Hello all,
First:
Perhaps the Earnie ball staff will get mad when I tell them I did this, but I hope it is OK. The bass will never be sold to any one, and if it inspected using a magnifier it will be revealed it was not delivered as a Stingray from the factory.
Background:
I tryied out all Stingrays and SUB basses in my local store down town Stockholm a few years ago and came to a conclusion. The Stingrays and SUBs play exaclty the same. The differences are rather related to individual differences and tuning of the basses, fret board material etc, but not related to wheter it is a stingray or a sub. Also, after reading alot about this many others came to the same conclusion. Perhaps the best peaces of wood are not selected for the SUB because of their solid painting. So, I got my self a SUB. The most fantastic base I ever have played. However, I never liked the finish. Solid white body and black neck and head. Did not feal right for me. So I took sand paper and started working on the bass.
Total time and money spent:
10 days, 8 hours effective work.
Perhaps $100. If you buy the right thing the first time $50 will do the job.
What I did:
Disassembled everything, sanded the bass to remove all paint on body and neck. going from paper 80 up to 1200. Oiled the body. The body was done! Assembled it again and test played. Well, it looked better, but no other differences as expected
After this I created a Sting ray logotype. Got a photo of a sting ray head from google, extracted the logotype in photoshop and printed it on a "rice paper" (called Japan paper in Sweden) using a B/W laser printer. When this paper gets in clear paint, it turns transperant, but the laser print remains...
Spent about a week putting on huge amount of clear paint and sanded to get all un-even stuff away about this rice paper to get it look like an original logo. I only put the clear paint on the front of the head knowing that I could never get a factory result on such a large area as the entire neck. Also, I like the oiled-natural feeling on the neck.
Oiled the rest of the neck.
Done.
So I now have a "stingray" that playes like a stingray and looks like a natural oiled stingray. And if it looks like a dog and barks like a dog.. Well...
Will throw in some pictures of the result.
First:
Perhaps the Earnie ball staff will get mad when I tell them I did this, but I hope it is OK. The bass will never be sold to any one, and if it inspected using a magnifier it will be revealed it was not delivered as a Stingray from the factory.
Background:
I tryied out all Stingrays and SUB basses in my local store down town Stockholm a few years ago and came to a conclusion. The Stingrays and SUBs play exaclty the same. The differences are rather related to individual differences and tuning of the basses, fret board material etc, but not related to wheter it is a stingray or a sub. Also, after reading alot about this many others came to the same conclusion. Perhaps the best peaces of wood are not selected for the SUB because of their solid painting. So, I got my self a SUB. The most fantastic base I ever have played. However, I never liked the finish. Solid white body and black neck and head. Did not feal right for me. So I took sand paper and started working on the bass.
Total time and money spent:
10 days, 8 hours effective work.
Perhaps $100. If you buy the right thing the first time $50 will do the job.
What I did:
Disassembled everything, sanded the bass to remove all paint on body and neck. going from paper 80 up to 1200. Oiled the body. The body was done! Assembled it again and test played. Well, it looked better, but no other differences as expected
After this I created a Sting ray logotype. Got a photo of a sting ray head from google, extracted the logotype in photoshop and printed it on a "rice paper" (called Japan paper in Sweden) using a B/W laser printer. When this paper gets in clear paint, it turns transperant, but the laser print remains...
Spent about a week putting on huge amount of clear paint and sanded to get all un-even stuff away about this rice paper to get it look like an original logo. I only put the clear paint on the front of the head knowing that I could never get a factory result on such a large area as the entire neck. Also, I like the oiled-natural feeling on the neck.
Oiled the rest of the neck.
Done.
So I now have a "stingray" that playes like a stingray and looks like a natural oiled stingray. And if it looks like a dog and barks like a dog.. Well...
Will throw in some pictures of the result.
