Signature Sound: Ernie Ball Music Man Redefined the Artist Series Guitar Phenomenon
For 30 years, Ernie Ball Music Man CEO Sterling Ball has run his company by adhering to a simple credo: "We make tools for artists." He forged that mantra back in 1984 when Ernie Ball purchased Music Man, a brand established a decade earlier to manufacture the first products designed by Leo Fender after he split from the company that bears his surname.
The initial instruments manufactured by Ernie Ball Music Man were an updated version of the StingRay bass, a design first conceived in the mid Seventies by Leo Fender (with input from Sterling Ball and Tom Walker), and the Silhouette, a streamlined yet versatile six-string that was compact enough to fit into an airplane overhead compartment. Despite its sleek curves, easy playability, and bold tone, the Silhouette was not a hot commodity upon its release.
"This was the mid Eighties," Ball recalls. "When we showed the guitar, people laughed because it didn't have a pointy headstock or a semi-naked girl airbrushed onto it. It was 10 percent smaller than a standard guitar. People thought, How dare you?"
Ball says this with a hint of bemusement, but he's never let market trends dictate the look and sound of his instruments. Rather, he has remained primarily concerned, as he says, with making tools for artists. For Music Man, this concept has deep and literal meaning. Since the late Eighties, the company, based in San Luis Obispo, California, has produced some of the industry's most renowned signature-model instruments, designed in conjunction with virtuoso guitarists like Steve Morse, Steve Lukather, Eddie Van Halen, Albert Lee, and John Petrucci. When Music Man builds tools for these artists, it's with the intention of creating a dream guitar that meets their individual needs. That the instruments have also resonated with the greater guitar-buying public is merely a happy byproduct.
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