I love my American "Qualifier[1]" Fender Dimension V HH bass, in the sense that physically it's an absolute joy to hold and play (with a good setup and a hardwood neck shim). But after some soul searching, I am forced to admit that the pickups are, at best, OK.
They're fine. The pickups are fine. If you only use that fourth position "both inner" setting or you're playing country where the harmonics don't matter, they're fine. They have a fat bottom and an aggressive high end peak that is great for modern country, hard rock and metal tones. Which is fine. Did I mention that it's fine? But the harshness of that high frequency peak wears thin pretty fast. Otherwise, there's nothing really wrong with, or particularly special about, the electronics. (Ok to nitpick, the treble knob doesn't cut very far, so it's practically useless for flats and begs for a passive tone mod, but you could say that about almost any modern active preamp.)
There's no information whatsoever about the bass as far as I can tell, so I dug in and took a look. Here are some pictures of that.
Cutout looks reasonable.
Love how the poly finish pulled up around the screw holes. There's also a lot of finish overspray in half of the neck pocket, which made the neck (and therefore the strings) sit at a funky angle until I spent some nervous quality time with sandpaper and a small paper shim. Not impressed with the finish work from US Fender. This was *before* COVID; no excuses.
Looking closer at the electronics first because ... hey a wire fell off! I didn't even pull on it.
Uh oh, wonder how many of these other wires are also inadequately crimped. Ah well I can solder it on.
A TI TLE2062 JFET dual op-amp with a split power supply, no bass bypass capacitors, that's nice. But only a dual op-amp definitely limits our options for the tone circuit, right? Looks like it sounds, quiet and high quality but just a simple treble middle bass.
The non-rewirable 5-way switch is a disappointment. If I decide to go for more complex pickup options (the neck-only position should be a single split coil) will have to spend some quality time figuring out where on that PCB is actually the input. (Yes I could swap the preamp but it's actually pretty good and there's a chip shortage.)
Moving on to the pickups themselves...
The covers just come right off. Well, that's handy! Look at that magnet structure. Just look at it. Truly overengineered in a way that makes my internal engineer very happy. I mean not in one that delivers live-changingly awesome tone, but it's still fun to look at.
Comparing it to a 5-string J sized pickup (bartonlinis tend to be a little undersized):
Hmm, so you might think "they took a standard 5-string double-J pickup and shoved it into an oval case" and maybe that's how they started, but the actual end result was a pickup that looks for all the world like a Bartolini BD5C[BC] with an oval drawn around it, 100.3x36.8mm. The other pickup available in this shape is the Delano SBC5.
Two great options, but both very civilized. I would choose Delano for articulation, but I wanted to keep some (just some) of the "overwound monster" feel of the factory design.So I found a couple of new old stock BD5C bridge pickups on eBay. This should keep the neck dominant and deliver some old school fatness.
But in the interest of keeping things completely reversible, I made an adaptor (link to STL provided). Didn't even trim the pickup leads, just stuffed them into that huge cavity. No drilling!
(3D enthusiasts, please excuse the horrid Z-banding. I have a new extruder drive on order. I figured it's inside the body of the bass and nobody will notice so no need to reprint it...)
There's a cutout on the back for the wires, and it has holes for either the two- or three-screw versions of the pickup. I left a channel for the wires out the side, and later realized there's enough space underneath the pickup to park a small car, so it's not really needed.
And they're in:
Notice the bridge pickup is upside down. Yes I did that on purpose. This means instead of "inner" and "outer" coil settings, you have "both neck" and "both bridge". This puts a little bit of midrange into the "both neck" making it usable in that "vintage deep neck coil" way. It also makes the neck coil more dominant in the "both bridge" setting, which gives it a "modern J" feel. Everything else is the same.
The only limitation here is that the "just neck pickup" setting is too honky (well I *did* put in a bridge pickup), and should probably be replaced by a single-coil setting (split coil) or a neck pickup wind or a clever highpass humbuck setting (G&L style) or... but whatever. It works so well in the multiple-pickup positions I am going to leave it. For now.
3D files on Thingiverse Fender Dimension V Bass Bartolini Pickup Spacer by tekhedd or DM me, they're not images so I can't really upload them in the thread.
So...now there is one place somewhere online with detailed closeup pics of the inside of an active American Dimension bass. And free STL files to boot. (Should be easy to adapt to 4-string also.) Hope this helps.
(Oh, and yeah, it sounds great.)
1 - Fender really dropped the ball on Deluxe vs Custom vs Standard on the American Deluxe basses, didn't they?
They're fine. The pickups are fine. If you only use that fourth position "both inner" setting or you're playing country where the harmonics don't matter, they're fine. They have a fat bottom and an aggressive high end peak that is great for modern country, hard rock and metal tones. Which is fine. Did I mention that it's fine? But the harshness of that high frequency peak wears thin pretty fast. Otherwise, there's nothing really wrong with, or particularly special about, the electronics. (Ok to nitpick, the treble knob doesn't cut very far, so it's practically useless for flats and begs for a passive tone mod, but you could say that about almost any modern active preamp.)
There's no information whatsoever about the bass as far as I can tell, so I dug in and took a look. Here are some pictures of that.
Cutout looks reasonable.
Love how the poly finish pulled up around the screw holes. There's also a lot of finish overspray in half of the neck pocket, which made the neck (and therefore the strings) sit at a funky angle until I spent some nervous quality time with sandpaper and a small paper shim. Not impressed with the finish work from US Fender. This was *before* COVID; no excuses.
Looking closer at the electronics first because ... hey a wire fell off! I didn't even pull on it.
Uh oh, wonder how many of these other wires are also inadequately crimped. Ah well I can solder it on.
A TI TLE2062 JFET dual op-amp with a split power supply, no bass bypass capacitors, that's nice. But only a dual op-amp definitely limits our options for the tone circuit, right? Looks like it sounds, quiet and high quality but just a simple treble middle bass.
The non-rewirable 5-way switch is a disappointment. If I decide to go for more complex pickup options (the neck-only position should be a single split coil) will have to spend some quality time figuring out where on that PCB is actually the input. (Yes I could swap the preamp but it's actually pretty good and there's a chip shortage.)
Moving on to the pickups themselves...
The covers just come right off. Well, that's handy! Look at that magnet structure. Just look at it. Truly overengineered in a way that makes my internal engineer very happy. I mean not in one that delivers live-changingly awesome tone, but it's still fun to look at.
Comparing it to a 5-string J sized pickup (bartonlinis tend to be a little undersized):
Hmm, so you might think "they took a standard 5-string double-J pickup and shoved it into an oval case" and maybe that's how they started, but the actual end result was a pickup that looks for all the world like a Bartolini BD5C[BC] with an oval drawn around it, 100.3x36.8mm. The other pickup available in this shape is the Delano SBC5.
Two great options, but both very civilized. I would choose Delano for articulation, but I wanted to keep some (just some) of the "overwound monster" feel of the factory design.So I found a couple of new old stock BD5C bridge pickups on eBay. This should keep the neck dominant and deliver some old school fatness.
But in the interest of keeping things completely reversible, I made an adaptor (link to STL provided). Didn't even trim the pickup leads, just stuffed them into that huge cavity. No drilling!
(3D enthusiasts, please excuse the horrid Z-banding. I have a new extruder drive on order. I figured it's inside the body of the bass and nobody will notice so no need to reprint it...)
There's a cutout on the back for the wires, and it has holes for either the two- or three-screw versions of the pickup. I left a channel for the wires out the side, and later realized there's enough space underneath the pickup to park a small car, so it's not really needed.
And they're in:
Notice the bridge pickup is upside down. Yes I did that on purpose. This means instead of "inner" and "outer" coil settings, you have "both neck" and "both bridge". This puts a little bit of midrange into the "both neck" making it usable in that "vintage deep neck coil" way. It also makes the neck coil more dominant in the "both bridge" setting, which gives it a "modern J" feel. Everything else is the same.
The only limitation here is that the "just neck pickup" setting is too honky (well I *did* put in a bridge pickup), and should probably be replaced by a single-coil setting (split coil) or a neck pickup wind or a clever highpass humbuck setting (G&L style) or... but whatever. It works so well in the multiple-pickup positions I am going to leave it. For now.
3D files on Thingiverse Fender Dimension V Bass Bartolini Pickup Spacer by tekhedd or DM me, they're not images so I can't really upload them in the thread.
So...now there is one place somewhere online with detailed closeup pics of the inside of an active American Dimension bass. And free STL files to boot. (Should be easy to adapt to 4-string also.) Hope this helps.
(Oh, and yeah, it sounds great.)
1 - Fender really dropped the ball on Deluxe vs Custom vs Standard on the American Deluxe basses, didn't they?
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