Ibanez Musician MC-900DS fretless

The Ibanez Musician MC900 bass was one of Sting's most iconic basses, dating to the Reggatta De Blanc era (1979-1980). This is the first of the Ibanez basses Sting had.

Background
Sting first appeared with the Ibanez fretless bass on the RockPop TV mimed performance of "Roxanne", filmed on 29 May 1979. His main bass at the time was still the Fender Precision fretless, however, which he stuck with until the end of the Outlandos D'Amour tour on 23 June 1979.

Following this, Sting used the Ibanez bass during the Summer 1979 recording sessions at Surrey Sound Studios for the Reggatta De Blanc album. It was his go-to bass guitar on the Reggatta De Blanc tour in 1979-80, with the Fender fretless as a backup (he did receive other Ibanez basses later on).

For a brief period in Spring 1980, the Ibanez had a rhinoceros sticker fitted to it.

Regarding the model, many sources inaccurately referred to this as an Ibanez Musician MC940 fretless. It is obviously an MC-900DS model converted to a fretless. The fingerboard has frets still visible around the top edge, which implies the bass was once fretted. There's no evidence in the Ibanez catalogs of a stock fretless version of MC-900 as such...