Hello good folks of this forum!
I recently received my precious Custom Design Music Man StingRay after waiting 3.5 months (which is relatively quick!) and it is absolutely stunning! My girlfriend designed it for me, picked the color of the bass, the hardware and everything… well, see for yourself:
It plays like a dream… sort of.
Occasionally, and without notice, the sound of the bass suddenly changes from the familiar zing of the StingRay to a weird high-end lacking distorted sound… Here are some sound examples:
I suspected it has something to do with the battery box, but replacing the batteries sometimes fixes it and sometimes doesn’t… I really don’t know what to do.
I don’t want to send it back to the states since it’s very costly for me.
Have you folks ever encountered this?
Any help would be appreciated.
Thank you and God bless you all!
You could test your “battery theory” by playing the bass in passive mode for a while and see if the problem still occurs or not.
I understand that you don’t want to send it back to the US, but perhaps a local luthier could be of assistance. It also depends on how confident you are checking electronic connections, solder points etc yourself, and potentially taking those apart and fixing them.
Thanks for the quick reply, @joergkutter!
My bass doesn’t have a passive mode as far as I know, it’s only active…
I have meddled with some of my basses before, replacing electronics etc. but I don’t want to nullify my warranty, and this bass is too expensive for me to risk damaging it
And yes, perhaps I should take it to a local shop, see what they say.
Thanks again!
Well, if you have a warranty agreement, then you almost NEED to send it back if you want to make use of this. Otherwise, if you are interested in a working bass and do not want to send it back, you will have to accept to potentially nullify that warranty agreement.
Doesn’t the existing warranty agreement include the shipping costs for sending it back and forth??
Ah, OK, it’s active only - interesting! I have one bass (Yamaha TRB) which is like this, but it’s also from 2009; I didn’t think there were many of the modern basses that only had an active mode…
Good luck!
By the way, I found it hard to hear any big difference in the two examples you posted (even with headphones)
Yeah I understand completely, I’m just quite conflicted as to how to proceed.
The EBMM warranty agreement states that I should cover the shipping cost to them, and they cover the expenses back to me:
Any material or workmanship determined defective by EB within the one (1) year term shall be repaired or replaced by without charge for parts and labor provided the unit is returned, transportation costs prepaid, to Ernie Ball, Inc. […]. EB will pay shipping costs to return the unit to its owner.
Weird, right? That’s gonna have to do…
And yes, the difference is very small but quite distinctive to my ears, the “bad tone” is missing the so-called glassiness of the Music Man sound.
It seems I’m quite sensitive to sound…
Just to be sure: you do unplug the bass when you’re not playing it, right? This means removing the plug from the output jack on the bass itself. If you don’t do that, it essentially stays powered on, and it will drain the battery quite quickly.
I guess the different circuits have different ways to react to the battery giving up (those are my layman terms for stuff I don’t understand): on most of my basses, the output signal just gets gradually weaker. But on the Yamaha, when the battery is about to die, it starts howling (really bad sound; freaked me out the first time), and instantly turns into an unusable, 5-kg paperweight
Yes indeed, I do unplug after playing. Good point!
I even bought fresh batteries and replaced the ones that came with the bass, to no avail.
It doesn’t matter which batteries are in: it sometimes plays fine, sometimes with the distorted sound. I could guess it’s probably a loose wire or something, but I don’t know.
I have actually, even sent them the sound bites. This forum post is me being impatient
I’m still waiting for a response from them, perhaps they could direct me.
I really like this bass, the best I ever had and the best I’ll ever have… a shame it came with this “bug”.
If you don’t get a response in 2 business days, keep contacting them daily. I would also think if the issue is from their end or perhaps shipping they should cover the shipping or make alternate arrangements to get this assessed and fixed ASAP. If you had a local luthier I would get their opinion of the issue.
Thanks for the advice @Linda!
I am playing through an amp mostly, but the issue persists even when playing directly to the audio interface.
It doesn’t matter what I’m plugged into, the bass keeps making the wrong sound…
I’ve last heard from Music Man on Friday, and since yesterday and today are weekend, I assume they’ll get back to me by tomorrow afternoon, which is my late night - early Tuesday.
We’ll see what happens… thanks for the help and support!
The recordings I posted are with the following signal chain:
Bass (flat EQ) → Amp (flat EQ) → Audio interface → DAW
I also tried it without the computer, straight to an amp, and even directly to my effects pedal that has a phones out jack, and same result.
A bit frustrating, but I hope this will come to a resolution soon enough
It took them a while, but Music Man has finally answered me.
In the meantime, I noodled around with the bass and realized there’s hum coming out of the pickup, which is weird, since it’s supposed to be a “humbucker”, right? That led me to suspect one of the coils of the pickup was faulty somehow.
So today I received the response, and the Music Man team has instructed me to perform a “tap test” - tapping the pole pieces of the pickup with a screwdriver, to see if it responds to electric current.
Lo and behold, I was right! The entire bridge coil was nonresponsive.
So now Music Man will send me a replacement pickup under warranty, which I will use the help of a local shop to install.
Just a few weeks back I sold a Nordstrand MM4.2 pickup that I bought a while ago for a project, thinking I don’t need it anymore since I’m getting the real thing. More fool me!
I will update here once the pickup is delivered and the bass is fully functional again.
Until then, thank you everyone who chimed in and supported!
Owning a Music Man bass was a dream come true for me, and it’s a bummer that mine came with a defect. I was really disappointed the past few days and frustrated to not receive a response from them. With all this, it felt good to know people here are on my side and curious to see how this pans out. Thanks everyone!
Thanks for the update. I hope they pay for you to bring to you luthier.
I don’t know if it is a quality issue or maybe electronics can get messed up with shipping. But that is not your fault. It sounds that Music Man has been pretty good in providing solution. They need to work on their QA and/or shipping practices IMO. I am so happy your dreams are coming true. Good catch and trouble shooting!
