Fender unleashes the Troy Sanders Precision Bass, a low-end Silverburst monster rich in Mastodon signature details
With its Remission neckplate, Emperor Of Sand 12th-fret marker and stencilled headstock, this looks a very cool bass for Mastodon fans. Watch Sanders demo it here
Fender has unveiled a signature bass guitar for Mastodon’s Troy Sanders, a Silverburst Precision Bass replete with an array of subtle details to get the Masto super-fan excited without alienating the rest of the bass-playing world.
Take the finish for a start. Perhaps even more so than Tool’s Adam Jones, Mastodon have been key players in the rise in popularity of the Silverburst. This handsome P-Bass, with its matching headcap and 3-ply black pickguard, wears it well.
Besides the colour scheme, fans will notice the name on the back of the headstock, the Empire Of Sand inscription in the 12th-fret inlay – though from a distance it all looks pearloid block – and on the back the neck plate has been stamped with the logo from the Atlanta, Georgia metal behemoth’s debut studio album, Remission.
Otherwise, this is just a cool retro P-Bass with a cool paint job. It has a solid alder body with a bolt-on maple neck that’s carved into a custom ‘70s P-bass “C” profile. That is topped with a 9.5” radius slab rosewood fingerboard and 20 medium-jumbo frets marked out by the aforementioned block inlays.
A four-saddle Hi-Mass bridge offers a stable platform for monster walking basslines, big sustain, sonorous lows, with open-gear tuners and the control plate all finished in chrome. You can string this bass through the body or for a more slinky feel you can top-load and feed the strings through the bridge.
Bass soloists might want to give the latter a bash; it’s something we don’t often see on Fender’s bass designs, but most notably in recent years the Jimmy Page Telecaster offered that choice too.
The Big F has reached out to Tim Shaw for the pickup design, with Sanders’ bass equipped with one of Shaw’s split-coil P-Bass pickups in the middle position and one of his Jazz single-coils at the neck.
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These are wired to an 18v active preamp with controls comprising a master volume, a pan pot for selecting and mixing your pickup voices, Bass and Treble knobs that allow you to boost or cut as desired, and a mini-toggle switch for selecting active or passive modes.
The bass is finished in gloss poly while the neck is a tactile satin urethane. Other specs of note are the regular 34” scale, the 41.3mm synthetic bone nut, and the bass ships with a deluxe gig-bag. Though, we would be tempted to haggle a deal with a retailer for a hardshell case. You don’t want that finish getting damaged.
The Troy Sanders Signature Precision Bass is available now, priced £1,479, and you can hear Sanders put it through its paces in the video above. It sounds incredible. For more details, head over to Fender.
Jonathan Horsley has been writing about guitars and guitar culture since 2005, playing them since 1990, and regularly contributes to MusicRadar, Total Guitar and Guitar World. He uses Jazz III nylon picks, 10s during the week, 9s at the weekend, and shamefully still struggles with rhythm figure one of Van Halen’s Panama.
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