Marlin Stingray

no idea where it came from or how long ago. Judging by the aging of the neck id say early 80's. Mine has the classic strat 3 single coils, 5 way selector, 3 knob layout. Great guitar.
Fitted mine with a killswitch and was going to replace the pots, only to find they were all 500k alphas. Needless to say i didnt bother.

i play everything from blues to hard rock and it seems to suit everything really.
I use plenty of different over-drives (peppermill, red llama etc) and a few fuzzes (Big Muff, Coloursound) and it seems to work well with everything.
Second setting on the toggle (bridge and neck) seems to work best for me. Has the most amount of bite and kick to play chords and solos.
Very bright sound overall, but cranking the bass on the amp generally leads to a gorgeous sound
I have unwired the neck pickup so i can get rid of the tone pots (bypassed em and broke the bridge pickup i should say) but the rest of the electrics are unaffected and sound as great as ever.

I use a FAL Phase 50 amp through a Peavey cab. I also use an "edited" 1x8 cab for treble boost, and it performs amazingly.

As a side note, this thing works great with octavia pedals (green ringer especially). Neck pickup, lower the tone - instant haze.

Bought the guitar second hand from Ebay and the previous owner had set it up rather well already. The intonation is still out; not got round to setting it up in the 3 years i've had it.
Pickup height i adjusted myself, i like to get the best tone possible.
The bridge is pretty much a fender sync. bridge. I run it with 3 springs but rarely use the vibrato anyway.
Action i have extremely low running mid gauge strings (usually 10's or 11's) and it copes with very little buzz.

The finish on mine is absolutely screwed; but i did that myself.
I hate clean guitars, so i doubt mine would appeal to many people - almost hendrix-esque.
As i said, second hand so im not sure bout factory specs.

Played it live time and time again with no issues. Solid wood, lovely sustain.
The pots and switching are immaculate and the "cheap" pickups are so much warmer than any i've heard before. Much prefer them to fender ones.
The finish on mine is already worn to the bone through excess playing, and the neck is bare wood. Just the way i like it.
I reinforced one of the strap buttons with a bigger screw and "custom" strap-lock (actually just an oversized washer).
Its the only guitar id look to use live - i have an epiphone SG which is far too top heavy, another awful strat copy and a Wesley guitar which i like very much; but its the first one id take with me.

Well i have no idea where the guitar came from, who made it or anything.
They are solid dependable guitars and the most they will ever need is a string change and proper setting up (action and intonation)

You dont need customer service - any music shop can point you in the right direction for parts if you require them.

best guitar i've ever owned. Best i've ever played - no competition.
The body is very light to my feel, and has a much thinner coat of poly than a fender (a good thing - more resonance and more sustain), the neck is well bolted and the joint is tight, the pickups are warm yet bright, the electrics are top notch, i could go on forever.
I absolutely adore my Marlin.

I sanded the gloss off it, carved stars into it and called it "Marl" - its the only male lover i ever want.

In my eyes i cant compare it to anything. Its cheap, its very well made, excellent quality and great sound.

Buy one, have someone set it up properly and love it like you should.

Korean, probably Samick made, bought new in 1986. Early attempt at Super Strat style. Thick, sparkly dark red paint job on a seriously HEAVY solid plywood body. Two robust, felt-padded strap hangers.

Passive, generic 'Marlin' H-S-S pups each seperately switched. Also, bridge humbucker is tapped and switched. (So, four micro switches.) Two volume pots (HB + S,S), one tone pot.

22 medium frets, 25.5" scale, flattened 'D' profile neck with dark wood fretboard and stripe on neck, reverse-side. Strat-style floating trem with individual string height and intonation adj. Chromed locking nut assembly and 2 long screws plus bar string tree behind the nut. Six in-line, chromed Gotoh-style machine heads.

Six, innovative (then) but clunky chromed micro-tuner screws. Pearloid position dots and customary Marlin silhouette at 12th fret. Chromed carrier for 2 Allen keys next to machine heads.

I'll play anything I can get my head and hands around. Amazing range of switches and settings on offer so, sounds limited only by my (same vintage) Peavey Decade 10W amp, lack of effects processor, stunningly buzzy and weedy, (i.e. utterly devoid of any prescence) pick ups and my skill level.

For years, none of which bothered me in the least because this was my first electric guitar, it looked the DBs, my playing was 'flaky' but improving, I didn't know how to set up an electric guitar (or, even, that I needed to) and besides, selecting the humbucker and setting the amp to '11' on distortion seemed a simple cure to all these issues.

Now, I have a balding head, the 'nous' and tools to do my own set-ups, some filthy-lucre, buzz-free amps (Crate 100W head, 200W S+W speaker unit and Peavey Transtube 30W combo), a Zoom processor/ pedal unit, etc., etc. and (sometimes) a grown-up's control of the volume knob so, when I picked it up again recently, it finally dawned on me that despite its age this Marlin plank is actually a 'kin amazin' piece of kit.

The neck and middle pups still buzz like a nest of angry sex-starved wasps but I have to admit that with some added noise cancellation and the volume under control, the range of tones, resonances, harmonics and sustain on offer is 'wicked' as they say these days...

Except for the limitations of the two, still weedy middle and neck pups, it can 'do' the lot.

As I said, it did and still does look the DBs but, it was and still is still a cheap plank. The woodworking is exemplary but, out of the box the frets were so poorly finished that their edges protruded ffrom the bottom edge of the fret board and 'kin cut the insides of my fingers.

Kind of a result really. Boy, did I learn quickly to shape my left hand 'properly' and apply my finger tips to the strings at the classical 90 degrees!?

Filing the offending frets and tapping them with a 'toffee' hammer hasn't really fixed them so, it's still too risky to slur back and forth between frets with the 5th and 6th strings depressed with one fat, flat finger...

It cannot cope with 10's. In standard tuning, the bridge is raised so high that the trem arm scrapes the tops of the pots. (Ok, ok, I'll fit more and stiffer trem springs one day but, the claw screws are at their limit and besides, it's way easier to maintain the intonation and height by just fitting 9's.)

I tried raising and lowering the weedy pups many times... result? No change with the buzzing, of course, certainly louder, audible (i.e. irritating) picking noises and still no 'kin prescence.

When I was young, brash and spottily hormonal I did play this thing live. But, I paid my own cash for it so, I looked after it like an obsessive compulsive would. Also, I only got around to buying a secondhand Jackson Performer about three years ago (2006). So, meantime, the Marlin has had a lot of playing, and string wiping.

23 years later, after a polish and except for a few barely visible chips, still looks as it did. (Amongst other climates it's lived in Germany, Cyprus and the Outer Hebrides - often uncovered and stood upright against a bedroom wall and never in anything but a padded bag.) The neck is as straight and flat as it gets, the truss rod still works and most of the chrome still looks shiny, if a bit pitted here and there.

The locking nut assembly is made of chrome-plated chewing gum. Meantime, the locking screws are black hardened steel Allen screws. A baby could strip these locking nuts but, no need, despite excelling during my engineering apprenticeship, I did it all by myself, all too 'kin easily.

The six trem cover screws have rusted and recently took ages to get out. The heads are now 'ked and all of them need replacing. The three pots have no dead spots and don't scratch. The switches still operate positively and work without clicks and bangs. The strap hangers work ok and still look like new including the, still white, felt.

Hmmm... I guess it's a shame what happened to those Welsh importers all those years ago. But Samick are still around, though I've never contacted them.

Someone else said this in a previous review but, I too have found it's true. Every guitar tech (and many players) I've met admires the 'charm' of these things.

All up, I've been learning to play on-and-off since I was 14. About forty years ago. I own loads-a-music-kit. So much that it's become a boring, familiar and easy win for my wife to beat me up with it everytime: we're short of cash or, have visitors who might want to eat in the music room (aka the 'dining' room) or, she gets the guilts that she hasn't run the vacuum cleaner around the place lately.

Apart from the amps and electronics (some already mentioned) I have an Ibanez Prestige 1570, a Jackson Performer, an Eko Ranger 12 string acoustic, a Peavey Predator (fitted with Ibanez INF3 & INF4 pups), a Tanglewood 'Les Paul' clone, an ESP Ltd Hybrid 300, an original (Made In Italy) Eko 6 string semi acoustic and a Peavey 6 string acoustic.

The Sidewinder's weedy pups got the better of me and I swapped them all out recently for an Ibanez HB and two Super 7's from a 1986 RG440. Same vintage but what a different quality league? The same variety of switchable sounds, now with piercing presence and, through a modern amp, NO NOISE whatsoever.

Throughout, I scored this review not for what it was when I bought it but for what I came to realise about this curious gem of a plank and before I changed the pups.

If it was stolen I would be 'kin-moody-and-deeply-unapproachable-for-days because I think there's a good chance that, when they're sufficiently rare, it will dawn on someone that good quality examples of these 1980's Marlin's should be collectible.

White Stingray, 1987/88, S/S/H, Coil tap and 3 on/off switches.
Black Hardware, Locking nut,rose wood "stained" finger board, Ply Body.

Didn't sound too bad from what I can remember.

Don't even go there buddy boy!
The humbucker with misaligned and turned slightly sideways and the neck was like a dogs hind leg.
Bowed and warped beyond any setting up.

All Marlin Hardware is very cheap tin-like metal which is hollow.

Shut up!!!!!!!!!!

Unplayable crap.

Standard Strat copy, with 22 fret neck and really low action.The rosewood neck is lovely to play, really easy to bend and slide on, even if i did hav to fiddle with it a bit in order to get rid of the occasional buzz. The s/s/h pickups are selected with 4 induvidual switches, meaning that you can have everything off or everything on, and can even split the humbucker by turning 1/2 of it off. The tremolo system is the only thing that lets the whole thing down, it appears tto be Marlins own Floyd Rose copy, but it only locks at the head, meaning that unless you have either some really chunky strings on there or are prepared to wait about 5 days to let thin ones strech in then it goes out of tune as soon as you look at it. The tuners are okish, as long as you keep them in the middle setting, as they get a bit tochy towards being too tight or loose. One other thing - it weighs a ton, it is about twice as heavy as my other electric (a 12-string yamaha Pacifica)so not too good for extended playing without a comfortable strap...

With the huge chouve of pickups available with the four seperate selector switches the range of sounds you can get, especially with the replacement humbucker, is great. Even through my crap Hohner Rockwood 10watt practice amp with one of the volume controls it sounds great. With the Humbucker on the volume you can get out of this thing is incredible, and all the way to the top it sounds fine. the only problem is that when going between the humbucker and the single pickups the difference in volume is a but too pronounced.

Since I got this when my Dad died i have no idea how it was set up at the factory, i did have to sort ot teh neck, since it was nastily twisted, but that only took a few minutes with a screwdriver. I have my suspicions that Dad did some home made changes on the humbucker, as it is not original, and the switch that cuts off 1/2 of it works teh other way arond to the rest of them, but once you get used to that it seems fine

As mentioned earlier, the tremolo is very dodgy if not allowed to settle in, i wouldn't use it live without putting the srtings on at least a week in advance, which is a bit of a bugger, but if you don't use the tremelo it is fine. The finish has lasted about 20 years i reckon, and the only problems i can find are a couple of chips i think it is safe to say that the finish is durable. With what appears to be a typical marlin trademark the guitar weighs a ton, and this can make it uncomfortable and usually requires a good strap (i used a cheap plasicky one first time and it broke after about 2 days) but after a quick tighten they're fine.

Dad's dead, so i can't ask for any help.

I haven't been playing very long, and my only other electric is a 12-string Yamaha Pacifica, not really a great comparison item. But i really love all the chrome and the sheer weight of the thing makes it great fun to play, the only problem i can find is the Tremelo, which is not a big problem because i don't ever really use tremolo, ecept occasionall to rest the heel of my hand on the bridge to get a nice wobbly sound when soloing.