Luthier Sheldon Dingwall founded Dingwall Designer Guitars in the mid-1980s, after years of actively playing music and doing guitar repair work. Dingwall moved from designing guitar models to bass models, specifically concentrating on fanned fretboard designs pioneered by Ralph Novak. Bass notables such as Lee Sklar, Michael Rhodes, Mike Brignardello, Mark Fain, and Hank Insell are all currently playing and recording with Dingwall basses.
Disaster struck on October 8, 1996, when the warehouse where the Dingwall factory was located caught fire. The fire eventually consumed the entire building, including the tooling and construction tools. When Dingwall began rebuilding the company, he received help from other Canadian luthiers such as Glenn MacDougall of Fury Guitars (see Fury) and Byron Olsen of Olsen Audio (a contract manufacturer of musical and audio equipment). As a result, the combined manufacturing experience totalled over fifty years! Local musicians and businesses held a benefit to raise funds for the re-tooling of the bass line. Dingwall basses were back to production twelve months later.
While Dingwall is concentrating on bass guitars, he used to offer several high quality electric guitar models. All models featured bolt-on necks, 3-per-side headstock with Sperzel or Gotoh tuners, and passive pickups. The Roadster featured a single cutaway body, stop tailpiece, mini-humbucker (neck position) and single coil (bridge). The ATV had an offset double cutaway body, tremolo bridge, and three single coils wired to a custom switching harness that delivered 10 distinct tones! The LVQ (Low Volume Resonance) model offered similar stylings to the ATV, except the design featured tone chambers (semi-hollowbody) and a stop tailpiece. Contact Dingwall Designer Guitars for availability.
Instruments currently built in Saskatoon, Canada.