Dingwall Amos Williams Signature Combustion 5

Dingwall Amos Williams Signature Combustion 5

A signature bass for TesseracT’s Amos Williams

Amos Williams plays bass in TesseracT, the UK band that more or less wrote the book on modern progressive metal. His signature Dingwall is part of the Ready to Play artist line. It is built on the Combustion platform, so you get the fanned frets and the three-pickup setup that Dingwall is known for.

Made from off-cuts, so every one is different

The thing we really dig about this model is the idea behind it. Amos wanted to cut down on waste. Therefore, every body is put together from carefully selected off-cuts that would otherwise be too small to make a full body. As a result, each bass has its own grain and its own stripe pattern. The one you see in the photos is the one you get.

It weighs 4.2 kg, which is about what you expect from a five-string with a 37″ low B. The finish is matte natural, so the wood is what you look at.

Body, Neck & Woods

Alder with stripes of maple, rosewood and mahogany

The body is mostly alder, with laminated stripes of flame maple, rosewood and mahogany running through it. Alder gives you a balanced, even sound with a solid midrange. In other words, it’s a great base for a bass that has to cover a lot of ground. The stripes are mainly a visual thing, but they are also what makes the off-cut idea work.

Maple neck and pau ferro fingerboard

The neck is 5-piece maple, bolted on and reinforced with carbon fibre. That keeps it stable, which matters with the extra tension of a long B-string. The carve is a slim C, so it’s easy to get around on. On top sits a pau ferro fingerboard with 24 frets and dot inlays.

The frets are banjo size, and that is a tone decision. Less metal on the fingerboard means more wood in contact with the string, so the note gets woodier. Moreover, smaller frets need narrower slots, which leaves more wood in the board and makes the neck stronger.

Fanned frets from 34″ to 37″

On a normal 34″ five-string the low B is the weak link. It feels loose and sounds a bit muddy, because the scale is too short for that string. Dingwall’s Novax fanned-fret system gives each string the length it needs, from 37″ on the B to 34″ on the G. Consequently, the B gets real tension and definition, while the G stays warm. The fan looks wild in photos, but your hands get used to it fast.

Electronics, Sound & Feel

Three FD3n pickups and a Quad-Tone selector

There are three Dingwall FD3n pickups, and they sit side by side in one tight cluster. The one closest to the bridge is the bridge pickup, then comes the middle pickup, and the one nearest the fingerboard is the neck pickup.

The 4-position rotary selector decides which ones you hear. Position 1 is the bridge pickup alone, tight and aggressive. Position 2 runs bridge and middle in series for a fat MM-style sound. Position 3 is bridge and neck in parallel, which gives you the J-style sound. Finally, position 4 is the neck pickup on its own, round and deep.

EMG 3-band preamp

The preamp is an EMG B30EQ with bass, mid and treble, plus a master volume. In addition, a mini toggle switches between active and passive. That means you can keep playing if the battery dies in the middle of a gig. The battery sits under a magnetic cover on the back, so changing it takes seconds. The output jack is recessed into the body.

Hardware

The hardware is all black: licensed Hipshot Ultralite tuners, a Graph Tech nut and Dingwall’s one-piece Minimalist bridge with 18 mm string spacing. The bridge is the angled black piece behind the pickups, following the fan of the frets. It’s simple, light and it holds the tuning.

Who is it for?

Obviously, this is a great bass for modern prog and metal, where a tight low B is everything. However, the four pickup settings and the 3-band EQ also make it a very usable all-round five-string. For example, it covers clean fingerstyle just as well as heavy, distorted parts. It comes with a Dingwall padded gigbag.