GUITAR OF THE MONTH
1976 Music Man
StingRay Prototype
“Old Smoothie”
BY CHRIS KIES
In 1971, Tom Walker and Forrest White—two former Fender employees—approached Leo Fender
about starting a new company. They launched
the company as Tri-Sonic, and after a few more
name changes, settled on Music Man in early
1974. Initially, Music Man specialized in building
hybrid amplifiers constructed with both tube
and solid stage technology like the Sixty Five.
In 1975, Fender’s “no-compete” legal restriction mandated by CBS in 1965 expired and they
started using exclusive guitar and bass models
through Fender’s CLF Research. When developing the first StingRay basses for Music Man, Leo
relied on a young-and-up-coming star Sterling
Ball—son of Ernie Ball—to test the instruments,
work with R&D, and deal with artist relations.
for being one of the first Music Man instruments ever built, but also because it now can
be seen as a torch-passing moment between
Leo Fender and Sterling Ball—current owner
and CEO of Ernie Ball Music Man.
The bass shown here is an early Music Man
StingRay bass prototype custom built for Ball
in 1976. Not only is this historically significant
It has an ash body finished in a 3-tone sunburst
that has aged to a deep chocolate brown around
the edges. The neck is a one-piece maple with a
walnut stripe down the back and bullet truss rod
adjustment on the headstock. It has the original
string-through-body bridge with ferrules on the
back and adjustable bridge mutes. The unique
feature of the bass is the pickup, which was fab-
ricated using two StingRay bass pickup covers,
cut and rejoined to form a pickup with five pole
pieces in each coil. The pickup is mounted with
each string placed between two pole pieces,
which are the original 3/8" diameter Alnico V
rod magnets. The preamp is the original Music
Man 2EQ active preamp. And Dudley Gimpel,
Ernie Ball Music Man’s production manager
and master luthier, says the iconic bass’ cool
nickname is Old Smoothie, because “its sound
is very fat and smooth, with the typical punch
of the StingRay, but a little more subdued and
much mellower tone.”
A special thanks to Dudley Gimpel and Ernie
Ball Music Man for the opportunity to feature
this fine instrument and its story.
Have an axe that would make a great Guitar of
the Month? Then email pics and your instrument’s
story to us at gotm@premierguitar.com.
