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Dingwall Owners Club

#30,881
Selta said:
Oof. That went south quickly. The bass is suddenly "packed up" and they "can't take additional photos or provide any more information". Hard pass on that one for me.
This one, in case any one wants to look at the one photo, and also avoid buying it: DINGWALL Z3 5st Indigo Burst | eBay
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Sorry, I attempted to locate the original listing of this bass but I was not successful. I tried looking through the inventories of the most common Japan music shops. Sometimes the eBay re-sellers will keep an advertisement up, even though the original store already sold it.
 
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#30,883
Selta said:
Having controls on board is still good. It's not just "getting the sound you want". It's easy, on-the-fly adjustment right at your bass - not kneeling over at a board or walking back to an amp. It's having a Hi-Z, bufffered signal. It's unloaded pickups. It's (potentially) higher output. There's nothing wrong with a pre-amp on a bass, either from factory or added after the fact. Not sure why the negative attitude towards them :)
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I first got obsessive about having an onboard buffer back in the early 80's.

The first was a home-made clone of the pcb from an MXR Micro Amp. I was young and stupid, and roughly chiseled out a cavity under the pickguard of my '64 Precision.

In the late 80's, I went to EMG, and although I bounced around their catalog quite a bit, they became my go-to for a couple of decades. Going active helped with the strange and crappy signal chains I often ran into on pickup gigs, and with some of the pedals I favoured at the time.

About 7 or 8 years ago, I was farting around with a couple passive Jazz basses as projects, and discovered that the subtleties that I had been missing with VVT controls and pickup loading. While I was waiting for my ABZ to be built, I stuck a pair of FD3's in my homemade parallel-fret bass, and fell in love with the clarity of the Dingwall passive setup.

Meanwhile, the places I play these days always have at least a Radial ProDi at minimum. I've also become more sparing with effects, and tend to stick with quality stuff from companies like Diamond and Empress.

End result? I would look still look to an onboard preamps for specific tonal characters, but I don't see them as must-have to preserve my signal anymore.

I don't hate on onboard electronics, but for what I'm currently doing, I prefer the simplicity and interactivity of the controls on my passive ABZ. It doesn't hurt that going passive helped helped me to afford a Dingwall in the first place!
 
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#30,884
Wyvern said:
Japan sellers are frauds- the feedback is made up and fraudulent.

What they do- best case scenario, is get pictures from a bass on a store on their side of the pond, if you buy it, and it's available, they take your money, buy the bass from the other shop and then ship it to you, pocketing the up-charge.
Typically, what happens, is they take your money, say it's not available and offer to give you a different instrument.
Worst case scenario, they take your money and ship you the wrong instrument or you get nothing at all.

I saw a few B1005 Ms's on ebay, what I did is offer a stupid amount of money and BOOP! the listing is gone

I've been using Ebay as a 9 year old kid in 1999, I have seen the scams, and been bitten before, buying and selling, Right now Ebay is almost unusable, the sellers are frauds and the buyers are even worse- always claiming it's not as described, attempt to buy from foreign countries and have their "bro's" ship it to them from the US (such a common stupid scam), and the newest trend, get exactly what they want and then leave you negative just to be the wicked little people they are.

Biggest problem as a seller- you CAN NOT LEAVE THEM NEGATIVE FEEDBACK.

Dealing with eBay personnel is infuriating, they always side with the buyer, and many are not native English speaking.

I reported a scam from something I was selling, called eBay, told them to look out for this guy, and what happens? THEY LOCK MY ACCOUNT! I never even replied to the person attempting to scam me outside of eBay.

So yeah, eBay is the last place I buy or sell anything.

Vent over, Carry on.
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lol. That’s quite the blanket statement!

I got this from Japan.
E1045EA4-58BE-4A5D-BE06-19DC152868A9.png


The seller was an amazing person to deal with. Very honorable and with all the great communication we had I would like to think I have another friend over there now.

The issue as you mentioned, there can be a language barrier breakdown and the most frustrating thing for me is seeing the dealers there take up soooo many priorities in the build que so that soo many of new customs that we see are all crazy priced and so far away.

Edit: removed some misinformation.
 
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#30,885
AB Nate said:
lol. That’s quite the blanket statement!

I got this from Japan.
View attachment 3513266

The seller was an amazing person to deal with. Very honorable and with all the great communication we had I would like to think I have another friend over there now.
@rulefuzz is also Japanese if I recall and my understanding is nothing but honorable. Not to mention, parts with his basses at super fair prices.

The issue as you mentioned, there can be a language barrier breakdown and the most frustrating thing for me is seeing the dealers there take up soooo many priorities in the build que so that soo many of new customs that we see are all crazy priced and so far away.
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Thank you for your kind words, I'm actually Chinese.

+1 that Japanese people are really, really (extremely) honorable imo
 
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#30,886
I love having the time shaping controls of the darkglass or glockenklang. I’ll often play around in passive and of course it’s amazing sounding but the refinement added from the pre makes me happy.

In a D bird however.... I’m not sure I’d go that .......”route”...... ;)

Get it..... Route...... get it. Sorry.
 
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#30,887
rulefuzz said:
Thank you for your kind words, I'm actually Chinese.

+1 that Japanese people are really, really (extremely) honorable imo
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My apologies.

I meant no misdirection with your nationality. I just thought for sure you were in Japan for some reason......


We’ll never mind!!! It’s those Chinese sellers you have to worry about then!!!!!!!

:p:whistle::angel::wacky:

I thought you were in Tokyo for some reason. I see now your in Hong Kong
 
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#30,888
rulefuzz said:
Thank you for your kind words, I'm actually Chinese.

+1 that Japanese people are really, really (extremely) honorable imo
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It has nothing to do about someones place of origin, it has to do with a few instrument sellers out there that take advantage of eBay's loopholes and the fact that they are so far away, sending something back becomes costly- and they bank on that.

I have bought numerous tech and hobby parts from Japan (and China) with nothing but praise, but instruments are another story, there are only a couple legitimate sellers on eBay from Japan.
 
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#30,891
brandon.miller said:
Has anyone ever put a active pre in a D-bird? I'm looking into it and was just curious if anyone had. Hoping to find a 2 knob pre with a stacked pot so I can keep the blend knob. Ideally a Vol/pickup sel/stacked bass&treble kind of set up.

I believe I'm just used to my higher output active jazz basses and am looking for that growly jazz sound.
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EMoneySC2 said:
I have a hard time imagining a jazz bass having higher output than a 3x Dingwall, active or passive.
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+1 to this. I get that it's not totally about volume, but my D-Bird is just about as loud as my NG-3 on the same pickup settings and with the DGTC set flat. If the NG-3 is in passive mode, the D-Bird "feels" like it's louder and thicker. Obviously, if I dimed all the knobs on the NG-3, it'd be louder, but that's not how I roll(It is on my F-Bass! It sounds AMAZING with everything maxed!).

A D-Bird isn't gonna sound like a J-bass, the pickup selector doesn't offer bridge/neck. You could try dropping in the 3X switch, which would give you the J-bass setup. I have no idea what soldering/wiring skills would be involved in that operation, but it might get you what you're looking for??

On a semi-related side note, I had an American Deluxe Jazz 5. It was gorgeous! Ash body, Maple neck & board, Black Blocks and Binding. Really sexy looking. Unfortunately, it sounded like garbage. The powerful N3 Noiseless pickups they were using were neither powerful, nor noiseless. The passive tone was useless and, to top it off, it quit on me in the middle of a gig. The coup de Grace? I'd only had it for about 8 months when this all happened, so it should've still been under warranty, right? Tech finds the problem and tells me that it came that way from the factory, fixes it, and then the store charges me for the repair! I tell them it should be under warranty, they tell me to take it up with Fender. I call Fender, explain the situation, and they couldn't have cared less. Got the bass home, put it in the classifieds, sold it, and vowed to never buy another Fender bass. I'll rock G&L or MusicMan basses all day, I might even try a Fender amp, but they'll never get any of my money for a bass...
 
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#30,893
#30,894
EMoneySC2 said:
I think I commented in another post - but have you played with your D-Bird's pickup height? I have a hard time imagining a jazz bass having higher output than a 3x Dingwall, active or passive.
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Not a 3X, but my SJ definitely has lower output than a passive G&L JB that I have at home atm
 
#30,898
J Posega said:
I sure would like a 4 string AB or Combustion someday. Still haven't fondled a 4 string Dingwall yet.
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EMoneySC2 said:
I got my hands on a 4 string D-Bird and now both my 5 string Dingwalls have turned into 4 string Dingwalls ;)
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Their 4-string basses are awesome! My bands insist on tuning super low though so I've moved in the opposite direction to all 5-string Dingwalls to get that extra scale length
 
#30,899
Passive v. Active.

Like most, I've played both over the years.

I've come to realize that I like the opportunity to boost as well as attenuate from the bass. On a passive bass you can roll back the highs down into the mids. That's great, but what if I want to roll back the highs a bit then boost the lows? or if I want to attenuate the lows a little and grab a bit more in the mids? Yes I can do that from my amp but it's way easier to do it on the fly at the bass. To the same extent, if I'm playing and i have my treble and mids dialed in all comfy it's really nice just to add a hint more lows if I want without turning around and walking the 10 feet back to my amp.
 

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