Dingwall Owners Club

[Selta]

I think it was in Florida for a while, but I'm not positive. Yes, I commissioned this one in 2007. Bass Northwest brokered the purchase for me. When it arrived in Missouri in the fall, the carton was so light, I wasn't sure there was a bass inside. I was the one who installed the P-tone neck pickup in it. The only reason I sold it was that I wanted to focus my playing on Sheldon's medium-scaled (Super series) instruments. Funds from its sale went to purchase this indigoburst beauty:

Very cool! I am excited by how light it is, too. I've never owned a bass this light. I think the closest is my old Combustion, which is under 9, but I don't think it's under 8.5 like this.

I still want to try a Super P or Super J. They appeal to me as well, but I think if I order one, it'll be an ABZ. Kind of on a holding pattern for the Combustion 6s

 

[ustabawannab]

I think it was in Florida for a while, but I'm not positive. Yes, I commissioned this one in 2007. Bass Northwest brokered the purchase for me. When it arrived in Missouri in the fall, the carton was so light, I wasn't sure there was a bass inside. I was the one who installed the P-tone neck pickup in it. The only reason I sold it was that I wanted to focus my playing on Sheldon's medium-scaled (Super series) instruments. Funds from its sale went to purchase this indigoburst beauty:

That's right, you did put the P-Tone in. Oops.
I put the P-Tone in my ABII because I liked the way it sounded in the ABI.

 

[spiritbass]

Very cool! I am excited by how light it is, too. I've never owned a bass this light. I think the closest is my old Combustion, which is under 9, but I don't think it's under 8.5 like this.

I still want to try a Super P or Super J. They appeal to me as well, but I think if I order one, it'll be an ABZ. Kind of on a holding pattern for the Combustion 6s

When it was in its original, passive (w/blue cube) condition, it weighed eight pounds even on my digital (postal) scale. The only bass I've ever had that is lighter is my ash/maple Super P, which weighs seven pounds and four ounces.

 

[spiritbass]

That's right, you did put the P-Tone in. Oops.
I put the P-Tone in my ABII because I liked the way it sounded in the ABI.

No prob, brother. It's not like I've never mis-remembered something before! The p-tones are great!

 

[BrBss]

Loving my first Dingwall- a series 4 Combustion. Pulled the pickguard off and played around with the neck pickup position a bit. The stock position is similar to a jazz bass, and the NG-2 position sounds more like a single humbucker, a la Musicman. I settled on a spot right in the middle, which is close to my Ken Smith or a Spector-- I guess I'm going opposite from @ustabawannab ha ha. Now I don't have pickguard, but it doesn't look too bad from a distance with the black finish. Also toying with the idea of swapping pickups for some Nordstrand Dual Blades or Aguilar DCBs, as I prefer the focused midrange and reduced clank I get from dual coils. But the series position with the bass and treble rolled down gets me pretty close.
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[bebass]

I didn't play bass at church this Sunday because I was on the tech crew. After church was over I plug my base in on the youth stage where they have QSC KW181 and K12 speakers for a PA.

It seem like I had a lot of clarity in the low frequencies and it rumbled the whole building. I mostly play praise and worship music but this afternoon I am going over to a friends house who plays heavy-metal to show him my new bass, he is a guitarist and a bass player and has a serious bass rig.

Will run it through its paces and get back to you, thanks for everything.

If the youth stage has KW181s and K12s what does the main stage have?

 

[bebass]

A seriously fancy Super J being assembled in Saskatoon:

Stunning!

 

[kirkdickinson]

If the youth stage has KW181s and K12s what does the main stage have?

The youth had old worn out JVC speakers that were rated for like 80 watts. The pastor asked me what I thought they should get and he had a $3000 budget, so I basically ordered the stuff for them. They already had a nice Mackie 1608 which works good in their space.

The main sanctuary has an engineered system. A Pro (supposedly) Church Audio company came in with RTAs and computer modeling and designed a system. They have two of those arrays up in the rafters and 2 - 2x18 2000W subs. They don't let the sound guys run it over 90db which is crazy, but our church is pretty conservative. They reused the old Midas 48 channel board and added an Aviom system at the same time. I think they spent $50,000 on all that upgrade.

The Church Audio company recomended that they cover up about 1/2 of the wood in the sanctuary with acoustic treatment. Another $12,000. They didn't do that, but should have. Very echo-ey.

I guarantee if you gave me an X32 board and about $15,000 to spend on QSC stuff, I could put together a better sounding system. I love QSC. I know there is better stuff out there, and cheaper stuff, but QSC is where it is at for me.

I personally have 2 K-Subs, 2 K-12's and 2 K-10's for our bands PA. I don't use a bass rig when we play out. I don't need one.

 

[bebass]

The youth had old worn out JVC speakers that were rated for like 80 watts. The pastor asked me what I thought they should get and he had a $3000 budget, so I basically ordered the stuff for them. They already had a nice Mackie 1608 which works good in their space.

The main sanctuary has an engineered system. A Pro (supposedly) Church Audio company came in with RTAs and computer modeling and designed a system. They have two of those arrays up in the rafters and 2 - 2x18 2000W subs. They don't let the sound guys run it over 90db which is crazy, but our church is pretty conservative. They reused the old Midas 48 channel board and added an Aviom system at the same time. I think they spent $50,000 on all that upgrade.

The Church Audio company recomended that they cover up about 1/2 of the wood in the sanctuary with acoustic treatment. Another $12,000. They didn't do that, but should have. Very echo-ey.

I guarantee if you gave me an X32 board and about $15,000 to spend on QSC stuff, I could put together a better sounding system. I love QSC. I know there is better stuff out there, and cheaper stuff, but QSC is where it is at for me.

I personally have 2 K-Subs, 2 K-12's and 2 K-10's for our bands PA. I don't use a bass rig when we play out. I don't need one.

Interesting. Perhaps it would meet the sound goals if there were double the people to do the same job as covering up the wood. I do think there are cheaper acoustical treatments available, though it may not be fancy enough. 90 db? They should have saved the money and not even gotten subs.

 

[kirkdickinson]

Interesting. Perhaps it would meet the sound goals if there were double the people to do the same job as covering up the wood. I do think there are cheaper acoustical treatments available, though it may not be fancy enough. 90 db? They should have saved the money and not even gotten subs.

There is a large sheetrock back wall that if covered with nice acoustic treatment would help a lot. The roof is all exposed beams and they reflect like crazy too. People in there help, but there aren't any up by where the main primary reflections are coming from.

We did a "Worship Night" and invited bands from 3 other churches and they cranked the sound in there then. It sounds pretty good at 100-105. Just guessing I wasn't on sound and didn't have the meter. Just enjoyed the music that night. (and played)

Here is the archive of the live stream from our church.
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I didn't play this week. I am only a fill in. I did play my Lightwave on January 3rd. (Fretted) and my fretless Lightwave Dec. 26 with my regular band who was filling in for the main band. The stream is a mix from a board feed and two boundary mics. Some day, they are going to split all the channels to a separate board for a "stream mix".

 

[BurningSkies]

More updates...

This is what the control cavity looked like when I got the bass: Pretty simple Jazz bass V/V/T layout, completely passive.

I started working on the Aguilar OBP-2 preamp outside of the bass, since it really has a ton of connections and I'm not terribly confident with little fiddly connections in a tight space. This is the stacked bass/treble pot:

I also connected the jumpers on the blend pot before installing it, but most of the other connections had to be done in the bass, since it's pickup connections. Of course, after a few different wiring jobs, the pickup leads are getting short, so there was plenty of splicing to be done, ugh.

This is a test fit of the module. It doesn't fit there. It has to move up closer near the volume pot at the bottom of the picture for the battery clip to fit. Not as neat as Sheldon and the boys, but not bad either. This is before I connected the output or the battery compartment which is attached to the compartment cover. Unfortunately the battery clip is broken, so plan B is zip ties.

Right now it's wired 9v, but I may be going 18v once my two new clips come in and if I can figure out how to make it fit. A quick test shows that it's all working properly, which in my mind is a christmas miracle. I'm going to play as it is right now for a while, but I have an email into Carey Nordstrand about his FD-3's.

 

[5StringPocket]

Loving my first Dingwall- a series 4 Combustion. Pulled the pickguard off and played around with the neck pickup position a bit. The stock position is similar to a jazz bass, and the NG-2 position sounds more like a single humbucker, a la Musicman. I settled on a spot right in the middle, which is close to my Ken Smith or a Spector-- I guess I'm going opposite from @ustabawannab ha ha. Now I don't have pickguard, but it doesn't look too bad from a distance with the black finish. Also toying with the idea of swapping pickups for some Nordstrand Dual Blades or Aguilar DCBs, as I prefer the focused midrange and reduced clank I get from dual coils. But the series position with the bass and treble rolled down gets me pretty close.
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Wiring the pickups in series is also an easy mod which fattens up the tone - worth trying before investing in new pickups.

 

[lowphatbass]

More updates...

This is what the control cavity looked like when I got the bass: Pretty simple Jazz bass V/V/T layout, completely passive.

I started working on the Aguilar OBP-2 preamp outside of the bass, since it really has a ton of connections and I'm not terribly confident with little fiddly connections in a tight space. This is the stacked bass/treble pot:

I also connected the jumpers on the blend pot before installing it, but most of the other connections had to be done in the bass, since it's pickup connections. Of course, after a few different wiring jobs, the pickup leads are getting short, so there was plenty of splicing to be done, ugh.

This is a test fit of the module. It doesn't fit there. It has to move up closer near the volume pot at the bottom of the picture for the battery clip to fit. Not as neat as Sheldon and the boys, but not bad either. This is before I connected the output or the battery compartment which is attached to the compartment cover. Unfortunately the battery clip is broken, so plan B is zip ties.

Right now it's wired 9v, but I may be going 18v once my two new clips come in and if I can figure out how to make it fit. A quick test shows that it's all working properly, which in my mind is a christmas miracle. I'm going to play as it is right now for a while, but I have an email into Carey Nordstrand about his FD-3's.

Sweet! I ended up going in a slightly "non-traditional" way. Having added a couple of additional gadgets in there we decided to equip the batteries with longer leads and float them between two layers of foam.....One above the control layout and one on the plastic cover. The idea was a bit unsettling at first but it has been completely reliable and functional through many years of hard gigging.

 

[BurningSkies]

Sweet! I ended up going in a slightly "non-traditional" way. Having added a couple of additional gadgets in there we decided to equip the batteries with longer leads and float them between two layers of foam.....One above the control layout and one on the plastic cover. The idea was a bit unsettling at first but it has been completely reliable and functional through many years of hard gigging.

Still thinking about the Nord FD-3's so I can use the 4-way. I'd even see if I could figure out a way to have push/pull for series/parallel. I emailed them yesterday with a few questions about the pickups. I'm not going to do it quite yet, given I don't need to spend another afternoon soldering and I don't need to spend another 300+ bucks yet. Still pondering the 18v and figuring out how to get a second battery well mounted...but for now I'll just play it.

This was my first real messing with some more extensive electronics. I can wire up Jazz and P basses like crazy, but this had some detail stuff that made me wonder if it would come together. I was sort of surprised I got it done correctly.

 

[spiritbass]

Sweet! I ended up going in a slightly "non-traditional" way. Having added a couple of additional gadgets in there we decided to equip the batteries with longer leads and float them between two layers of foam.....One above the control layout and one on the plastic cover. The idea was a bit unsettling at first but it has been completely reliable and functional through many years of hard gigging.

I have had perfect success in using the foam supplied with several Redeemer Circuit installs (AB-1, G&L JB, Squire Jag, and others with cramped space) as suggested in their instructions.

 

[dtsamples]

Super P into an SVT!

 

[BrBss]

Wiring the pickups in series is also an easy mod which fattens up the tone - worth trying before investing in new pickups.

Fantastic idea. For some reason I thought the FD-3n only had 2 leads, not 4. Loving the growling midrange from the series wiring!

 

[Stinkoman20xx]

If anybody is Looking for a green NG-2 I just listed mine in the classifieds. I just got it and love it but, over sight on bills I need money. I'll pull it if something else sells first

 

[BurningSkies]

I have had perfect success in using the foam supplied with several Redeemer Circuit installs (AB-1, G&L JB, Squire Jag, and others with cramped space) as suggested in their instructions.

This may be my option. I probably won't do it just this moment (since I spent 2ish hours yesterday neck deep in the bass) but once I've got a bit more motivation. I'll be interested to see how much I like the original Bartolinis now that I've got the bass set up properly with new dingwall strings and with a preamp that's at least similar to the OBP-1 that's in my other bass.

 

[spiritbass]

Hmmm... New pickups?