Figured walnut on the bass side adds great sustain, clarity and punch to the B and E strings. Soft figured maple on the treble side keeps the G and D strings nice and warm sounding.

The traditional way of combining body woods to control tone is to laminate horizontally. For example laminate a thick maple top on a mahogany core to increase the brightness of the mahogany. This system works well to alter the tone response of all the strings as a group. However, our experience with the Novax Fanned-Fret ® system has opened up a whole new way of thinking about an instrument. What if we could take this concept one step further by focusing on the needs of the bass and treble strings separately? In effect creating a body that naturally balances tone between the bass and treble strings. At the time this had never been done before.

To achieve this naturally equalizing body we turned traditional thinking on its side by laminating across the width of the body. This allows us to use a higher density wood such as Walnut for the bass side to accentuate the highs and give power to the lows without affecting the treble strings. We then use a lower density wood (Alder) for the treble side to bring out the resonance and warm up the treble strings without making the bass strings sound muddy. For such a simple idea the results are pretty dramatic – warm, punchy treble strings with solid snappy bass strings.

Prima Artist necks are laminated from 5-7 pieces of exotic wood.  We choose the woods for strength and tone first, then try to come up with a combination that either blends or contrasts nicely with the top and back woods.

The double expanding truss-rod style is one of the industry standards.  Carbon fibre is standard on the Z.

“While repairing guitars, I found that many guitars had either stripped or missing truss rod cover plate screws.  I found it frustrating that it usually took longer to remove and replace the cover plate than it did to do the actual adjustment.”
The truss rod is the most commonly adjusted component on most guitars, so access to the truss rod adjustment should be as easy as possible.

All Dingwall basses feature easy to access truss-rod adjustments.

Macassar Ebony with edge lines. We prefer the warmth of tone and beautiful look of Macassar Ebony for a fretless fingerboard. To guaranty buzz-free performance regardless of temperature and humidity changes, we install short fretlines on the edge of the fingerboard only. Thereby eliminating any chance of buzzing caused by the fretlines shrinking or expanding from the fingerboard surface.

Vintage small size 18% hard nickel silver fretwire. Lee Sklar turned us onto the benefits of small frets. The advantages are a more woody, less metallic tone, smoother glissandos and a faster feel. Our standard size is “banjo” size. This is the same size as you’d find on most guitars from the 50’s and 60’s. Although its size is smaller than standard bass fretwire, its service life is about the same.

Mando size Optional
We install Mando size fretwire in the Lee Sklar model.  These are Leland’s personal favorite size frets.  They have an amazing feel – almost fretless like.  They are the most woody and smooth sounding frets available.  Their service life is very good.  Depending on playing style, you can expect 5-10 years of use per set.

The Prima Artist pickups feature an FD-3 treble coil with a custom wound bass coil. The coils are noise-symetric/tone-asymetric, which means they maintain near-perfect noise rejection with increased low-end clarity. The pickups are installed into wooden shells cut from the actual top and contrast layer of the body that they will be installed in. They are truly one of a kind pickups made in our shop in Canada.

Their tone can best be described as the best of a vintage J and P, but with the most clear and punchy lows possible. It’s impossible to imagine the power and clarity of the lows of these pickups. They have to be heard to be believed.

The Prima Artist pickups feature 4-lead wiring which enables the internal coils to be wired in either series for strong mids and high output or parallel for scooped mids and normal output. The Prima Artist bass features individual series/parallel switches so that the player can access these tones at the flick of a switch.

PA1 spacing
The PA1 pickup spacing is modeled after the J style bass. The tone combinations will be familiar to anyone used to a J style bass.

PA2 spacing (optional)
The P2 spacing features two pickups grouped together in the sweet-spot.  The tone is more focused in the mid-range than the standard spacing. This tone will be familiar to anyone used to a MM SR tone.

At Dingwall, we take our hardware pretty seriously. Nowhere is this more evident than our bridges. The Prima Artist and Z-series basses feature Dingwall designed individual saddles with a countersunk sub plate system.

The saddles feature a unique pin system that anchors the string by utilizing the hole in the ball. This eliminates any stress points on the string where it wraps around the ball.

Designed to be “set & forget” simple. Once the string height and intonation are set, the saddle is locked down to the sub plate for perfect coupling. This also guarantees that the saddle never goes out of adjustment accidentally.

Aircraft aluminum is used for the saddles and sub plate as it is lightweight and has a wonderful ring (Aluminum is the material of choice for vibraphone bars). The riser screws are made from 18-8 stainless steel. These screws will virtually last forever.