Review : Sire Marcus Miller Z3 4 String Bass
Hey gang! This time I take a dive into the Sire Marcus Miller Z3 4 String Bass. It may look like a bass from your memory and that is the intention, but it’s definitely a Sire, and that means an incredible instrument at a price for normal people. This review would not be possible without the support of The Arts Music Store. If you are in Canada and not shopping there, please start! It’s great store, with lots of stock and they ship Canada wide!.
The body shape, excluding the headstock of course, invokes the image of an early Music Man Stingray and it does a nice job of it. Music Man still makes the Stingray in a couple of variants, but the Sire is more evocative of a 1970’s era Stingray.
Overview
The Sire Z3 is a single pickup active / passive 4 string bass that bears a more than passing resemblance to a ‘70s Music Man Stingray. The single pickup is placed closer to the bridge than to the neck and my unit came in the pictured blue with a maple neck and maple fingerboard. There is a five string version available as well. The bass is available in Antique White, Blue, Sparkle Black and Rose Gold. There are also a Silver Sparkle and Skyburst Sparkle version with a rosewood fingerboard. The fingerboard edges are rolled in Sire’s “Edgeless” design. The body is mahogany and the neck is hard maple.
The bass is part of Sire’s Marcus Miller bass lineup, similar to their guitars being in their Larry Carlton guitar lineup. The bass as received sells for $769 CAD which puts it in direct price competition with the higher end Squier Vintage and Fender Standard series as well as some fine models from Yamaha. It’s good for a bass player to have a selection to choose from. While this is in Sire’s 3 lineup, their most cost effective strata, this is not a cheap instrument. In my first impressions below, I rate it well above where it sits in the marketplace.
There is a more expensive version called the Z7 that offers an alder body and two pickups.
Specifications
I screenshotted the information from the Sire website to save retyping and to avoid my own errors, as well as the “help” of auto-screwup.
Initial Findings
The bass is very comfortable to hold and to play with no neck dive when on a basic strap. The body is very simple, basically a Telecaster like block of wood with a shallow belly carve on the back and a really nicely cut neck joint for those who play far up the neck. The fretwork was very good with no dead spots and minimal factory neck relief. The instrument is measured as received, which means before a customer exit check has been done. No stores to my awareness do their exit setup before the sale of the instrument as things can change when an instrument is hanging on a wall. This instrument had been out a couple of weeks before being transferred to me for this evaluation. All the pots worked, although the dome knobs do not have a set screw and the push pull on the bass knob was riding on the cover plate. A simple lift of the knob a tiny bit resolved that. All the pots were very smooth and the tone controls are functional but more evident in active mode.
The weight is well distributed and the jack is on the edge of the lower bout. I recommend a 90 degree plug for this bass as I do for all instruments with this jack placement. The factory strings were in good shape and sounded just fine. They are traditional bass strings, original manufacturer not specified and while I would personally swap them for tape wounds (my personal preference) there is no reason to force a string change at time of purchase. This is consistent with all the Sires that I have tested. The neck is a five bolt attachment which helps keep the cost down without compromising tone.
It is my opinion that this Sire Z3 is at the performance and quality level of a much more expensive bass, better in my opinion than the excellent Ensenada Mexico made Fenders, light years beyond the disappointing Fender standards and up there with some higher end Yamahas. While it is priced sort of like a Music Man Sterling series, this bass far surpasses that line.
The tuning machines are simple open backed, non-locking tuners. They are completely smooth and lash free.
Initial Setup Findings
The Sire Z3 is both passive and active and can be played if the batteries (2 x 9V) go dead in passive mode, because some fool (myself) left the darn thing plugged in for a couple of days. So I footed the bill for a brand new pair of Duracells.
Playability
I did no tweaking of significance to the bass, calling it perfectly playable right out of the box. It was immediately comfortable with a fine range of tones and a rich and powerful single pickup. I prefer simple in a bass, and advocate passive only basses in general, although I do take a different position here. You gain value and lose nothing with this bass being active or passive. While I own many basses from different makers and a number of bass amps, I did all my initial testing using the EBS MicroBass 3 pedal amplifier first into a 12” FRFR cabinet and for recording direct from the EBS MicroBass 3 into a Clarett+ interface.
I did have an old Diamond Effects Memory Lane and Diamond Effects Halo in the the Effects Loop of the EBS MicroBass 3 used occasionally during my testing because I like what those two effects can do with a really good electric bass signal.
While the fretwork was excellent, there was a tiny bit of shrinkage in the fingerboard edges as noted above. Nothing that caused pain at all, but one could if one wished do a bit of cleanup on the fret ends. I have played bass guitars priced well over $2500 that have this issue in far worse states. I did not do any work on this evaluation unit to change things.
I like the single pickup configuration. It give me a wide range of tones while keeping things simple and straight forward. I also like the aggressive cutaway on the treble side of the neck for when I get up to the higher frets. The nut width is more jazz bass than precision bass, in keeping with Marcus Miller’s preferences. I like this better as well although switching from one neck width to another in a live situation is unlikely to mess one up.
Sample Tones
To record the sample tones, I plugged the Z3 into the EBS Microbass 3 and then took the output into a Clarett+ interface via XLR. The EBS Microbass 3 has a very nice compressor which was always on, and there were an original Diamond Memory Lane and original Diamond Halo in the effects loop although the loop pedals are not on all the time. I left the tone controls in their neutral detents at all times in both passive and active modes. I recorded from the Clarett+ into Logic Pro and the only post processing done was the use of my now standard Abbey Road Mastering Console. The first section is the open strings, then their harmonics at the 12th. The second session are chords played badly, and then a very simple riff with the Halo enabled.
Wrapping Up
I am really pleased with this instrument. It is immediately playable, comfortable and feels like a short scale while being a regular 34” scale length. When in active mode, it’s louder and the independent treble, mid and bass controls have a more pronounced effect. I found that I played it more often in the passive mode, finding that somehow warmer and just more conducive to experimentation in my evaluation setup but that is likely just me and the time when I would just sit and play on my own. For the investment, you get a wonderful bass with great tone and playability. I heartily recommend the Sire Z3.
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