Music Man Sterling

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The Music Man Sterling is a model of bass guitar designed by the Music Man company. It was named after Sterling Ball, son of Ernie Ball, the founder of the parent company.

This bass weighs 9 pounds, sporting a solid body made from selected hardwoods and finished in high-gloss polyester. The bridge is the traditional Music Man chrome plated, hardened steel bridge plate with stainless steel saddles and an optional piezo feature for acoustic upright-like tones. The standard pickguard colour is either black or white. The Sterling uses a long, 34"-scale length with a maple neck featuring rosewood or maple fingerboard (pau ferro for the fretless variant). Like the other Music Man basses, the Sterling comes with Schaller tuners. The truss rod is adjustable and the neck is bolt-on type with an asymmetrical 5-bolt neck plate. The electronics are magnetically shielded and there's a 3-way switch for coil selection as well as a 3-band active EQ with separate tone controls for treble, middle and bass.

The Sterling differs from the famous Music Man StingRay 4-string bass in that it is lighter, smaller, has a different preamp, uses the "phantom coil" pickup technology and features a thinner neck with 22 frets than 21 actually found on the StingRay. It won 'Most Innovative Bass of 1993" in Musician Magazine. Dave LaRue (of the Steve Morse Band, The Dixie Dregs, and Bruce Hornsby) is a known user, as is Ty Boyd of the Canadian rock band the Blazing Violets. Another notable user is Johnny Christ of Avenged Sevenfold.

The Sterling was created as a 4-string version of the highly popular StingRay 5, which also uses ceramic magnet pickups and a different preamp than the StingRay's alnico magnet pickups. New pickup configurations and 5-way pickup switching debuted in 2005. Music Man has introduced a 5-string version using the same body and pickguard styling as the original 4-string since January 22th, 2008.