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Fender American Professional II Series

#41
707GK said:
Ahh, so their marketing team is just advertising as new, to make people feel left out and desiring a fancy bass with “new” fingerboard edges. Gotcha.
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I don’t know how long you’ve been paying attention to Fender’s new product releases over the past few years, but when CITES made export of rosewood problematic, the Classic Series were renamed Vintera and now had Pau ferro instead, the Standards were given Pau Ferro and rebranded Players, and the Classic Vibes were switched from Chinese to Indonesian factories and were given laurel fretboards.

Ash is now endangered, so they had to switch to pine. That’s all that’s really happening here - they decided to throw in some new pickups and a new neck plate/screw config, and some new finish colours. Anybody who’s been into buying American Fenders for literally decades has known they have rolled fretboard edges. Anyone who’s now moving “up” to one has likely come across Sire making a big deal about rolled fretboards like they invented them or something. Of course Fender’s marketing team needed to say something about it. That’s not why the Pro II exists though, that’s all pine vs ash.
 
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#44
Before someone shells out a fortune for a bass they probably don't need consider this.
There is really nowhere a Bass player can go these days. Especially a hard rock/metal player that cant sing. Bands are utilising keyboards and going bass less more and more. If you are a Youtuber (which is a fantastic site today to show skills) and you want the bass to outshine your playing abilities then ok..I see this in comments on YT everyday. People say what's the bass? Or nice bass ect while nothing is said of their playing skill.
Where does it end with gear? Do we buy every new thing that comes out and have a house packed with abandoned gear we don't play anymore. It's your choice. The 5 people that show up at the bar won't care about what you play..
Cheers.
 
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#45
Love_Bass said:
Before someone shells out a fortune for a bass they probably don't need consider this.
There is really nowhere a Bass player can go these days. Especially a hard rock/metal player that cant sing. Bands are utilising keyboards and going bass less more and more. If you are a Youtuber (which is a fantastic site today to show skills) and you want the bass to outshine your playing abilities then ok..I see this in comments on YT everyday. People say what's the bass? Or nice bass ect while nothing is said of their playing skill.
Where does it end with gear? Do we buy every new thing that comes out and have a house packed with abandoned gear we don't play anymore. It's your choice. The 5 people that show up at the bar won't care about what you play..
Cheers.
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Noice pep talk
 
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#46
Do I sound cynical if I have the feel that it's basically down to colour options and the neck heel? And a price tag that's going way above the inflation, not keeping 2020 into account.

Having said that, some of those colours look great on screen. Mercury and surf green stand out yet IMHO are versatile enough to blend well in most contexts onstage while drawing attention. Mercury is great, I like the Antigua concept.
The Dark Night looks stunning by itself, it's probably a bit less versatile in context, depending on how dark/reflective it really looks like in action. It doesn't mean that I find it worse. I think they probably got it wrong with the fixed rosewood match - that kind of colours is usually on maple necks for Performers and they look the part. Most of all, I think it's frustrating to see the neck matching options locked on all but two classic combinations, at that price tag.

Theoretically speaking, I like the Miami blue as a colour itself, say a Pantone shade for a chair, T-shirt... on that instrument it gives me the "toy" impression compared to the others, but I might change my mind later. A black pickguard would greatly help, IMHO

But, yeah... the bottom line is that I've just talked about looks, with a rant for the price increase.
 
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#48
EmaTheMirror said:
Most of all, I think it's frustrating to see the neck matching options locked on all but two classic combinations, at that price tag.
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Besides, what is the reasoning with creating most of those matches as opposites between Js and Ps?
I guess (and I fear) some might be driven to get both, like Pokemons...
 
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#51
My favorite part of their marketing message on these is (I know this isn't new) the "Vintage Himass" bridges - two words that are essentially contradictory to those who know about such things, they choose to ignore all that, and just slam those words together because.....it'll probably sell. It sounds good, who cares it it makes sense?

Fender continues to get their new product design ideas from examining their own recycling bin.
 
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#53
micguy said:
My favorite part of their marketing message on these is (I know this isn't new) the "Vintage Himass" bridges - two words that are essentially contradictory to those who know about such things, they choose to ignore all that, and just slam those words together because.....it'll probably sell. It sounds good, who cares it it makes sense?

Fender continues to get their new product design ideas from examining their own recycling bin.
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I know, right? It sucks when marketing organizations do their jobs.
 
#57
MtManiac said:
I know, right? It sucks when marketing organizations do their jobs.
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I work for a company that's been around longer than Fender, and we make products used in the same places. We do have some products that have been around as long as the original Fender ones, but we have a lot of other things that, when we introduced them, seemed a bit silly - why put effort into that stuff when we have a perfectly good product over here that's been selling for decades just fine?

Well, its 2020. The world has changed. Our oldest product line is in the dumps - nobody is touring right now. If we hadn't branched out, a lot of us would be out of jobs. But those silly products that took focus away from our old product lines? They're suddenly in VERY high demand - some of them have tripled or more in production volumes in a matter of months, and we won't know how many we really can sell until we can keep up with demand. We're doing everything we can to keep up.

A good Marketing department can balance traditional and new products. Fender just chooses not to. While that seems like the low risk path most of the time, it is, when things really change, risky. All their eggs really are in one basket.
 
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