Musicman StingRay Special 5 H Burnt Ends (pre-owned)

StingRay Special 5 H — Burnt Ends, 2023

The StingRay is the bass that put active electronics in working musicians’ hands, and the Special is the version where Ernie Ball went back and rebuilt the whole thing from the inside out. Lighter body contours, a five-bolt sculpted neck joint you can actually play past, stainless frets, a roasted maple neck finished in oil and wax instead of gloss, and a neodymium-loaded humbucker running on 18 volts. Everything that made a StingRay a StingRay, with the parts that used to be a compromise quietly fixed.

This one left the factory in San Luis Obispo on 28 February 2023 in Burnt Ends — a deep two-tone burst that fades from near-black at the edges to bare amber ash in the middle, with a tortoise shell pickguard and chrome hardware. It’s a rosewood-board single-humbucker 5, it weighs 3.85 kg, and it’s in 98% mint condition. If you’ve been waiting for the Special in the one colour that actually looks like an instrument rather than a paint chip, this is it.

Body, Neck & Woods

The body is ash, and on a StingRay that isn’t a spec-sheet detail — it’s the source of the sound. Ash gives you the fast attack, the hard low-mid bark and the tight, focused note that lets a StingRay cut through a loud band without any help from the amp. Burnt Ends is a translucent finish, so you can see exactly what you’re getting: open, straight grain running the length of the lower bout with the burst pulled in just far enough to frame it. The Special’s rounded body contours also make a real difference against your ribs and forearm compared to the older, squarer StingRay body.

The neck is roasted maple, finished in gunstock oil and hand-rubbed wax rather than gloss. Roasting drives the moisture out of the wood, which makes the neck more stable through temperature and humidity swings and gives it a drier, more immediate response. The oil-and-wax finish is the part you notice first: it feels like bare wood, your hand doesn’t stick to it under stage lights, and it never gets that tacky drag a glossed neck develops. The rosewood fingerboard takes a little of the glassiness off the top end and adds warmth without slowing the attack down.

Twenty-two stainless steel frets sit on an 11-inch radius board — flatter than a vintage Fender, so bends and fast lines don’t choke out, and stainless means they won’t wear the way nickel-silver does. The nut is graphite, which keeps the open strings from binding when you tune. It’s a 34-inch scale with a 44.5 mm nut, so strings and setup are entirely standard and the low B still comes back tight, helped by the five-bolt sculpted joint clamping the neck into the body.

Condition

98% mint. This bass has barely been out of its bag — no fret wear, no buckle rash, no finish checking, and the roasted maple neck still has its factory oil-and-wax feel. Everything on it is original, which matters on a Music Man: the neodymium pickup, the 18-volt preamp, the bridge and the tuners are all exactly as they left San Luis Obispo.

Electronics all work as they should across the full range of the EQ and every position of the selector. It comes with the original Mono gigbag and the case candy — registration card and hex keys — and it’s set up and ready to play. Want closer photos of any detail before you commit? Just ask and we’ll send them over.

Electronics, Sound & Feel

The pickup is a Music Man humbucker wound around neodymium magnets rather than alnico. Neodymium is a far stronger magnet, so you get more output and a wider frequency response from the same size pickup — the top end opens up, the bottom stays tight, and the whole thing sounds faster and more three-dimensional than a classic StingRay pickup. It’s still unmistakably a StingRay: that hard, nasal midrange bark is right where it’s always been.

Where the Special earns its name is the three-way selector next to the knobs. In parallel you get the classic StingRay voice — scooped, punchy, the sound on a thousand records. Flick to single coil and the pickup thins out and gets clearer and more vocal, closer to a bridge-position Jazz bass, which is where fingerstyle lines suddenly have room to breathe in a dense mix. Series is the loudest and fattest of the three: thick mids, more output, a genuinely aggressive rock and gospel voice. Three real, usable sounds from one pickup, not three shades of the same one.

The three-band preamp runs on 18 volts rather than the usual nine, and the extra headroom is audible — you can push the bass and treble a long way before anything gets brittle or farts out on a hard slap. Volume, treble, mid and bass, and the mid control in particular is the one to learn: cut it and you have a slap machine, push it and you’re carving out space in a mix that no amount of amp EQ will find for you.

At 3.85 kg this is a light StingRay 5, and combined with the rounded contours and the sculpted neck joint it’s a genuinely comfortable bass to wear for a three-set night. If you want the StingRay bark with a modern neck, stainless frets, real switching options and none of the weight, this is the one — and buying a two-year-old mint example with the original bag saves you a serious amount over the same bass new.