NBD - Darkray in Sparkly Orange Metal Flake

[Jared Lash]

I've been curious about the Darkglass Tone Capsule for years. Glad to hear it's working out for you.

That's a fantastic and gorgeous Stingray. Congrats!

 

[skaForge]

To begin with I am a long time Stingray player. For over 20 years, my third (and only bass at the time) was a '79 Stingray. Fast forward about 30-odd years, and that bass just became too heavy for me to play (5 back surgeries since 2013). Through a few trades, I was able to parlay the '79 for a 2020 BFR Stingray Special fretless 5 string. I loved everything about it except the tone. Plus it only weighed 7.4 pounds, over two pounds lighter than the '79! What I expected (foolishly I suppose) was a 5 string version of my '79. I just didn't care for the sound of the neo pickup or the 3-band EQ.

I found out why. After I removed the pickup and preamp, I sent the preamp to a friend who did an RTA (real time analysis) on it and found the reasons I didn't like it - there was WAY too much interaction between the 3 bands to the point they were stealing gain from each other. If that was not bad enough, the treble sounded harsh and strident to me.

For years, I have been upgrading Sterling Ray4s and 5s with a pickup wound to late 70s specs, and a clone of the original late 70s preamp. So, I asked Nordstrand to make me a special pickup to fit (as the 2020 had no pickguard) and paired it with a late 70s preamp (I make and sell them as well, but that's not the point of this post). NOW, I had the sound I was hoping to have.

I have been a huge fan of the Darkglass Tone Capsule for a long time. I tend to use it in upgrades of single pickup basses other than Stingray-style ones. For that reason, the Darkray interested me a lot, not so much for the built-in effects, but because of their work matching a custom 2-band preamp to the characteristics of the Stingray Special's Neo pickup.

So, regarding the DarkRay 5 string: First, the pairing of the Neo pickup (no doubt the same one in the Stingray Special) with the Darkglass preamp creates a much different tone than the stock Special, and much better range of tones in my opinion. In this case, I was NOT looking for a duplicate of what I already had with the fretless BFR, so my expectations were that it would sound good, but different to the Special, and I got what I wanted.

What I wanted was a bass that sounded great, did not require any mods to sound great, and a bass that sounded different to the fretless Stingray I already owned. Most (probably 95% of the time) I will never use the distortion or fuzz, those to me are just an extra plus. It's a great bass with great tone, and I got the color I wanted, a weight I could handle (my rep at Sweetwater cherry-picked one and got me one that only weighed a bit over 8 pounds, also very light for a 5 string) and interest free financing with up to four years to pay off. To me, that was just too good to pass up.

I love the range of tones I can get using just the two-band EQ and see no reason to modify the bass in any way, other than to install a set of Straploks.

This is one fantastic bass. If you look at it as a tone monster with a great neo pickup/preamp combination with a couple of special effects thrown in, that's probably the best way to consider it. To each their own, that's for sure. Here's a couple of pictures.

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Beautiful bass! I've loved gold-tops since I first heard Freddie King play!

 

[BQFS]

Beautiful bass! I've loved gold-tops since I first heard Freddie King play!

Thanks! I'd never even considered a color like this before buying a Bongo in a similar scheme. Not a run of the mill color, that's for sure.

 

[BQFS]

I've been curious about the Darkglass Tone Capsule for years. Glad to hear it's working out for you.

That's a fantastic and gorgeous Stingray. Congrats!

Thank you!

Let's make sure we are referring to the same thing. The Tone Capsule is a stand-alone accessory. It is NOT what is installed in the Darkray. The TC only comes with three controls for EQ - bass, low-mids, and high-mids with no treble control at all, and no volume or balance controls either. Quite a different approach.

I prefer using them in single pickup applications so that an expensive active balance control is not required. Darkglass furnishes different wiring diagrams for the TC, including VB or VV. VV is of course less expensive. You CAN use an MN pot for balance, but in my experience passive balance controls cause signal loss and often suck the tone as well. On the few dual-pickup installations for which I've used a TC, I opted for the $79 EMG ABC (active balance control) which works great, does not cause signal or tone loss, but makes the installation considerably more expensive.

The preamp in the Darkray was custom-made for it and takes into account the characteristics of the DR Neo pickup. It offers only two EQ bands, bass and treble. The Tone Capsule, on the other hand, is pickup agnostic.

I was somewhat skeptical years ago when I first heard about the design decisions that went into the TC, but once I used one, all reservations were gone. No one I've done upgrades for that have used the TC has had a word of complaint or disappointment. It is one fantastic upgrade, that's for sure.