Music Man Sterling

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 around nine pounds, sporting a solid body made from selected hardwoods (generally Ash) 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 five-bolt neck plate. The electronics are magnetically shielded and a three-way switch is used for pickup coil selection as well as a three-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 and a selector switch for parallel, single coil, and series pickup coil configurations, uses the "phantom coil" pickup technology and features a thinner neck with 22 frets rather than 21 actually found on the StingRay. It won 'Most Innovative Bass of 1993" in Musician Magazine. Notable users are Colin Greenwood of Radiohead, Dave LaRue (of the Steve Morse Band, The Dixie Dregs, and Bruce Hornsby), Johnny Christ of Avenged Sevenfold, Dougie Poynter of McFly, which has light up led inlays, Andy Stickel of 7 Blue Skies and Roger Manganelli of Less Than Jake, Ado Flowers of Ebony Brown, H'Edin Duranovic of Fall of Reach, Diego D'Agata of splatterpink and Jennifer Young of the Travis Larson Band.

The Sterling was created as a four-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 five-way pickup switching debuted in 2005. Music Man has introduced a five-string version using the same body and pickguard styling as the original four-string since January 22, 2008. On July 24, 2010, Music Man introduced a "Classic Collection" 4 string Sterling featuring a single ceramic pickup wired in parallel, two-band boost/cut EQ, string-through slab body, 7.5" inch fretboard radius, a choice of flamed or birds-eye maple neck with maple or rosewood fingerboard, chrome battery cover, and string mutes.