Well here she is, my brand new Transparent Gold Stingray 5. I used to shy away from Ernie Ball's unfinished maple boards as they can get dirty and are hard to clean but there is no denying how good this bass feels and sounds.
The back story is that I had ordered a Gibson Midtown bass in sunburst back in December from the the big Canadian retail music store chain and six months later there was no sign of the bass and no ETA was available from Gibson. The guys at the shop managed to locate a single lefty in the cherry color and since there was no sign of the other one ever appearing, I asked them to bring it in. It arrived a week ago and was a huge disappointment. So many little things were messed up that I was forced to return it and pretty much give up on the Midtown as there were no other lefty's in the country to replace this disaster of a bass. Things like bare spots in the finish, bad grounding, right handed pots and believe it or not, a hole on the bottom horn where a strap pin had been installed, filled in and sprayed over. It was really a bad example of an American built instrument.
Upon returning the bass, I asked the salesman to search their chain wide inventory for other lefty basses and this SR5 was sitting in the warehouse. It had been ordered for store stock and was not on hold for anyone, so I decided to go for it sight unseen. Could not be happier. The Alnico pickup sounds fantastic and is a nice change from my other SR5 that's equipped with a ceramic pup. She cost a bit more then the Midtown and is a totally different type of bass, but I am smitten!
