonewood here) is a compressed midrange and reduced highs. That was really working against me in the worst way. So Mahogany was out, and possibly Rosewood fingerboards as well.
Time for a change. That bass went up on Craigslist and was quickly sold. I went down to my local independent guitar shop, The Guitar Shop and started playing everything. I was open to anything not made from Mahogany. I tried several Fender & Squire Jazz basses, a Squire Classic Vibe P-Bass, a Yamaha BB414 (Actually quite good for the price too), almost all of which would be an improvement tonally, but perhaps not in quality. Then I noticed a couple Sterling basses. Sterling is the new, more affordable line of basses and guitars from Music Man. Music Man makes some seriously badass basses, but they can be pricey. The Sterling line is assembled in Indonesia and inspected in America, this allows them to use quality parts for half the cost.
In the shop there were two very similar basses, they were both Ray 34 models (MM Stingray design), one was black with Rosewood fingerboard, and the other was a natural clear gloss finish with Maple fingerboard. Same price. The Ray 34 model has a single massive humbucker, Volume, 3 band active EQ (High, Mid, Low with center detents). Tonally they fairly were similar, but the natural finish one was a couple pounds lighter and had a touch more excitement. With Swamp Ash I think it’s better to go with lighter (lower on the tree). After going back and forth between those two and the Yamaha I made my decision, made a deal and walked away with the Ray 34 Natural.
It looks just like that, but the color is just a shade lighter, less yellow. Because this is an import model you’re probably guessing that there are some quality or quality control concerns. Well there are, but in this case there are only two very small issues with this particular bass.
As with many brand new guitars the fret edges (especially in the winter) stick out a bit and had to be filed down. They did this at the store for me free and most shops will do this for you if you ask.
The second minor issue was a couple of the screws for the tuners are not in fully and the screw heads are stripped. I don’t think this will affect anything as nothing is loose.
Very minor things IMO. You will want to try these out because the density, weight and tone of Swamp Ash can vary quite a bit.
Included with the bass is a soft gig bag, padded and faux fur lined and 3 hex keys.
Alright, to bring this long post to an end. This bass is SWEET/SICK/AWESOME/ADJECTIVE/CAPSLOCK really it is. A massive improvement.
I highly recommend this bass for recording. Most people will say Fender P bass or Jazz bass…NO, get this one. LOL
Note – This review is after just 1 day owning the bass. I’ll update if I run into any problems or change my mind about it. I’m having a ton of fun with it so far.
Any questions?
