Review : A Bass for Everyone, the Sire Marcus Miller V7
Playing the bass is a great pleasure for me. There exists this illusion that bass is just a backbone instrument not given to proficient soloing or being a lead instrument. To those who may still buy into this fallacy, I offer you James Jamerson, Jaco Pastorius, Chris Squire, Geddy Lee and Marcus Miller. To see the fun that one can have playing bass, one only need to head over to All About the Bass on the Anderton's Music Youtube channel and watch the jams with Nathan and Lee.
Marcus Miller is an incredible musician. He was one of the top NY session players and also worked with Jazz genius Miles Davis. He's also an incredibly nice fellow if his interview with Lee Anderton is any indication.
Marcus Miller partnered with Sire to bring high quality basses to players who didn't have multi-thousands of dollars to drop on a great bass. I'm fortunate to have added a number of great basses to my own collection over several decades including Fender Precisions, Fender Jazzes and Rickenbackers. I also have an inexpensive Cort with a shorter scale that is a joy to play. I recently had the opportunity to get a Sire Marcus Miller V7 on evaluation to do this review.
Wow! Most times when you pick up a bass in the $500 range, you are getting something that might be a start to decency. Without wanting to throw Squire under the bus, that's a decent example. Having now been exposed to the Sire Marcus Miller series from V3 through V10, I cannot imagine why anyone would go with anything other than a V3 as their first bass, or if finances allowed, not just go to a V7 and play.
Although not part of this review, let me quickly touch on the V3 lineup. Here you find mahogany bodies with Canadian Rock Maple necks. The fretboards are rosewood with the rolled edges and fret smoothing that you typically need to go to high products for. The pickups are switchable for active or passive and include the comprehensive EQ system that Miller prescribes for all instruments bearing his name. Thus you have a three band EQ built in where you have control over what frequency the midrange control impacts. The bridge is solid steel and the strings load through the body. I've not found a bass in this price point that sounds or plays anywhere near this quality. And btw, the finishes are beautiful in a deep and rich gloss, not some horrible matte spray that says the maker was too cheap to do a nice and proper finish.
Coming back to the V7, we move to a choice of body and fingerboard options. There is a swamp ash body with maple neck and maple fingerboard, or an alder body with maple neck and ebony fingerboard. The latter is what I had for my evaluation.
The V7 has an offset body and at the risk of offending the Fender purists is very much like a Jazz bass in its body shape, nut width and overall profile. The controls are different than a Jazz bass because of the 3 band active EQ, and of course the headstock is different, but the V7 has the wonderful playability one comes to know from a Fender Jazz Bass built in California or in Mexico, or one of the rarer specials from Fender Japan.
Tone is lovely with a nice punch and enormous control when using the Active functionality and three band EQ. The volume knob is a double stack with the centre post being the volume and the outer ring being the main tone. The choice of Active or Passive is via a micro-switch so if you don't want to use the Active 3 band EQ, you do not have to. The pickups are enamel wound and have a nice brightness with excellent resolution. They are called Marcus Super J and are designed and built to sound like a vintage Jazz pickup. I don't have access to a vintage Jazz bass, but I like the sound very much.
When I ask newer players what frustrations they have, one of the comments is that their instrument is physically hard to play. This is most often due to a poor setup at the factory along with the use of lowest cost strings. When I ask parents of newer players what frustrates them, it's that their child doesn't play the instrument much after asking for one for months. When I ask if the bass was setup at time of purchase, most of them ask me what a setup is.
I deal with professional guitar shops. All of them offer a setup either at time of purchase or in the first year of ownership. A setup means that the instrument is going to be checked over by the resident instrument technician and he or she will adjust action, neck bow, intonation and otherwise check the instrument for maximum playability. Every bass player needs time to build up some calluses, but going through this on a poorly setup guitar is more painful than it needs to be. Online shopping is very prevalent, but if you as a buyer can spend time in a proper guitar shop, your odds improve.
The other reality is that no shop can afford to offer a free master grade setup on an instrument. This kind of thing can run into the hundreds of dollars and even a basic setup will normally cost about $75 or so depending on the instrument. It would be better if the instrument was well setup out of the box and already had decent strings on it, instead of the junk so often installed. I was very impressed with the V7. It was hung on the wall right out of the box after a very quick check and tuning. When I took it down, the only thing that I had to do was tune it. Every other setting was very acceptable to the majority of players as is. When I got it home, I checked the neck relief, the action and the intonation and there was nothing there that was bad. I found a minor fret buzz on the E string. It was slight and probably wouldn't bother to most people. I'm very picky and so a quick bridge saddle adjustment was required to slightly raise the E string. This eliminated the buzz but was not so extreme as to compromise the action.
I was very pleased to see that if at some point, I did need to adjust the neck there is a long slot for a neck wrench in the pickguard so you can make the needed adjustments without pulling the neck off. So sad that other instruments in this price range require you to pull the neck to adjust it.
I've been playing the V7 through a 60 watt Fender Bassman amplifier. This is an older solid state amp with a nice clean tone and no digital modeling. It has an active / passive selector and the only other non-standard thing is an Enhance button, that in my case, is always off.
Because this is a very basic and relatively low cost piece of kit, I do use a pedalboard with it. It's my only board that is all TC Electronic. Not by design, it just worked out that way. The signal chain is a Polytune 3 Mini, then a Spectrodrive, a Corona Chorus, a Flashback Mini and a Hall of Fame Reverb Mini. For my use cases, these are all excellent tools that do what they are designed to do without unwanted excess coloration. I have been pleased with the V7 whether I plug in directly or go through the board. The tuner is handy and I probably have the reverb on 90% of the time, albeit at a very low setting. The Spectrodrive is a great tool, particularly with basses that do not have their own EQ, and the compressor that is built in is exactly what a want for a bass. Plenty of added sustain with no squishiness. Regular readers will not be surprised because they will already know that I am a compressor dork. I only use the chorus or delay rarely in my use cases, but like many effects, they are essential when you need them, but otherwise idle. The V7 responds well to being put through this effect chain and I like the creamy sustain that I get from the Marcus Miller Super J pickups routed through the Spectrodrive. As an aside, if all you need is a bass compressor, just get the TC Electronic Spectracomp and be done with it.
The V7 that I have has a bound fingerboard. I realize that this sort of thing is typically marketed as an upgrade and it certainly is well done. However, if the fingerboard edges were not so nicely rolled and the fret ends so well finished, it would not matter. I find the edge and fret finishing on the V7 as good as a California built Fender Jazz Bass and better than most any other non-American built instrument. How do I draw this conclusion? Sit in the bass room and take lots of basses down and just run my fingers and hand down the neck. There should be no sharp edges or grabbing as you do so. This may sound like a small thing, but in the long term, it's a very big deal and takes a lot of skill and time to get right. I have tried instruments at three times the price where the fret ends were like a series of little dull knives. Not so the Sire V7. We won't even discuss instruments from other makers at this price point.
The conclusion? If you are looking for a bass guitar and want to keep your spend under $1000, or perhaps even less, there is, in my opinion, no better place to look that at Sire.
