Question Maybe this is a dumb question but...

[jlepre]

...why was the Stingray 5 designed with a different pickguard than the 4 string OVAL version?

I know it's irrelevant now, but I have always wondered why the new design?

My guess is they wanted a clear difference from the 4 string OVAL guard, but why?

 

[TheAntMan]

I've always wonder that also!

--Ant

 

[drTStingray]

Me also - I'm sure I read that they based it on the Silhouette guitar but always wondered why no oval pickguard

 

[rizzo9247]

Me also - I'm sure I read that they based it on the Silhouette guitar but always wondered why no oval pickguard

routing aesthetics perhaps

 

[drTStingray]

routing aesthetics perhaps

Possibly - but surely a chrome control plate could have been designed to cover the space if they'd wanted to. All that said I still love my SR5 as it is

 

[Movielife]

Ive always preferred the unusual SR5 guard. It sets it out from the Ray 4s.

 

[TheAntMan]

routing aesthetics perhaps

Yeah, I realize it is to cover the routing but why not route it like they did on the SR4s? Surely they can do so since the 4HH SR4s don't have this issue.

Just curious as to why. Maybe is was a cost factor at the time. Oh, well, I am sure the answer will bubble up

--Ant

 

[SightInjection]

If you want a Stingray5 that looks like an SR4, get Classic SR5. That thing has the oval pick guard, and the chrome control plate. Your wildest dreams have officially come with EBMM.

 

[danny-79]

If i remember rightly it was based around the Silhouette guitar body style wise, an was made to look different from the SR4 to set it apart as something different an not just a Stingray that had had an additional low B slapped on it.

 

[Smallmouth_Bass]

Yup, it's a Silhouette shaped bass (and what a nice shape it is!).

 

[five7]

If you want a Stingray5 that looks like an SR4, get Classic SR5. That thing has the oval pick guard, and the chrome control plate. Your wildest dreams have officially come with EBMM.

or a sub 5

 

[Chuck B]

yepp - different bass with a well known name...

 

[jlepre]

Thanks for all the replies. Just to clear something up, I wasn't asking how I could get an SR5 with the SR4 look. I was asking WHY was the pickguard design so different from the SR4?

I was hoping for a more specific reason, but I guess it seems that it was designed arount the Sillouette guitar.

 

[bovinehost]

Thanks for all the replies. Just to clear something up, I wasn't asking how I could get an SR5 with the SR4 look. I was asking WHY was the pickguard design so different from the SR4?

I was hoping for a more specific reason, but I guess it seems that it was designed arount the Sillouette guitar.

I seem to remember BP talking about it being the first bass they - he and Dudley - had designed from the ground up. Leo, in other words, had nothing to do with it, so there was probably a desire to set it apart from those basses that had remained from the 76-79 period.

It was, in fact, a bass designed around the Silhouette look.

The pickguard? Not sure we've ever got an in-depth answer on that particular design but it's always interesting to me how it divides people into camps. Until the intertubes, I never thought about it much one way or the other. It was the pickguard on the SR5. *shrugs*

 

[danny-79]

The pickguard? Not sure we've ever got an in-depth answer on that particular design but it's always interesting to me how it divides people into camps.

This is very true

 

[Holdsg]

I bet so many people so closely identify MM with the oval PG, that the SR5 PG just doesn't sit well with them. I don't, but I can understand where they are coming from.

 

[b-unit]

I love the SR5. Everything about it, including the pick guard. It just makes the bass so recognizable.

 

[Norm66]

I didn't know that the SR5 wasn't just a SR4 with a low B slapped on and was built from the ground up by BP. That's really cool. Learn something new around here every day.

 

[cellkirk74]

Wasn't the SR5 supposed to be named 'Sterling', but they decided to make it a Stingray for marketing reasons?

It was a completely different bass with the ceramic magnets in the early years.