Fender Ultra Precision bass

I've played a few. Nice basses. Not my cup of tea, but certainly a good quality instrument.

 

I like Fender instruments a lot. I have Ps fretted and fretless, J and Strat and an acoustic guitar that looks like I hate it but that's because I love it.
I am partial to the Precision neck profile, all my favorite basses have that general shape.
If I was going to buy a new Fender today before I even tuned it up I'd replace the bridge and I might mess with the electronics a little. Those are the only 2 areas that Fender hasn't been real concerned with in 65 years or so.

So if you're asking my own dumb opinion, the Ultra series takes the bridge (Foreman: "Hey, Leo, some drunk employee screwed the lid from your snuff can on to a bass." Leo: "Keep it. I'm heading to Music Man anyway.") and upgrades it with a properly functioning music grade bridge. Then they give you the switchable option of passive and active electronics. It's a win. It's all the stuff you love about Fender Ps, made in the USA, high QC, with the mandatory bridge upgrade taken care of so you can play your bass sooner. It's a no-brainer.

 

The old American Deluxe pickups were generally noted as being a bit weak and plenty of people didn't like them, including the guitar pickups. TBH my American Deluxe Jazz has an original neck and a seymour duncan quarter pounder at the bridge. Between the two, I don't have any issues getting sounds that I like, so I couldn't say the noiseless ones were bad. I'm also just happy to be playing bass, in all honesty, I'm not all that picky past having a decent setup.

At any rate though, as far as I know they've been redesigned since.

 

I wouldn't say you're wrong either, two people can listen to the same pickups and have completely different opinions. I plugged a no-name strat at a pawnshop into my epi. valve jr, and didn't like it because I had a hard time making the amp distort, and the pickups overall felt lifeless - I just hated them. When it comes to my american deluxe jazz though, I don't mind either of the pickups. Maybe I'd hate them if the bass only had the stock ones, but having the added versatility of two completely different pickups makes it okay? As you can see, I'm not about overthinking my gear anymore, I either like it or I don't, and I tend to like it.

 

The necks on these beauties are really comfortable to me. Every person has different preference for necks, obviously. I think they feel great.
More important, what color?

 

Glad more people are beating me to it. Great bass. I've had Alembics and Spectors and I prefer this for sounds and playability.
Only real complaint is the battery life... three month a set!

 

I've always been the other way round. Love my active circuits. But the passive is so nice on the Ultra I use it more than on any other bass. The active circuit with all Eq at 0 seems just a louder version of the passive with all the tone up. From there it can locate a large range of tones that all sound very Fender. Looking forward to seeing what you think.

 

The neck on the Precision is very nice! It's a slim D neck and the finish is very smooth! If I ever do a modded p bass that's the neck that i'd install.

About the noiseless pickups. I didn't care about the elite pickups.

The bridge pickup on the ultra sounds good, very present. The P pickup sounded good but was very low output. I'm curious to know if all the ultras P are like this... It might be a faulty pickup. Can anyone confirm?

 

The neck profile and compound-radius board isn’t for everyone. If you’re a classic P guy, that may be the case for you. However, I found it to be very comfortable and playable. Only having it in your hands will tell. Other than that, these are great basses. I’ve played one extensively at the local GC, as I’m in the process of deciding on a new P to buy. The Ultra is a top contender.

 

I took a chance on a Mocha too because I loved the finish so much. I don't know why I did it to be honest because I've had some poor luck with MIA Fenders lately and have never really loved active Fenders.

But this one... I absolutely LOVE it. The neck feels GREAT (if a little "unfamiliar" at first for a P-bass). The new neck heel feels great too. I didn't expect this to matter much to me. I mean, I've got plenty of other non-Fender basses with sculpted neck heels and I've never missed it on my Fenders. But it just felt so nice to be able to go all the way up there with no restraints on a P-bass.

The sound is amazing. I actually like it best in passive mode. Unlike the AmPro it sounds exactly as I would expect from a good P-bass.

I like it in active mode too but with the tone controls centered it's voiced just a hint too bright for my taste. Nothing a slight treble cut won't fix though. Unlike many other active basses the tone controls feel just right to me. Very musical sounding and hits exactly the right spots frequency wise.

Excellent hardware. String retainer for the A-string! None of those silly fluted tuners on the AmPros. Everything is just perfect.

Even the setup was pretty good, which is hardly the case with most Fenders.

Someone mentioned in another thread that it EATS batteries. I put Duracells into mine upon arrival and they've got quite a few hours on them now so it doesn't seem to be a HUGE problem. I put one of the "stock" batteries into a Boss tuner where it didn't even make it through one rehearsal so maybe eating batteries was simply down to this, I dunno?

Fit and finish couldn't have been better.

Everything about this bass is top quality. It's one of VERY few Fenders I've owned that I truly think compares to stuff like Sandberg, MIJ Yamaha, etc.

The only thing I didn't like was how it smelled when new. A kinda sharp chemical smell... I would have preferred that lovely vanilla of Custom Shop/Original/Vintage series.

 

Yeah, it's only the ones in the vintage cases that have the nice smell. I'm actually not sure it the smell is from the case or the bass. I think it's the case. It wears off pretty soon on the basses.

My Ultra smelled pretty nasty. If it wasn't sealed and factory fresh I would have suspected a cat... But apart from that the bass is absolutely amazing. I'm sure you will love it. And the smell wears off after a couple of weeks. Or maybe they keep cats at the Corona factory and mine was an accident...

 

Got to say I think mine are well balanced. Did PU hight adjustment not work?