IN-DEPTH SPECIFICATIONS
The first thing you’ll notice when you pick up an American Ultra is the neck shape: it’s the same depth as the old 'C' neck but with higher shoulders for a more 'D'-like shape, and with rolled fretboard edges and fret ends for supreme comfort. Fender also tested over half a dozen new neck finishes before settling on the satin finish found here: it almost feels like raw wood, and yet it’s not. It has a vintage tint but isn’t glossy, and you’ll be able to fly up and down the fretboard like nobody’s business.
The fretboard radius goes from a slightly curvy ten inches at the neck end, right up to 14 at the highest frets. Upper-fret access is exceptional thanks to a new sculpted neck joint, which includes a scoop behind the treble-side cutaway as well as a lower-profile block joint. The back of the body also has a more comfortable tummy-cut, which is a nice touch.
The electronics include newly redesigned fifth-generation noiseless pickups, along with some special tweaks in the electronics. The noiseless single coils are hotter here than in the SSS model, in order to more comfortably hang with the beefy, but not-too-strident Double Tap humbucker. Hit the S1 switch built into the volume pot, and you’ll find that the humbucker becomes a single coil, but without the typical volume drop expected when you split a ‘bucker. Fender achieves this by over-winding one of the humbucker’s coils, then taking a tap off it when in regular humbucker mode (effectively removing those extra winds from the coil), then reinstating those additional coils once the humbucker is split. All while staying noiseless and giving you a hot, SRV-like single coil snarl that complements the power and voice of the other single coils.
The volume pot isn’t just an S1 switch: it also includes a treble bleed filter to maintain the sparkle and chime of the high end when y ou roll the volume pot down. The tremolo system is aided by a low-resistance nut and new staggered Fender locking tuners, and it returns to pitch with exceptional smoothness.