Stingray is series?

[T_Mac]

Hi folks,

I am the proud new owner of a '97 Stingray (4 string, 3 band EQ). This is my first non-Fender bass, BTW, and I have a newbie type question.

I understand that Stingrays are wired in parallel. Is it possible to wire the pickup in series? Or better yet, install a series/parallel switch?

Thanks!

Mac.

 

[Duarte]

It is possible, but probably best to not mod a bass like that.

Or...get a sterling, which has that capability. Each to his own though.

Good job on the 'conversion' amd welcome to 'is 'ere forum!

 

[MrMusashi]

welcome to the forum t-mac!

we are a forum for musicman nuts so you might not get crowd approval for modding your bass we tend to feel its made perfectly from the factory...
however, everything is possible and it is YOUR bass so take it to a good guitar luthier and have him do he mod
our opinions are after all internet opinions... ghehehe

MrM

 

[T_Mac]

Thanks guys.

I'm really liking the balance (due to the 3+1 headstock, I presume). Right hand took all of 30 seconds to get used to. Neck plays like a dream. Tone....well.....it'll take some getting use to

I'm pretty handy with a soldering iron. If it's a simple matter of "remove red and green and solder them together" I could do that.

No biggie, though. I 'll leave it as is, and futz with my amp EQ.

Cheers!

 

[T-bone]

Hey Welcome T-Mac.

You're gonna love that bass. What's more, I'm pretty certain you'll find your tone without plugging in your soldering iron. And if not, well there's Sterlings and Bongos and SSSs, oh my. You'll be gas'n real soon.

tbone

 

[Bobbo 77]

Órale,
A stingray's not a stingray in series..... just my Ol' skool opinion

 

[KHStudio]

Hi all, My first post here.

I have a S/R 5 & like it very much but I NEVER use (or even liked) the sound wired in parallel.
It sounds VERY closed in & "Pingy" & not usable.
Does this sound right?

I was totally shocked when I found this forum & read that ALL the original MM's are set up this way.

I've never heard a 4 string Stingray before so I have no experience to compare it to.

 

[GGK]

Hi all, My first post here.

I have a S/R 5 & like it very much but I NEVER use (or even liked) the sound wired in parallel.
It sounds VERY closed in & "Pingy" & not usable.
Does this sound right?

I was totally shocked when I found this forum & read that ALL the original MM's are set up this way.

I've never heard a 4 string Stingray before so I have no experience to compare it to.

I can only comment based on my experience with the single H-SL, I find the series setting to be a little brighter maybe I little louder than the parallel. At first I really didn't notice too much, but with the new amp I have I do notice this difference.
I think the parallel setting may be a little more boomy or even bouncy if that makes any sense, certainly not "unusable" by any stretch for me.

Edit, forgot to mention the pickups are different in a SL vs SR, so this may be a moot comparison, sorry

 

[bdgotoh]

I've rewired a Stingray to series/parallel with a switch and while it was interesting, it sounded better stock. The pickup is wound to sound right in parallel and is overwound for series - it ended up a lot darker sounding than I wanted.
It's not super straightforward to do, either. You have to change most of the wires around on the pickup do it, and if you want to do series/parallel you have to add a couple of wires.

 

[73jbass]

Listen to anything by Sade. That,to me is a classic Stingray tone.

Hi all, My first post here.

I have a S/R 5 & like it very much but I NEVER use (or even liked) the sound wired in parallel.
It sounds VERY closed in & "Pingy" & not usable.
Does this sound right?

I was totally shocked when I found this forum & read that ALL the original MM's are set up this way.

I've never heard a 4 string Stingray before so I have no experience to compare it to.

 

[five7]

Leave it alone!

 

[oli@bass]

It sounds VERY closed in & "Pingy" & not usable.

Not usable. Exactly.

That's probably the reason why I have so many and ordered even more... desperately trying to find a good one...

 

[Rano Bass]

Hi all, My first post here.

I have a S/R 5 & like it very much but I NEVER use (or even liked) the sound wired in parallel.
It sounds VERY closed in & "Pingy" & not usable.

Welcome aboard.
To each his own i guess, i have never liked the series setting. I sounds very "unRay" to me, not the classic sound that i love.
Good thing we have options

 

[strummer]

Does this sound right?

I would say it sounds unusual, but taste is individual.

 

[jedai rawker]

Yeah, hi, long-time reader, first-time poster. Great question, and the other posters are right (or have a right to their opinion) it is a matter of taste. I think parallel sounds better for rhythm (conventional bass playing), and series sounds better if you prefer to play lead (like lead guitar, except on the bass instead). I like to play the melody more than the accompaniment. . I like lead bassists/singers like tom araya from slayer or sting from the police. Soapbar pickups have two pickups in one, so pardon me if it sounds like I am referring to two separate pickups (but really that's how it is). Parallel is almost like double-tracking, literally, even if on a microscopic phase level. You are taking both pickup signals and blending them together. Series is like using both pickups and using them as one big pickup. Think adding the waveforms on top of each other (stacking), rather than averaging them out together (mixing). Let me try to explain with words:

In parallel, wire A from coil 1 gets put with wire A from coil 2, and wire B from coil 1 gets put with wire B from coil 2. Then your A wire and B wire are output.
In series, wire B from coil 1 goes to wire A from coil 2, kind of making one big coil. And your output is wire A from coil 1, and wire B from coil 2.

I attached a picture I found from a quick google image search

So long story made even longer, I too prefer the sound of series, and yes you can easily change it just by switching some wires around, assuming that you have access to those wires coming out of the pickup(s), and that would be a lot easier than adding a switch and you wouldn't have to modify the externals of your bass.

 

[Mu5icM@n]

The stingray is really designed to sound right with the pickup wired in parallel. The USA Sterling, on the other hand, sounds amazing with its pickup in series, in particular with Ernie Ball Cobalt rounds on it. Marriage made in heaven as far as I'm concerned.

 

[tbonesullivan]

I have a Stingray 5 H with an Alnico Pickup from 2012. It has the three way switch, for Parallel, Series + Filter, and Series. Honestly, I don't notice a major difference in sound with the various modes. Maybe it's due to the design or the preamp, but any difference is subtle. There may be a bit more beef and less edge in series mode, and the "series + filter" is supposed to sound kind of single coil like... maybe. I've never been able to get a real answer on what the filter does.

 

[Boscoe]

I have a Stingray 5 H with an Alnico Pickup from 2012. It has the three way switch, for Parallel, Series + Filter, and Series. Honestly, I don't notice a major difference in sound with the various modes. Maybe it's due to the design or the preamp, but any difference is subtle. There may be a bit more beef and less edge in series mode, and the "series + filter" is supposed to sound kind of single coil like... maybe. I've never been able to get a real answer on what the filter does.

Take with a grain of salt that my experience is more with the vintage StingRay 9V preamp. But what I've found is that the original circuit is designed around a low impedance humbucker (AKA wired in parallel). When you rewire the pickup on that circuit to series, it quadruples the impedance and at full volume it tends to get muddy and boomy on the low end. Makes the pickup seem unbalanced and poorly defined.

I don't know how the circuit on the SBMM Ray4s and Ray24s is laid out, but from casual examination it seems similar, but with a different opamp. I'm pretty sure it has the same issue, and in my experience modding these basses rewiring them to parallel dramatically improves the sound, even with the cheap ceramic pickups. I'm pretty sure the two band EBMM StingRays were using the vintage circuit with the LM4250CN opamps, but I don't know the design of the earlier three band StingRays and SBMM Ray34s. If someone can point me towards a schematic that'd be awesome, I'd love to figure out how it works. Anyhow, I also suspect they would be boomy and unruly in series.

Now, all that said, the new StingRay Specials have a newer preamp with 18V of headroom. I strongly suspect that the preamp has the headroom to handle higher impedance and this may be why people are always of different opinions on series vs parallel with StingRays. It probably sounds a lot better on a Special.

If I'm barking up the wrong tree I'd love to learn more.

 

[Blackened Soul]

I put a nordstrand (didn’t want mess up the original pickup) in my ebmm sub5 (they have the old style 2 band eq) and added a switch for series/parallel, I like the series sound… I don’t find it muddy at all, but, switching back and forth I tend to adjust the bass control when I switch. For me this makes for the ultimate ray..

 

[Boscoe]

I put a nordstrand (didn’t want mess up the original pickup) in my ebmm sub5 (they have the old style 2 band eq) and added a switch for series/parallel, I like the series sound… I don’t find it muddy at all, but, switching back and forth I tend to adjust the bass control when I switch. For me this makes for the ultimate ray..

View attachment 43626

Which Nordstrand? The MM5.2s should be sorta vintage spec (in that there weren't 5s back then) and are low impedance. I suppose I should have also mentioned that the SBMM line has pickups with higher impedance and thus they'd be more likely to overload in serial.