Description

Dingwall Z2

Maple Burl top
Swamp Ash body
Super Fatty II (SFII) Pickups in the Z1 position
Pre-Bleach/Pre-Dye Custom Reverse Burst Finish
Glockenlang 3-band preamp with Passive Tone
5-piece Maple neck with Carbon Spars
Wenge fingerboard
Body Matching headstock
Turquoise Ghost Speedo bars
White side dots
Blue Luminlay Headstock D logo
18mm spacing
Weighs 9lbs 7oz

In the Dingwall nomenclature, a Z1 is a jazz bass pickup arrangement, a Z2 is a musician pickup arrangement, and a Z3 has 3 pickups.

This bass has the Dingwall Z2 woods and shape, but it has the pickups arranged in a jazz bass style (Z1-style) arrangement. This is quite uncommon, and a special option.

Dingwalls are well known for having the most stable necks, short of composites. To accomplish this Dingwall uses carbon fiber spars that are tapered to reinforce the neck. These spars are thick at the neck joint end and thin down near the headstock. I believe there are at least 2 carbon fiber spars on both sides of the truss rod.

The Super Fatty II pickups: Dingwall winds their own pickups in-house, and has gone through a number of progressions to change the tone and improve the clarity and punch. Super Fatty II is the most bottom heavy and thickest sounding pickups Dingwall currently makes. They have tremendous punch and mid clarity, but with more bottom than the current FDVs which is the standard in this Z bass series. I believe Sheldon uses special magnets in his pickup that facilitate the mid-focused sound.

Z style basses have a special high-mass bridge that is not bolted into the body wood but clamped on using a base plate, and those circular discs you see on the back of the bass. The high mass bridge provides a large surface contact patch to the body and allows the bass to resonate strongly.

The pickup switch selector is well described on the Dingwall website. Basically, position 1=bridge, position 2- both p’ups in parallel, position 3- both p’ups in series(very punchy and slightly louder), and position 4 = neck alone. Dingwall pickups are not humbuckers, but are essentially a P bass configurations hidden in a large shell, whereby the pole pieces align with the harmonics of the string over the sloping fan. This bass does not have a “single coil” tap.

Dingwall has increased in price as the company has gotten more popular/famous, with some big time players using their instruments, such as Lee Sklar, John Taylor (Duran Duran), and Nolly Getgood (periphery).