STERLING BY MUSIC MAN SUB RAY5 BASS
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STERLING BY MUSIC MAN SUB RAY5 BASS

SBMM SUB RAY5-BK copy ONLINE.jpg

 

EVERYBODY LOVES RAY

The Ray5 is avail­able in three colours: Black (BK), Wal­nut Stain (WS), andHBS, which looks to be a sort of ‘honey burst’ sun­burst. Whichever colour you select, the heart of the instru­ment is a solid hard­wood body. Ster­ling doesn’t spec­ify what kind of hard­wood it is, and it’s pretty heavy despite the website’s spiel about light, airy bodies.

The maple neck fea­tures a rose­wood fret­board on the WS and HBS mod­els, and maple on the BK. And all the key Music Man fea­tures are present and accounted for: the split 4/1 tun­ing key lay­out; the cool bev­el­ling, the pro­pri­etary bridge design that adds mass and increases the amount of metal mak­ing con­tact with the body for bet­ter string energy trans­fer; the sturdy six-bolt neck joint. Even the neck pro­file feels unmis­tak­ably Music Man-derived. The lone hum­buck­ing pickup looks just like the ‘real deal’ Music Man model. It has two rows of large mag­netic pole pieces for a wider mag­netic field, and its three-screw adjust­ment gives you greater con­trol over its angle and height so you can bet­ter match the string angle and ensure con­sis­tent out­put from string to string. The pickup is joined to a Vol­ume con­trol and a two-band active EQ (Tre­ble and Bass, each capa­ble of boost­ing or cut­ting its selected fre­quency). Bat­tery access is through an eas­ily acces­si­ble com­part­ment in the back.

 

PLAYTIME

Like the Ray34, the Ray35’s playa­bil­ity is excep­tional, not only for a bass in this price range but for a bass in gen­eral. A big part of this is the fret­work. It’s totally flaw­less in terms of the fret ends, which plays a big role in enhanc­ing playa­bil­ity. The frets aren’t quite as nicely fin­ished as on the Ray4 we reviewed (these ones poke over the edge at the B string side just a lit­tle bit, which could be the result of the wood set­tling after man­u­fac­ture). This bass has a really nice nat­ural tone, which trans­lates well to the plugged-in sound. The nat­ural tone is a lit­tle lower in tre­ble detail than the Ray4, and this gives it a lit­tle more punch and oomph. The EQ gives the hum­bucker a wider range of sounds than would oth­er­wise be avail­able, includ­ing great slap/pop sounds, and you can get some nice deep ‘dubby’ tones by turn­ing the bass up and the tre­ble down. It also helps that you can use the pre­amp to restore and enhance that nat­u­rally lower tre­ble content.

 

GIMMIE FIVE

This is a killer bass for begin­ning five-stringers, gui­tarists who want a bass for record­ing and mess­ing around with, or even as a backup for more sea­soned play­ers. Budget-priced instru­ments have come a long way in the last decade or so, and although close inspec­tion reveals hints here and there that this isn’t a US-made Music Man, the faith­ful­ness to the key points of the design com­bines with a build qual­ity that far exceeds price.

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