NBD: Fender American Professional Classic Precision

HeadlessBassist · 2026-01-03T00:21:26Z

So many of you will have seen my thread on here entitled, "Do I reeeally need a Precision..?" Well, I ordered this on December 22nd and finally went down to The Bass Gallery in Camden today to get it. Thankfully, with a lot of people still on Christmas holidays, London was relatively quiet and traffic free.

I plumped for the new American Professional Classic as it was sonically quite similar to my previous American Professional I, but considerably cheaper than the American Professional II, which doesn't sound anywhere near as good. From the videos I studied, the new Classic with its Pure Vintage series derived 'Coastline' 60s pickups has a very clear upper register and a subtly warm bottom end. I also really like the 'modern C' neck profile. It's very slim [fingers to thumb] for a Precision and the usual modern 9.5" radius/1.625" nut, almost like a '63 neck, minus a little thickness.

So after driving all day (went to Bridgewater in Somerset too!), I've only had a little play, and first order of business is always to get those awful stock Fender strings off and put some nice 40-95 Elixirs on instead. Better. After a brief setup, it's a very nice sounding bass. Very easy to play and sounds really nice. Just what I was looking for - a mix of modern and classic.

Being as this new series is supposedly the replacement to the long serving American Performer basses (and all the previous incarnations, such as American Special, Highway One, etc), the quality has been upped by a huge amount, bringing these much closer to the Am Pro II. This particular bass is flawless and everything lines up perfectly. The bridge is the same as the ones on the Vintage/Original/Vintage II basses, (which I've never had any issues with on my American Original Jazz in seven years), and the Gotoh Lollipop Tuners and high quality Domed Control Knobs are lovely too.

More to come when I give it a good playing tomorrow...