Look what the mailman brought me for my Sterling SUB Ray 4.
More to follow. 
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Ordered parts for my pedal board today. Will just have two pedals for a while, a zoom pedal for drum beats and a tuner ( which I also ordered today)
Will provide the details later, just a step in the journey.
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Perfect plan IMO!
Are those Hereck pick ups?
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You will like that one, I love it.
It is wired in paralell, like real stingrays are.
The stock pick up os wired in series, one of the reasons it doesn’t sound really good. it is good for a $300 bass, considering you are trying to mimic a $2500 bass, but the pick up swap, is really good to get more of a stingray sound. and you can even do it in any pick up that is wired in paralell, or if it can be either or, and you put it in parallel.
So, there are pick ups that are less that the Aguilar that will work pretty good.
Not as good as the Aguilar IMO, cuz I think it sounds awesome.
Yeah, I see the logo. I want some in Orange and White.
Do you pay the extra $8 or $20 for the color upgrade, or if you order the pick up can you just choose the color you want?
Cuz I would like to just order the Orange ones to put on my Aguilar pick up, but IDK how easy that would be, things are attached inside pretty good, so IDK how much ripping out of things would have to be done.
I like the green and red colors, they are cool. Christmas has past, but the colors of each on their own are nice.
Which pick up did you get, the ones that can be wired in 8 different phases?
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Yeah, the pick guards are a joke, especially when they realize most people are upgrading these typs of custom pick guard on $300 basses, or fix er uppers, so they are missing the mark trying to mark up so high.
If I were to do it over, I would start with a Ray4, and do those Herrick Pick ups, and a pick guard, and leave the pre-amp alone, then I would pay for all hip-shot tuners and drop tuner (in black) and then an upgraded bridge in black, and black knobs from Music Man, and then get a black aluminum control cover and be done with it.
Blue Bass with Orange or white pick up and maybe orange or white strings, black hardware and the orange strap, with the diamond Plate pick guard.
SICK
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Hey @T_dub, I didn’t go for the 8 coil in the end,just because I couldn’t imagine how the switching would work.
What I have instead is one pickup in alnico 5 and one in neodymium, I will not have the sound a real stingray has but I think it will be an interesting blend between a sterling,stingray and a bit of bongo wit the neodymium at the bridge.
I’m keeping the 5 way selector as it is. Can’t wait to hear the sounds.
Regarding the covers,the best thing to do is to write Martin @ heerickpickups an email, he is great to talk to always ready to reply to any questions and seems a top bloke.
He gave me a great discount, packed in a free funky T shirt and what’s most important- he really knows his stuff.
I don’t think you can go wrong with him.
He even got me in touch with another tech wizard who builds his own parametric preamp ala Wal,which I didn’t go for in the end ,because I feel it would be too much for me to figure out atm, but he was a top man too.
I have made progress regarding the vynil pickguard covers,but don’t celebrate just yet.
One local car wrap place has finally got back to me, but from the initial exchange I don’t think I’d be saving any money, compared to the already existing options.
The problem is that I want good quality vinyl and although the pickguard is small and the job simple,I’d have to buy a minimum of a meter length of said vynil( you can usually get 1m x half of master roll,which would roughly work out as 1m x 630cm) and just that alone is about £30…then I’d have to pay them to apply it…
Option two is printable white vinyl ,but without a vector file for their cutter they would have to figure that one out themselves,which of course they can do without any issue,but it would cost more to have to involve the design/graphics person and the applicator guy…
But I really want to go crazy yellow on the pickguard and black for the control plate…hopefully I’ll figure it out by ordering the vinyl online somewhere, but the quality of it differs wildly.the good stuff is pricey.
I like you colour choices! And I’m thinking the same with the tuners,but I already have a black hipshot droptuner and I like the contrast of 3 chrome and one in black. The bridge unfortunately hasn’t got a cheap option to be replaced nor painted(chrome doesn’t like paint) ,so I might just leave it as is.
Oh I forgot- Martin didn’t charge me extra for the covers! Drop him a line here: [martinherrick.com@gmail.com]
By some strange coincidences and late night googling sessions I ended up getting a discount for a preamp made by Basslab in germany…so that’s on the way here too! It’s an interesting bit of kit:
https://basslab.de/bassxx-preamp-elektronics/
but i think I have completely moved away from getting more of a stingray sound by going with it. Hopefully I didn’t mess up.
So mutantray it is from now on!
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I believe the new Ernie Ball Music Man Stingrays use this now.
The bridge pick up in parallel IS THE STINGRAY SOUND, but you have more options with the pre-amp, and if it is a 5 way, you will get the same paralell / series / neck / bridge selections. if you got some crazy 8 way pre-amp selector, then I guess you can take your sound a long way. LOL
Sounds cool, love the color choices. can’t wait to see / hear her.
Aguilar AG 4M pickup is now installed on my Sterling SUB Ray 4.
Installation was pretty simple - swap the pickup and solder two leads. It’s not even necessary to remove the pickguard, although I did anyway.
Tone is greatly improved as expected. I hadn’t thought of the stock pup as muddy sounding, but this is a whole lot cleaner, especially the E string.
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Looking great! Love that pickguard!!!
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Yes, both because it is a quality pick up, and also because it is wired in parallel, like all Stingray’s, except the Sub Ray4 and Ray24.
I do love that pick up, same one i have. And try to pry this bass from my hands.
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That is a great upgrade. I see you have flatwounds as well, how is that working out with this new pick-up?
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Just an update on the pickguard saga- just returned from a car body shop,they are very happy to spray it,quality of work is there,colour choice is unlimited…but…you wouldn’t get any change from £100!
So mine is staying white! I give up 
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That is crazy, don’t they know what it is for? sems like they would give a Covid Discount, or you could find somebody that is getting shorted hours that would do it over break for a 20 or something.
Oh well, one day the world will listen and give us better options for pick guards.
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I’d just spray paint it and finish with a few thin coats of a good clear coat lacquer. Let it dry hanging 12-24h between coats.
Something like Testors or Tamiya paint used for models should work. You probably want to very lightly sand the thing with finishing sandpaper first.
You could always buy a cheap pickguard on ebay or something and practice on it if you are nervous 
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Yeah I was hoping the fella would rather have some money than no money. The price is the paint- they can mix up a minimum of 100ml for their gun and the price of that alone was 60…plus the plastic primer and lacquer.
He said that you could probably do around ten of the pickguards with that amount of paint though…it just didn’t make sense for one.
@howard yeah I’ve been thinking the same. I asked the fella about it and he went story mode into how it wouldn’t compare etc…which I believe ,but it also wouldn’t be a hundred quid!
There are options,just seemingly very few and far between,especially on the two humbucker side.
I had a good look at the pickguard when it was off and DIY vinyl wrap wouldn’t look great.
Oh well, white for now…I’ll spend the money on more lessons/courses instead
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Yeah, for that much money you can get an artist to do a custom art pickguard for you… I think I’d do what howard is suggesting if it bugged me.
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