Sterling by Music Man Ray34 Left-Handed Electric Bass Guitar  

Excellent fretwork, really solid neck. The front of the headstock matches guitar finish and the back of headstock is gloss finish up to the nut and then satin finish the rest of way to the body, pretty cool and really comfortable to play. No dead spots on the fretboard. The ash body is perfectly finished. The pickup is passive but it has an active preamp with boost and cut for highs, mids and lows and a volume. Six bolt neck plate for no neck shifting at all. Many say it is heavy but mine weighs 9.4 lbs., not heavy at all, it's very comfortable and not neck heavy, very well balanced.

The bass is built very solid, everything fits together really well, and the playability and sounds you can get are second to none. It's very comfortable to play sitting or standing, very high quality. Now for the bad news, when mine arrived there were screws sticking out all over, on the pickguard, jack plate and machine heads, the neck was very loose and would wobble around. I pretty much had to finish putting it together myself and tighten up all the screws. Then I tuned it up and found the string slots in the nut were just starter slots putting the strings way up in the air so I had to grab my nut files and file down the string slots in the nut which should have been done at the factory. The right hand models come with a sticker saying they are set up, inspected and played before they are shipped out, mine didn't have the sticker and I know perfectly well mine wasn't set up, inspected or played. Poor quality control at it's worst, I hope all the leftys are not this way. You can't fault the bass for this, just the company. Once you have it "set up" by a pro if you don't know how to do this yourself, it is an excellent bass.

Awesome bass for the money. I never played a real Stingray so I can't compare them. It is the best bass I have ever played and you can really do a lot with the tones you can get out of it.

You might have to do some "set up" work to it but it will be worth it, so worth it. Excellent bass but the quality control is not there. I just bought a lefty Fender MIM Telecaster and it was the same thing. Maybe that's one reason why the MIA models cost so much more, because they actually finish putting them together. Like I said once you go over it and check that every thing is tight you will be very happy with it.