Dingwall AB1 Sixer Tom Sawyer Demo (R50 related)

[Cairobill]

I owned a very interesting Dingwall AB1 six string for a brief period a few years ago. It went bye byes (as all my six strings sadly tend to do) but I did manage to demo it with a dirty B15 sound on a bass/vox-less Tom Sawyer OG backing track. With the news of Rush effectively touring their own tribute with Anika Nilles on drums, a decision I heartily approve of, I thought it would be fun to spin this up as a first review with the clip I recorded. I hope to see them for a third time on this tour if they make it over to the UK.

Construction and ergonomics
This was a beautifully built bass. Light at about 7lbs and well balanced, it's an extremely playable six string. Finish was perfect and everything worked beautifully. The multi-scale approach is, of course, a matter of taste and context, but it works very well in terms of playability. I'm not sure it's an overall 'improvement' on a standard fretboard as you win some and lose some; chording on a six string like this allows for shapes that you can't achieve on a standard scale, but you simply can't fret an equivalent number of chords. The playing angle for the wrist is a definite innovation, however. All in all, it was great to spend some time on one, but it certainly did not make me turn my back on standard neck construction.

Sound
I did a lot of A/B testing with my producer pal. The much vaunted 'piano-like' tones that people talk about on the lower strings were there in spades. Huge bottom end, huge sustain etc BUT (and it's a big but) we decided that there was a blandness on those low notes. It all sounded a bit characterless. My producer pal conjectured that the cleanliness of those low notes on the Dingwall was dues to less overtones and tended to disappear in the mix. He pored over the waveforms from the bass when it was DI'd and, lo and behold, it looked very 'clean' with little harmonic dips and bumps across the board. 

Anyway, we did some experimentation with pickup settings and drive and this thing really came alive, with the added colour of the drive helping the bass sit in the mix.

Soooo, I put the thing through this UAD B15 emulator on a very hot setting and it worked really well...(vid/recording link below)

Conclusion
Very comfortable but also very marmite and with a tendency to tonal blandness, these things take effects very well. It's no coincidence that they find a home with progressive music that often involves a huge pile of processing. Not my thing really, but a well made instrument that def has a home in certain types of music. They also look a bit Lovecraftian with all those frets on the tip!

Anyhow, here's the vid. Massive gronk on this one (not a canonical version!). I have been playing this bassline for a LOOOONNNG time. Looking forward to R50 gigs in the UK!