Ernie Ball Music Man DarkRay

Definitely Not A Light Ray

Wildwoodians, let's get dark. Reeeeaallly dark. As dark as the depths of the Mariana Trench. So dark that the cover of Metallica's Black Album look sparkly green by comparison. That dark. Once you venture into the heart of that darkness, you will find a beast filled with unholy low-end power that only the brave of heart and stout of spirit may attempt to tame: the Ernie Ball Music Man DarkRay.

The DarkRay is a collaboration between Ernie Ball and Darkglass Electronics. Frankly, it's a match made in heaven. Darkglass's preamps and pedals have delivered gorgeous deep cleans, gnarly distortion, subtle sweet overdrive, and earth-shattering fuzz to an untold number of bass warriors over the years, and their peerless build quality matches that of Ernie Ball Music Man. Basically, the folks at Darkglass built a custom preamp for this bass with three channels: clean, Alpha, and Omega. The clean delivers the deep lows, powerful midrange, and meaty highs we expect from any bass with the name Ernie Ball on the headstock. However, the Alpha and Omega channels harness the dark side of the force to deliver some seriously eldritch low-end tones. The Alpha channel delivers sizzling, tight distortion while the Omega channel gives you a crushing wooly fuzz.

Add in the fact that it has a blend knob to balance clean and dirty sounds AND a Darkglass-designed 2-band EQ for tone-shaping and one thing becomes clear: this bay can capture every thunderous shade of bass distortion from subtle to facemelting. On top of all of that, it has the incredible playability, fit and finish that made the Ernie Ball Music Man name.

We have no doubt that the DarkRay will help some lucky purveyor of low-end thunder unleash the power of the dark. Cue force lightning.