The Fender MoFi PrecisionDeck turntable features a great sunburst finish with the Fender logo that causes an immediate positive impression... if you are a musician and in particular a guitar player. Fender knows that guitar players cannot resist buying just-one-more guitar, and feels that bass players will feel tempted to buy... just another turntable instead. Or maybe it's because turntables had a tendency to skip powerful bass notes (just ask any reggae musician). Whatever the reason, designing a turntable inspired by the heavy Fender Precision Bass is one of those ideas that just evokes a big, fat question mark.
According to Fender there is actually an historical precedent. In the early 1940s, Leo Fender was operating Fender Radio Service in Fullerton, Calif. His primary business was repairing home audio equipment—radios, TVs, and hi-fi sets. In 1945, Fender, with fellow inventors Doc Kauffman and Clifton Abbott, designed and patented a turntable of his own. Fender ultimately sold the turntable rights in 1945 for $5,000 in advance royalties and used the proceeds as seed money to fund the K&F Manufacturing Corporation with Kauffman. K&F manufactured lap steel guitars, amplifiers, and the record player for a short time before Kauffman sold his share in the company to Fender. Undaunted by Kauffman’s departure, Leo Fender established Fender Electric Instruments in 1946. Now, 75 years later, Fender’s name is once again gracing a technologically advanced turntable.
According to Fender, the MoFi PrecisionDeck is a high-performance belt-drive turntable in every way, with a design that was intended to reflect on the brand's decades of music history. With a shape designed by Principal Master Builder Yuriy Shishkov of the Fender Custom Shop (FCS), the PrecisionDeck is also built with the same wood - swamp ash - as the famed Fender Precision Bass guitar. The blanks of swamp ash are sourced, milled, and finished in the iconic three-color sunburst by Fender USA.
All the remaining turntable components are designed and built by MoFi, and the deck is assembled, featuring technology from the successful Mobile Fidelity UltraDeck (EISA Award 2019-2020), with testing and setup by MoFi at the company’s factory in Ann Arbor, Michigan. The turntable table is virtually ready to play straight out of the box with its pre-mounted MoFi MasterTracker pickup. Each limited-edition unit is individually numbered, badged, and certain to become a collector’s item.
"Having the opportunity to work with MoFi to bring this turntable to life has been a pleasure. The turntable finish comes in our legendary and iconic 3-color Sunburst and of course, uses the same ash wood used to make the Fender Precision Bass guitar,” notes Yuriy Shishkov, Fender Custom Shop Principal Master Builder.
The journey of the PrecisionDeck has been an authentic collaboration between the two brands. "MoFi is renowned for remastering some of the greatest records of all time, and collaborating on a turntable with the Fender brand, whose instruments are widely featured on those albums, was a natural fit", says MoFi Electronics President, John Schaffer. “Working with the entire Fender team has been a great pleasure and we could not be more excited or proud of the result. From the beginning, creating this turntable has been a joy. The ideas on how to leverage both companies’ strengths and create something authentic and special just flowed. With the very first prototype we knew we were really on to something, as folks would stop by to admire what we were creating.”
The Fender x MoFi PrecisionDeck is available now for purchase within the US at MoFi.com and Fender.com, and as well as select wholesale MoFi partners globally
www.mofielectronics.com
www.fender.com
