USA Sterling HH to Stingray Parallel MOD

[Klimax]

I finaly find a way to change the serie wired humbucker to parallel to sound like a Stingray. Usualy, it’s a simple mod but there is some hidden magic in the Music Man pre-amp that caused me a lot of troubles. So I had to do some random stuff.

Tried dpdt switchs to keep both series and parallels functionnal but it was not working. (Phase and coil split hell)

Neck pickup in parallel doesn’t sound that good and I lost 2 of the 5 positions this way.

Anyway the only sound I wanted was bridge in parallel.

Now with that guide, it’s an easy mod to do.

Also had to reverse 2 wire of the neck pickup to avoid phase problems.
I also lowered the neck pickup to have the same output than the parallel humbucker and have more space for slap.
Position 3 is awesome too. Position 4 is a bit noisy as no hum cancelling. Position 2 and 5 will be used for big fat sound with treble cut.

 

[Klimax]

Step 1

 

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Step 2

 

[Klimax]

Step 3 invert neck wires or try the 5 sounds before

 

[Klimax]

I hate MM pickguards

 

[mynan]

IMO, it sounds like you bought the wrong bass. Personally, I like the slightly more aggressive series sound and the two series settings that you have left are ones I would never use. So you may have made your Sterling sound like a Stingray, but you also removed what makes it a Sterling.

 

[Klimax]

IMO, it sounds like you bought the wrong bass. Personally, I like the slightly more aggressive series sound and the two series settings that you have left are ones I would never use. So you may have made your Sterling sound like a Stingray, but you also removed what makes it a Sterling.

Yeah sometimes I think this way. But I have small fingers, I like the feel of this neck and with that used like a New from 2021 I saved 2600$… I wish the dpdt switch worked to keep sterling sound but when I heard the parallel sound, there it was a no brainer for me. That’s the sound I always wanted. The sound in position 3 is cool too, it remembers me the serie filter sound of my SBMM.