discontinued in September 2006. Sterling Ball commented that, due to the quickly growing $1,000+ segment of the guitar industry, there were fewer and fewer SUBs in production each year. In 2009, as a replacement for the SUB line, Music Man licensed Praxis Musical Instruments to build a new import budget brand, Sterling by Music Man. In 2012, Praxis expanded this line with the "Sterling By Music Man SUB Series" to compete with other sub-$300 USD "beginner" instruments. They were produced in Indonesia and other Far East countries using "non-standard" woods (I.E. not typically thought of as "tonewoods") to keep production costs low. New models Music Man introduced the Sterling bass as a smaller, lighter alternative to the Stingray in July 1993. The Sterling also had a slimmer neck profile with 22 frets and a triple-coil pickup with a 3 way switch. The pickup could operate as a standard Humbucker in series and parallel mode and utilized a "phantom-coil" when in single coil mode. 2003 saw the introduction of the Music Man Bongo Bass, the result of a partnership with DesignworksUSA, a design firm better known for its work with BMW. This bass features a 24-fret rosewood fingerboard with "moon"-shaped inlays and a four-band active EQ powered by an 18V supply. The Bongo was made available with four or five strings, in fretted or fretless and left-handed versions, with the choice of HS (humbucker/single-coil), HH (dual humbuckers), and H (single humbucker, the traditional Music Man setup) pickup configurations and a pickup blend pot for ultimate versatility. These pickup configurations were adopted on other Music Man models three years later, using a five-way pickup selector with coil-tap capabilities. In 2008, Music Man released the Bongo 6, its first six-string bass. Sterling Ball had previously said "We won't be making any six-string basses unless a high-profile player asks for one," until John Myung (Dream Theater) collaborated on the prototype Bongo. Music Man introduced the Big Al bass, based on the Albert Lee signature guitar, with an 18V-powered 4-band EQ, active/passive switching, series/parallel pickup wiring and three single-coil pickups with neodymium magnets. As of 2010, the 'Big Al' bass came in a five-string version with the choice of H and SSS pickup configurations. The Big Al and Reflex basses were discontinued in 2015. The JPX' introduced 2010, is a variant of the John Petrucci signature model, commemorating the ten-year collaboration with Petrucci. The new