Strat traditions aren’t merely deep—they’re also wide. It wasn’t long after the instrument’s 1954 debut before players started tinkering with Leo’s original recipe, and the model’s evolution in the decades since has often been dramatic. These days, the Stratocaster line is like a family tree that can be charted on a vintage/modern graph, with near-exact vintage replicas such as the Fender American Vintage line at one end of the spectrum and humbucker-equipped hotrods at the other.
If a historically accurate American Vintage Strat rated a 9.5 on this imaginary spectrum, the new American Professional Strat would get about a 7.5. At $1,399, the Professional’s price is about average for a U.S.-made Fender Strat—costlier than the American Standard (which the Professional replaces) and American Special instruments, but not as expensive as high-end American Elite and American Vintage models.
A Familiar Feel
The Professional certainly feels like an old-school Strat. If you’re a veteran Strat player, chances are someone could hand you a Professional for the first time just as you stepped onstage, and you could play all night with barely a second thought, except perhaps to admire the quality and consistency of the guitar’s workmanship.
This build is excellent. The narrow/tall frets are perfectly installed, with smoothly rounded ends and a fast, sleek feel. The neck employs Fender’s “deep C” profile, which feels svelte where the neck edges meet the fretboard, but with substantial mass filling your palm. The modern “sonic gray” finish has a subtle blue-green tint and a chic industrial look. The gloss finish polyurethane is mirror-perfect. The rear of the neck wears a thin matte finish.
Smooth Setup
Our Professional arrived with a fabulous factory setup. The intonation was almost perfect. The actionwas slinky-low, yet buzz-free. The trem was set up “Jeff Beck style” (so that maximum pull raises the first string an exact half-step). The pickup heights were just right. This is truly a guitar you can play right out of the case. (And that molded-plastic hardshell case is included.)
The Professional sounds great unplugged. The innate tone is airy and bright, with generous sustain and an attractively “hollow” acoustic-like resonance. The whole instrument just hums when you strum, thanks in part to an expertly carved and seated bone nut. The bridge employs vintage-style two-screw saddles, and the entire assembly rocks smoothly and consistently on its fulcrum points. The pickup selector is the traditional 5-way type.
Modern touches include contemporary Fender tuners, a sleek new string tree design, a “trem’” arm that snaps rather than screws in. But Fender also revisits the under-appreciated Micro-Tilt neck angle adjustment feature that first appeared on oft-maligned 3-bolt-neck Stratocasters and Telecasters from the early ’70s.
Another update is a modernized wiring scheme. On vintage Strats, there’s a tone control each for the neck and middle pickups, but none for the bridge pickup—one of several factors that gives the Strat bridge pickup a “hard to handle” reputation. Here, though, the first tone knob controls the neck pickup, and the second tone knob controls both the middle and bridge pickups. For most applications, this system makes far more sense than the original design. The tone pots are nicely voiced, too. You can get more-than-decent traditional jazz tones when you roll them back.
Ratings
Pros:
Excellent build. Superb traditional tones. Cool wiring and hardware refinements.
Cons:
Not for strict vintage purists.
Tones:
Playability:
Build/Design:
Value:
Street:
$1,399
Fender American Professional Stratocaster
fender.com
Zing Went the Strings of My Strat
The Professional’s snappy unplugged sound promises high-end excitement and, man, does it deliver when plugged in! In every pickup position, tones ring and chime, with snappy-crisp attack and pleasing sustain. But that’s not to say the Professional is excessively bright. Thanks to the guitar’s basic tonal balance and sense of top-end headroom, you can dig in hard for aggressively bright tones that still sound even and listenable.
The Professional houses a trio of single-coils designed by Tim Shaw, which, according to Fender, feature “a proprietary blend of alnico magnet types,” though they offer no further details. Whatever their composition, the pickups provide vintage-approved sounds, but with a bit more treble openness. Everything balances beautifully (though part of that is due to the expert setup). The pickups’ pole pieces are staggered as on a vintage Strat.
Meanwhile, the volume pot is wired using the popular “treble bleed bypass” mod, which adds an extra cap and resistor between two pot lugs. That way, tones lose no treble when you lower the volume knob. After playing a vintage Strat for decades, I found the effect is a bit surreal—but I love it! The revised wiring might be an issue for the small percentage of Strat players who use the volume knob as a secondary tone control. But now you can get crystalline clean tones at lower volume knob settings, which means you can set your amp fairly hot and veer from clean to crunch via the volume pot.
The Verdict
The original Strat design is so iconic and beloved that you have to be cautious about referring to changes as “improvements.” With its updated wiring, pickups, and hardware, the American Professional Stratocaster may not be the best choice for hardcore Strat traditionalists. But the guitar will probably delight—uh—medium-core traditionalists, who will relish both its fine vintage-approved tones and the new possibilities afforded by the revised wiring. And there’s no denying the Professional’s universally fine build quality, zingy resonance, and richly nuanced tones.
Watch the Review Demo:
Onstage, Tommy Emmanuel executes a move that is not from the playbook of his hero, Chet Atkins.
“My biggest decision every day on tour is, ‘What do I want to start with? How do I want to come out of the gate?’” Emmanuel explains to me over a video call. “A good opener has to have everything. It has to be full of surprise, it has to have lots of good ideas, lots of light and shade, and then, hit it again,” he says, illustrating each phrase with his hands and ending with a punch.“You lift off straightaway with the first song, you get airborne, you start reaching, and then it’s time to level out and take people on a journey.”
In May 2023, Emmanuel played two shows at the Sydney Opera House, the best performances from which have been combined on his new release, Live at the Sydney Opera House. The venue’s Concert Hall, which has a capacity of 2,679, is a familiar room for Emmanuel, but I think at this point in his career he wouldn’t bring a setlist if he was playing Wembley Stadium. On the recording, Emmanuel’s mind-blowingly dexterous chops, distinctive attack and flair, and knack for culturally resonant compositions are on full display. His opening song for the shows? An original, “Countrywide,” with a segue into Chet Atkins’ “El Vaquero.”
“When I was going to high school in the ’60s, I heard ‘El Vaquero’ on Chet Atkins’ record, [1964’s My Favorite Guitars],” Emmanuel shares. “And when I wrote ‘Countrywide’ in around ’76 or ’77, I suddenly realized, ‘Ah! It’s a bit like “El Vaquero!”’ So I then worked out ‘El Vaquero’ as a solo piece, because it wasn’t recorded like that [by Atkins originally].
“The co-writer of ‘El Vaquero’ is Wayne Moss, who’s a famous Nashville session guy who played ‘da da da’ [sings the guitar riff from Roy Orbison’s ‘Pretty Woman’]. And he played on a lot of Chet’s records as a rhythm guy. So once when I played ‘El Vaquero’ live, Wayne Moss came up to me and said, ‘You know, you did my part and Chet’s at the same time. That’s not fair!’” Emmanuel says, laughing.
Atkins is the reason Emmanuel got into performing. His mother had been teaching him rhythm guitar for a couple years when he heard Atkins on the radio and, at 6, was able to immediately mimic his fingerpicking technique. His father recognized Emmanuel’s prodigious talent and got him on the road that year, which kicked off his professional career. He says, “By the time I was 6, I was already sleep-deprived, working too hard, and being forced to be educated. Because all I was interested in was playing music.”
Emmanuel talks about Atkins as if the way he viewed him as a boy hasn’t changed. The title Atkins bestowed upon him, C.G.P. (Certified Guitar Player), appears on Emmanuel’s album covers, in his record label (C.G.P. Sounds), and is inlaid at the 12th fret on his Maton Custom Shop TE Personal signature acoustic. (Atkins named only five guitarists C.G.P.s. The others are John Knowles, Steve Wariner, Jerry Reed, and Atkins himself.) For Emmanuel, even today most roads lead to Atkins.
When I ask Emmanuel about his approach to arranging for solo acoustic guitar, he says, “It was really hit home for me by my hero, Chet Atkins, when I read an interview with him a long time ago and he said, ‘Make your arrangement interesting.’ And I thought, ‘Wow!’ Because I was so keen to be true to the composer and play the song as everyone knows it. But then again, I’m recreating it like everyone else has, and I might as well get in line with the rest of them and jump off the cliff into nowhere. So it struck me: ‘How can I make my arrangements interesting?’ Well, make them full of surprises.”
When Emmanuel was invited to contribute to 2015’s Burt Bacharach: This Guitar’s in Love with You, featuring acoustic-guitar tributes to Bacharach’s classic compositions by various artists, Emmanuel expresses that nobody wanted to take “(They Long to Be) Close to You,” due to its “syrupy” nature. But for Emmanuel, this presented an entertaining challenge.
He explains, “I thought, ‘Okay, how can I reboot “Close to You?’ So even the most jaded listener will say, ‘Holy fuck—I didn’t expect that! Wow, I really like that; that is a good melody!’ So I found a good key to play the song in, which allowed me to get some open notes that sustain while I move the chords. Then what I did is, in every phrase, I made the chord unresolve, then resolve.
Tommy Emmanuel's Gear
“I’m writing music for the film that’s in my head,” Emmanuel says. “So, I don’t think, ‘I’m just the guitar,’ ever.”
Photo by Simone Cecchetti
Guitars
- Three Maton Custom Shop TE Personals, each with an AP5 PRO pickup system
Amps
- Udo Roesner Da Capo 75
Effects
- AER Pocket Tools preamp
Strings & Picks
- Martin TE Signature Phosphor Bronze (.012–.054)
- Martin SP strings
- Ernie Ball Paradigm strings
- D’Andrea Pro Plec 1.5 mm
- Dunlop medium thumbpicks
“And then to really put the nail in the coffin, at the end, ‘Close to you’ [sings melody]. I finished on a major 9 chord which had that note in it, but it wasn’t the key the song was in, which is a typical Stevie Wonder trick. All the tricks I know, the wonderful ideas that I’ve stolen, are from Michael Jackson, Stevie Wonder, Lionel Richie, James Taylor, Carole King, Neil Diamond. All of the people who wrote really incredibly great pop songs and R&B music—I stole every idea I could, and I tried to make my little two-and-a -half minutes as interesting and entertaining as possible. Because entertainment equals: Surprise me.”
I share with Emmanuel that the performances on Live at the Sydney Opera House, which include his popular “Beatles Medley,” reminded me of another possible arrangement trick. In Harpo Marx’s autobiography, Harpo Speaks, I preface, Marx writes of a lesson he learned as a performer—to “answer the audience’s questions.” (Emmanuel says he’s a big fan of the book and read it in the early ’70s.) That happened for me while listening to the medley, when, after sampling melodies from “She’s a Woman” and “Please Please Me,” Emmanuel suddenly lands on “While My Guitar Gently Weeps.”
I say, “I’m waiting for something that hits more recognizably to me, and when ‘While My Guitar’ comes in, that’s like answering my question.”
“It’s also Paul and John, Paul and John, George,” Emmanuel replies. “You think, ‘That’s great, that’s great pop music,’ then, ‘Wow! Look at the depth of this.’”
Often Emmanuel’s flights on his acoustic guitar are seemingly superhuman—as well as supremely entertaining.
Photo by Ekaterina Gorbacheva
A trick I like to employ as a writer, I say to Emmanuel, is that when I’m describing something, I’ll provide the reader with just enough context so that they can complete the thought on their own.
“You can do that musically as well,” says Emmanuel. He explains how, in his arrangement of “What a Wonderful World,” he’ll play only the vocal melody. “When people are asking me at a workshop, ‘How come you don’t put chords behind that part?’ I say, ‘I’m drawing the melody and you’re putting in all the background in your head. I don’t need to tell you what the chords are. You already know what the chords are.’”
“Wayne Moss came up to me and said, ‘You know, you did my part and Chet’s at the same time. That’s not fair!’”
Another track featured on Live at the Sydney Opera House is a cover of Paul Simon’s “American Tune” (which Emmanuel then jumps into an adaptation of the Australian bush ballad, “Waltzing Matilda”). It’s been a while since I really spent time with There GoesRhymin’ Simon (on which “American Tune” was first released), and yet it sounded so familiar to me. A little digging revealed that its melody is based on the 17th-century Christian hymn, “O Sacred Head, Now Wounded,” which was arranged and repurposed by Bach in a few of the composer’s works. The cross-chronological and genre-lackadaisical intersections that come up in popular music sometimes is fascinating.
“I think the principle right there,” Emmanuel muses, “is people like Bach and Beethoven and Mozart found the right language to touch the heart of a human being through their ears and through their senses ... that really did something to them deep in their soul. They found a way with the right chords and the right notes, somehow. It could be as primitive as that.
Tommy Emmanuel has been on the road as a performing guitarist for 64 years. Eat your heart out, Bob Dylan.
Photo by Jan Anderson
“It’s like when you’re a young composer and someone tells you, ‘Have a listen to Elton John’s “Candle in the Wind,”’ he continues. “‘Listen to how those notes work with those chords.’ And every time you hear it, you go, ‘Why does it touch me like that? Why do I feel this way when I hear those chords—those notes against those chords?’ I say, it’s just human nature. Then you wanna go, ‘How can I do that!’” he concludes with a grin.
“You draw from such a variety of genres in your arrangements,” I posit. “Do you try to lean into the side of converting those songs to solo acoustic guitar, or the side of bridging the genre’s culture to that of your audience?”
“I stole every idea I could, and I tried to make my little two-and-a-half minutes as interesting and entertaining as possible. Because entertainment equals: Surprise me.”
“If I was a method actor,” Emmanuel explains, “what I’m doing is—I’m writing music for the film that’s in my head. So, I don’t think, ‘I’m just the guitar,’ ever. I always think it has to have that kind of orchestral, not grandeur, but … palette to it. Because of the influence of Stevie Wonder, Billy Joel, and Elton John, especially—the piano guys—I try to use piano ideas, like putting the third in the low bass a lot, because guitar players don’t necessarily do that. And I try to always do something that makes what I do different.
“I want to be different and recognizable,” he continues. “I remember when people talked about how some players—you just hear one note and you go, ‘Oh, that’s Chet Atkins.’ And it hit me like a train, the reason why a guy like Hank Marvin, the lead guitar player from the Shadows.... I can tell you: He had a tone that I hear in other players now. Everyone copied him—they just don’t know it—including Mark Knopfler, Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page, all those people. I got him up to play with me a few times when he moved to Australia, and even playing acoustic, he still had that sound. I don’t know how he did it, but it was him. He invented himself.”
YouTube It
Emmanuel performs his arrangement of “What a Wonderful World,” illustrating how omitting a harmonic backdrop can have a more powerful effect, especially when playing such a well-known melody.
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