Sire Marcus Miller M7 Swamp Ash 5ST 5-String Fretless (2nd Gen) - transparent black burst

gepostet 07/10/2022 à 18:45 ANDREAS G. Zertifizierter Kauf

This base guitar was very nice manufactured, no faults, perfect lacque, perfect fretboar, and equipped with flatwound strings they give a very vintage sound. I formerly studied Sanxian which is a 36" fretless instrument, one could call it the chinese guitar.

The swamp ash material gives a very warm, bright differentiated tone, but not brute. Whenever it's 60ties rock, jazz or something where you like more the double base sound you're all set with the M7 fretless.

And what it doesnt do passive the variations are nearly unlimited with the onboard preamp which also has a tunable mid pot over a very wide range. Then you get it brighter or darker... and the strings... not made for plicking with pics. It just doesn't sound.

One hint - the batteries (2x9V ) are only cut off when the amp cable is unplugged. But the power switch has three empty pins, there it is easy to build a true battery bypass together with the passive switch without cnangung anything.

In my opinion it has three things that stops me giving 5 stars
- the stacked pots are far to high, They easily get damanged. They are directly soldered on electronic boards, and very hard to replace as a single piece. Luckily Sire sells the entire electronics for 60$ + shipping in case of need.

- plastic knobs... recentlyi I tested a fretted M7 5st and it came with metal ones.
- Last but least the battery case. It has a wooden plate (nice) that has to be unscrewed (lesser nice) to replace them and then you have to get the plate off with kind of little screwdriver.

And one suggetion... the base is explicitely sold with "no bag" but for far shipments it is strongly recommended to have at least a sturdy gigbag like IBanez does this with it's BTB premium models.