Some switching mods for Stingray5s and Ray35s

Hi! This is Andrés, from Madrid (Spain), longtime lurker here, longtime Musicman owner too, currently owning 2 Stingray5s (from 1997 and 2003), owned a Sterling5 HS last year and currently also own a SBMM Ray35.

A couple years ago I ran into a MM “inspired” bass from Thomann and after having to rewire it properly (was a gift for the wife and came terribly miswired) I discovered I digged the neckside coil solo tone so decided to try do something to have that as an option in my Stingray5s. Mine have both the 3 coil ceramic pickup, and the center position of the switch is for single+dummy coils. But the coil that makes the sound is the bridgeside coil. So what I did basically is add 2 more wires to the pickup, unlink some stuff there and, by means of a 4PDT switch, swap the sound making coils with each other. Here’s a video with some brief instructions and sound samples.

Now, just a month ago I got this SBMM Ray35 (BTW, amazing quality, feels and sounds SO close to the real thing) for an unrelated Frankenstein I wouldn’t dare attempt on my EBMM Ray 5ers. I had already tried many modern 2coil humbucker equipped SR5s and I didn’t dig the “filtered series” setting at all (not different enough, sort of a more hi-fi series really). This Ray35 suffered equally so I decided to do something about that too. This was simpler and less invasive, I simply added a DP3T switch so that I can turn off either coil (or none, for the stock parallel setting and for the other 2 settings -series- to work).

Link to video with brief instructions and samples (EB forums won’t let me post more than 1 video per post)

There’s also this TalkBass thread where I discuss all mods (including the one I did to the Sterling5 HS I had, to swap coils with one another too). I’m dropping this all here just in case it’s of interest to anybody. Might sound real touchy but if you’re a real Stingray5 freak like me you’ll get the tone varieties. For me these mods added some extra nice and usable tones to mine.