Dingwall Afterburner I
While the guitar industry as a whole is generally stuck doing copies and variations of designs from the ‘50s and ‘60s, bass players and builders are more open to trying new things. Not that there are not plenty of bass players perfectly satisfied with the tried and true instruments, but it seems like for every P or J bass copy out there, there is another company who is not afraid to get weird. (Also maybe don’t check last week’s post as that is not really going to help our point just now.)
So, let’s get weird. Here we have a 5-string, fanned fret bass with a neck extending quite far into the body. Some basses have a “finger ramp”, which is a raised block between the pickups that aids finger positioning and helps with certain techniques. These are commonly made of wood or increasingly 3D-printed, but Dingwall apparently decided, “Why not just throw a whole ‘nother pickup in there‽” So unlike that Hofner [we said, “don’t look!”] whose pickups wanted nothing to do with each other, these three are all smooshed together like kittens cuddling up for warmth.
The neck is Wenge, with fret inlays not dissimilar to those on the Yamaha Revstar that we had not seen before. The markers are angled to match the frets, and also form an arc along the length of the neck with a big ‘D’ (grow up) at the 12th fret. We get what they were going for, but the overall effects is, “Go home inlays, you’re drunk!”
Loads of knobs for volume, rotary pickup selector, and three band active EQ. Also the pickups are humbuckers and there is a mini series/parallel toggle switch for each.
The body is a… shape, with a wavy figured top stained purple and maybe some colors that are not purple.
