I was very excited when I saw that Sire was about to finally give us a high end luxury bass. I couldn’t wait till I find myself an excuse to buy one. Sadly, for me and my bank account at least, it just introduces bling and fails to bring the high end part of the bass making buissness.
First of all DO NOT BELIEVE THE SIRE FAQ WEBSITE CONSIDERING THE WEIGHT OF THE INSTRUMENTS!!! This boat anchor weighs 4.55kg and their website states 4.15 or smthing like that. Now that is not a small difference. Also, even with the Hipshot ultralites it neck dives like crazy. The center of mass on my bass is at the tip of the lower horn!!!! This is the worst part of it all. I can handle 4.5kg when it doesn’t tug my shoulder like crazy but let me tell you right now, if you plan to play this thing during 6-7-8 hour wedding gigs, you better have a good phyisio and even then you won’t be able to cope with the shoulder pain. Also my bass is made of 3 pieces of ash and it literraly looks like it’s made of 3 different woods because the grain of the 3 pieces is nowhere near simmilar to the other one. And then the preamp. This preamp sounds amazing and this is the preamp that all jazz basses should have, but sometimes it just stops working, or should I say works inproperly - in my case as a high pass filter. I’ve also had the issue of the bass knob not controlling anything.
With that all said this bass sounds AMAZING. The neck feels AMAZING. The pickups are AMAZING. The Preamp, when it works, sounds AMAZING. With all that said, no sound is worth health problems or should excuse the bad electronics QC and nonsense wood piece joints.
I have to tell you, if you value your money, give this thing a pass. Buy a second hand v7 and put ultralites on it - you’re gonna save money and have the same package. If the “GOLD” hardware on mine hadn’t tarnished already, I would return it in an instant.
