Fender Vintage Custom '57 Precision Bass Time Capsule Package - Wide-Fade 2-Color Sunburst

The Vintage Custom '57 Precision Bass is Fender's most accurate recreation of the bass that effectively rewrote what an electric bass could be — the post-'57 P-Bass that introduced the split-coil pickup, the chrome knurled knobs, the larger Strat-style headstock and the gold-anodised pickguard that defined every iconic low-end recording from Motown through to the British Invasion. Hand-built at the Fender Custom Shop in Corona and finished in NOS lacquer — pristine and unblemished, the way a Fender looked rolling out of the showroom in '57 rather than relic'd — and shipped as a Time Capsule Package with deluxe hardshell case, period-spec strap and Certificate of Authenticity.

The Time Capsule Philosophy

The Custom Shop's Time Capsule program asks one question: what if you could walk into a 1957 Fender dealership and pick a brand-new Precision Bass off the rack? Every detail is built to the exact spec of that year — woods, hardware, plastics, finishes, even the strings — but the instrument arrives in pristine NOS (New Old Stock) condition rather than aged. It's the playing experience of opening a sealed time capsule that's been sitting in the back room since Fullerton was still building basses by hand.

Hand-Selected Two-Piece Alder Body in Wide-Fade Sunburst

The body is two pieces of hand-selected alder, finished in Fender's Wide-Fade 2-Color Sunburst — the soft amber-to-dark-edge burst that runs a touch wider than the standard two-tone, letting more of the alder grain breathe through the centre. The nitrocellulose lacquer is sprayed to NOS spec, which is to say full-gloss and immaculate. None of the wear or check pattern of a relic'd guitar, just the look a Fender factory finish had the day it left the building.

Quartersawn Maple Neck with the 1957 Soft V Profile

The one-piece quartersawn maple neck is carved to Fender's 1957 Soft V — the rounded V-shape that sits in the web of the hand and lets the thumb anchor on top of the neck for the two-finger walking lines that Jamerson, Duck Dunn and Carol Kaye made canonical. It carries 20 Jescar 47095 medium-vintage frets, black Micarta dot inlays, a 7.25" fingerboard radius, and a bone nut at 1.75" / 44.45mm. The disc string tree behind the nut is correct to the year.

Hand-Wound '57 Precision Bass Pickup

Underneath the gold-anodised pickguard sits a Custom Shop hand-wound '57 Precision Bass split-coil pickup — the most accurate recreation Fender makes of the original 1957 wind, voiced for the thumping low end and present mid-range that defined the early P-Bass voice. Master volume, master tone, knurled chrome knobs, vintage-spec wiring loom. No active circuitry, no quirks — just the most influential bass pickup ever made, built by hand to original spec.

Period-Correct Hardware

Every piece of metalwork is built off a 1957 spec sheet rather than a modern one: a four-saddle vintage-style bridge with threaded steel saddles, vintage-style open-gear tuning machines in nickel/chrome, the single-ply gold-anodised aluminium pickguard, knurled chrome control knobs, and a disc string tree. The bass is strung from the Custom Shop with stainless steel flatwounds in .055–.105 — exactly the kind of strings a working player would have run on a P-Bass in '57.

What's in the Case

Ships in the Fender deluxe hardshell case alongside a period-spec strap and a Certificate of Authenticity signed by the Custom Shop builder. Set up in-store by Guitar World Australia's techs before it ships to you.

Specifications