“Start building your dream bass”: Ernie Ball Music Man launches The Custom Design Experience – allowing players to customize every single spec of its StingRay Special bass

Ernie Ball Music Man has launched The Custom Design Experience, giving players their first taste of made-to-order Music Man custom shop builds. 

Described by the firm as an “online custom instrument configurator”, it allows users to personalize their build from a host of spec and aesthetic options, with a 3D model of the build updating with every click.   

On launch, four- and five-string versions of the StingRay Special bass guitar are the only instruments available to spec out, with the builds happening at Ernie Ball's San Luis Obispo, CA, facility.

Other key spec choices include single or double humbucker pickup setups, and regular or SLO Special neck profiles, made from plain roasted or roasted flame maple. 

The fretboards can be made from maple, rosewood, or ebony, with standard dots, black inlays or inlay-free options on the fretted model. For the fretless variants, there are lined and unlined pau ferro fretboards to choose from.  

There is also a whopping 30 finishes on tap, split into Translucent, Bursts, Pearl, Pearlbursts, Satin, and Sparkle options. There's also Black Gloss if option paralysis is too much to bear. 

Finish options extend beyond just the body, with everything from its pickguard to the pickup, pole piece, and hardware colors all customizable to nuance the bass to your heart's – or eye's – desire.

For the headstock, color matching is only available with opaque finishes.

There are four tuning setups (standard, half step down, drop D, and whole step down) and three string gauge options to ensure your bass arrives primed for your needs. After all that, users can then choose for it to come with a Mono or hardshell case. 

Naturally, the price of the final build will vary, but basses start at $2,899. After experimenting, we found that some specs lowered the price to $2,699, while the most expensive build we managed to create was $3,899. 

That included twin humbuckers, a natural gloss finish, roasted flame maple neck, and block inlays. Builds take approximately four to six months and ship worldwide. 

There's no word on whether other bass and guitar models will become available in the future, but we're hoping this is just the first step of many into the custom shop domain for EBMM.

Head to Ernie Ball to get customizing.

EB's Custom Design Experience follows the launch of Fender's Mod Shop, which offers customizable P-Bass and Jazz Bass designs, as well as guitar models.