I JUST received this!
O.K. my thoughts...
It was boxed extremely well. a typical trapezoidal guitar/ bass box, inside a larger guitar shipping box. A LOT of styrofoam peanuts!
Opening it up, there's a styrofoam sleeve, and voila' a new bass!
It's really beautiful.. the color is called 'Lake Placid Blue' but it's really more like Fender's 'Ice Blue Metallic,' or Pontiac Engine blue metallic, which I love.
The action is medium high. I lowered it to my liking. The neck needed slight adjustment, about a quarter turn. I LOVE the truss rod access channel. VERY big plus here. The intonation, is perfect. I played it un-amplified, and it resonates quite well. The nut spacing is narrower than I'm used to, but it's not a problem. The big surprise for me, was the bridge. I have no idea why anyone would want to replace this. It's nicely machined, better, and with more mass than most 'bent-plate' style bridges.
I NEVER see this problem addressed, other than flatwound string breakage on older basses with only through body stringing- This new bridge fixes that- for us flatwound users- it's a DUAL LOAD, yes, you can string it through the body, OR through the holes in the back of the bridge. The saddles and screws are quite nice. Another unexpected surprise- the tuners have a Hipshot style TENSION set screw adjustment on the bottom shaft retainer!
Sure, there's a few negative things, like the uneven fret ends, and the way they are folded into the binding, and a few stray black file/ scratch marks on the binding. Now for my one BIG gripe. I plugged it in to familiarize myself with the preamp. This bass looks, feels, plays, and sounds just killer. I even find the slightly narrow for me nut spacing to be no issue at all. Now the one issue I don't like so much- Like my G&L tribute- the controls work counter-clockwise! All my other basses (20 others) have a much preferred to me- clockwise rotation.
If any of you have one of these, you already know what a great deal they are. If you don't, I'd say- buy one! I paid $784.00 and waited four months for this, and it was worth it.
So, for now... overall I'm pleased.
Sire is on top of what we need, these upgrades seem right on target. Especially the bridge.
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Tuner tension set screw.jpg [ 205.1 KiB | Viewed 9167 times ] |
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20220408_140012 half size 2.jpg [ 193.14 KiB | Viewed 9167 times ] |
