25th Anniversary 5 String MusicMan Bass Guitar

Ernie Ball celebrates 25 years with MusicMan. To honor this milestone, EB/MusicMan is offering the 25th Anniversary model bass guitar; an instrument with dramatically different body styling and electronic schemes from their Stingray, Sterling or Bongo lines. This, while retaining the familiar feel and tones expected from an EB/MusicMan instrument.

Consistent features found on this bolt-on design include a choice of 4 or 5 strings, select maple necks, 22 high profile/wide frets, topping a maple or rosewood fingerboard with an 11 inch radius. (Pau ferro fingerboard for fretless, with or without inlaid lines). All 25th Anniversary model bodies are ash, topped with a choice of flamed maple or (for a nominal up-charge) quilted maple, with cream binding. Finish is limited to Venetian Redburst. The familiar headstock of 3+1 on 4-strings, and 4+1 on 5’s is finished to match the body. Pickup configurations include; a single ‘H’ (humbucker in the ‘sweetspot’), an ‘HH’ (dual humbucker) and an ‘HSS’ (3 pickup version with a humbucker at the bridge, a single coil in the middle position, and a single coil in the neck position). Sorry lefties, no left handed models offered. The test instrument is a 5-string, single pickup ‘H’ version, sporting a quilted maple top and maple fingerboard.

Fit and Finish: The instrument arrived in a EB/MusicMan hardshell case, and upon opening, immediately noticed the departure from familiar double cutaway body I was so used to in other models; to an esthetically pleasing single cutaway design, accented by cream colored binding. A careful inspection of the polyester gloss finish, proved to be free of flaws of any kind; body or matching headstock. The Venetian Redburst perfectly complimented the quilts and figuring. The back of the neck is hand finished in gunstock oil and a special proprietary wax blend. Where the body and neck join, the heel has been shaped significantly to ease upper register playing and reducing the ‘hump’ associated with bolt- on axes. The neck is joined to the body with 5 bolts, and is so well mated with the neck pocket on the body, that not even the thinnest of feeler gauges could be slid between the two. A closer view of the fingerboard reveals another exclusive to the 25th Anniversary: the mother of pearl dot markers are encircled/accented in black. This small detail really makes the markers ‘pop out’ visually against the maple fingerboard. Hardware includes the standard MusicMan bridge and custom tuning machines with tapered string posts.

Electronics: This particular ‘H’ configuration is new for EB/MusicMan, but for those associated with the single pickup Stingray model; should not feel trepidation at viewing the controls on the 25th Anniversary for the first time. Two (2) pushbuttons, one for passive/active, the other for series parallel operation; four (4) knobs to tweak, one volume, one passive tone, and (2) stacked controls, one combining high-mid and low- mid, the other combining bass and treble frequencies.

25th Anniversary MusicMan 5 String Bass

Playability and Function: Anytime I get the opportunity to put a new bass through its paces, I generally concede the fact that I’m probably going to have to spend some time ‘re-setting up’ the instrument for action, neck relief, intonation and if need be, change the strings. I have fairly discriminating preferences for how a bass should perform after a proper set up, and the test instrument lived up to my standards. Specifically, the action needs to be low, without buzzing anywhere across the entire fingerboard. This, to me…means a straight neck and a uniform fret job. And an instrument in this price range should be ‘right’. I did feel the need to change the strings from the factory .046-.130 (Regular Slinky Bass #2836) to DR Low Riders .040-.125. While setting the instrument up to my preferences, I noticed it possessed an extremely resonant quality, acoustically. I was getting anxious to plug this bass in! I strapped the bass on and noticed a slight ‘neck dip’, likely due to the lack of an upper horn, changing its balance point. However, the minimal neck-heaviness was not anything that I would see as a problem in extended playing. To test the capabilities of the bass’ tone shaping, the instrument was run through a Sadowsky DI, (preamp disengaged) into a QSC PLX1804 feeding an Epifani UL410. Let me first start by saying…the acoustic qualities of the bass, most assuredly carried over into tone and resonant qualities when plugged in. With controls set completely flat, the bass sounded round and even across all strings; that includes a solid B-string and no dead C/C# on the G-string! I really enjoyed the first play of this instrument, from string spacing to neck profile…it was all good.

Okay, it plays great…but how does it sound? I’m assuming most of the readers of Bass Frontiers are fairly educated and have a basic understanding of what a single pickup MusicMan ‘sounds’ like, so I’ll save you the time of re-reading the same subjective descriptions of countless reviews on Stingrays/Sterling’s. However, it is important to mention; comments regarding the 25th Anniversary are based on an A/B comparison with a 2001 EB/MusicMan Stingray model; 5-string with a maple fingerboard and single mid control. Rather than compare and contrast two instruments; both having very similar tone qualities, I would like to use this space to review the affect of the added features on the 25th Anniversary, starting with the push buttons. Personally, I don’t see much of a rationale for an active/passive button. With the instrument set flat, I found the only difference between passive and active was output. I also thought to myself, if you’re not a fan of the EB/MusicMan preamp and its tone shaping qualities; why would you consider an instrument whose quintessential character IS and always has been in its preamp and ability to shape tone? Push button #2…series/parallel; most likely you’ll have a preference for one (the thicker, mid-range bump of the series) or the other (the tamer mid-range dip; parallel mode). A feature I really like; though it’s very subtle on the 25th Anniversary, is the passive tone control. This simple tone shaping component is the answer to those that may have grumbled about the MusicMan’s lack of warmth or brittleness on the top end. Roll this control back a ¼ to a ½ turn and you’ll notice the difference in the 1.5 to 2K spectrum. The stacked, high-mid/low-mid pot, are a welcome addition to those that prefer a midrange control onboard. Being more a ‘3 knob’ kind of guy…I can only see myself using this feature as a ‘cut only’ option to eliminate certain ‘honks’ from time to time. The stack knob inherently controls (individually), a wider range of frequencies and is an improvement over the single mid control. With a plethora of controls, one would think problems would arise in a live situation, but I had the occasion to use the 25th Anniversary at a recent rehearsal and found no difficulty whatsoever in finding ‘the sound’ and making changes to suit the material, without having to touch the preamp on the amplifier.

Overall, this is quality, well crafted player. Starting with its acoustic quality; an instrument that sounds good unplugged has got a pretty good chance of sounding good when plugged in. This is a versatile instrument; capable of tackling any style of music or venue; through playability, esthetics, tone shaping potential and a well established brand you can trust for customer service, and let’s not forget a measure of prestige onstage. This versatility and quality comes with a price; the test model carries a suggested list of $3,750 (with a street price roughly 30% less). Not cheap, but for those seeking an instrument in the $2,000-$3,000 range, the EB/MusicMan 25th Anniversary is an excellent consideration.