We all know Sting for his work with The Police, and his great voice, but how many people actually realize he plays Bass? Read further to see what bass gear Sting has been seen using at live shows.

Image by Lionel Urman. Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Click the gear images for more info and specs at Musician's Friend

String has two main basses he uses live: Sting’s two touring basses: a ’57 Fender Precision, sans pickguard, and a ’55 Fender Precision. The '57 bass is Sting's favorite bass and he uses the '55 as a backup bass. Both of the basses have Basslines Single Coil Stack pickups and are strung with DR Hi Beam strings gauge .040-.100. Sting used to play with a pick but has been playing his basses with his fingers lately.

Sting's bass rig has multiple crossovers. From the basses, Shure U1-UA wireless UHF transmitters are routed through a switching/muting system. From the switcher, the signal goes to an Alembic F1-X preamp and then into a Court Acoustics GE60 i-octave equalizer and a Urei 7110 compressor/limiter before going to an Electro-Voice XEQ-3 crossover and on to the amplification. Bass signals to the front of house come from two direct outs: one from the Shure wireless and a second from the Alembic preamp with the preamp out located after the EQ. Furman power conditioners protect all of the gear from power surges.

The outputs of the crossover go to two Carver 2.0 amps that have been modified by Clair Brothers Audio. The 1,200 watt low-end monoblock amp goes to two Clair Brothers ML-18 1x18 cabinets. The top-end amp (about 750 watts a side) goes to two Clair Brothers 12 AM-7 cabinets, each containing a 12" Electro-Voice speaker and a 2550 JBL horn. None of the cabinets is miked; they’re strictly for onstage sound.

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3.23 Copyright (C) 2007 Alain Georgette / Copyright (C) 2006 Frantisek Hliva. All rights reserved."