Sire V5 and V7

[JZx]

Hi, I bought two Sire basses after few years of watching almost only positive reviews and I got a bit disappointed. Maybe I am unlucky, maybe it is a bigger problem with their quality - I do not know, but maybe someone will find this info helpful. I will focus on cons as most of reviews are focused on pros.

 

Sire V7 2nd gen fretless (ash + maple fingerboard)

I bought it in Andertons, I find the service top notch, but the bass had some quality problems:

- the nut was filed too wide under E and A strings, while plucking these strings hard they where making noise on the nut. As shipping the bass back to UK would be expensive Andertons paid for the repair by local luthier

- the jack socket does not work well, when the plug is slightly pulled sideways it makes noises and sometimes the bass stops playing

- bottom of the neck pocket looks bad, there are spots of paint and it is far from beeing flat, there are traces of router. The neck is stable so it is rather aesthetical problem, but I’ve seen much cheaper basses with perfectly flat, nice and clean neck pockets

- the body and neck finish looks nice with two exceptions: 1) the finish on edges of neck pocket is not perfect as it was adjusted after painting, 2) the body seems not be as well polished under the pickguard as on the rest of it, so if someone would like to make it look like Jaco’s bass it would not look good

- tuners feel cheap

Other than that it is quite ok, sounds nice. You might say that I require too much from a budget bass, but I had cheaper Yamaha, Cort, Ibanez and probably some other basses I do not remember now, they did not have such issues.

 

Sire V5 5-string (alder + maple fingerboard)

Few months later I bought V5 5-string, there are the same issues with the finish, but there is also a bigger problem: half of bottom of the neck pocket is covered with paint (the one near the edge of body), the other half is not, so there are two surfaces that are not levelled together. If you put something with straight edge in the position parallel to the neck there is 0.5 mm gap under the end of it. The result is that the neck moves slightly even under string tension, when it moves it makes a cracking noise and the bass goes out of tune a bit. I am not sure why, but sometimes it happens more often, sometimes it does not at all for a an hour of playing. The other problem with this bass is that B string is floppy, that happens, but also the E and A strings do not seem to sound well (I tried three different sets of strings).

Another small detail: there are traces of glue around the nut, on the fingerboard and on the headstock and the nut itself seems to be covered with mix of glue and dirt

 

So to sum it up:

- in my opinion Sire basses (at least the two I have) are not high quality instruments. You can get better quality from Yamaha, Cort, Ibanez and probably many other manufacturers in the same or even lower price range

- I like my V7 fretless very much after fixing the nut, it sounds ok, feels nice, looks ok, I will have to replace the jack socket before I will decide to gig with it, I hope I will not have any more problems with it. Would I buy it again now? No, I would rather try something else. After problems with V7 I thought it was a bad luck, now with experience with V5 I am not sure.

- I do not like V5 at all, it is not built well, it does not sound good. I will try to replace it.

 

Questions to Sire owners:

Did you detach neck in your basses? How does your neck pocket look?

Are there more Sire owners with experience similar to mine?