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Sire Marcus Miller V7 4-String or 5-String? – Bass Practice Diary – 3rd December 2019

I’d like to do a review of the Sire Marcus Miller V7, because it’s a really good bass. I’ve already reviewed the Sire Marcus Miller M7 fretless 5-string. The only problem is that so many people have already reviewed the V7. I don’t want to just repeat what other people have already said, I try to make a point with my videos of always coming up with something a bit different from what’s already out there. Otherwise what’s the point in doing them.

So the question that I’m going to try to answer is, 4-string or 5-string? If you buy just one Sire Marcus Miller bass, I would recommend that you buy a V7. But, should you get the 4-string version or the 5-string version? Logically they should be identical apart from the number of strings, so does it make much difference if you go for the 4 or the 5? I think it does and I’m going to explain why.

What has everyone been saying about the V7?

The reviews that I’ve seen of the V7 seem to all pretty much say the same things. Sire have used high quality materials, meaning woods, hardware and even a bone nut. They have an excellent onboard preamp, they sound great, they have a low action which makes them extremely easy to play. And all for a price that is amazingly low given the quality of the instrument.

I’m not going to disagree with any of that. I would even add to it the fact that the bass sounds great without the preamp. When I first played one of these out the box, and it wasn’t yet hooked up to an amplifier, I could hear that it was a great sounding bass even without plugging it in.

It has an active/passive switch that turns the preamp on and off. It sounds great in passive mode with the preamp switched off. So I’m not sure how much it even needs the preamp. But having the preamp on the bass is definitely an added bonus.

The few minor negative comments that I’ve heard about the V7 include the fact that it’s a bit heavy. That hasn’t been a problem for me at all. I play Warwick basses which tend to be very heavy and the V7 feels relatively light in comparison. Maybe for someone who is used to playing Fender basses, the V7 might feel heavy.

Sire Basses Setup and Quality Control

I feel I should address the issue of quality control, because not all of the Sire basses are set up perfectly when you get them out the box. I’ve played four Sire basses brand new straight out of the box. Only one of them was set up exactly as it should be. Two of them, the two V7s featured in this video had very minor setup issues that were very quickly fixed. And I experienced big setup problems with the M7 bass.

I honestly don’t see that as a problem. Basses at this price are not meant to be perfect. For every bass to come out of the factory set up perfectly, Sire would need to pay luthiers to meticulously check every detail on every instrument. If they did that, the basses would be much more expensive. Personally, I would much rather they kept the price as low as possible, and I’ll sort out any issues with the setup myself.

Setting up a bass is easy. If you’re not sure how to do it, make sure you check out my video about setting up the M7 bass.

Should you buy the 4-string or the 5-string?

I should start by saying that both basses in the video are identical models. They both have alder bodies. So the only difference between them, apart from the colour, is the addition of a low B-string on the five string version. So, my first question is, is the B-string on the 5-string as good as the other four strings?

It’s an important question, because it’s really hard to get a low B-string to sound good. On almost any 5 or 6-string bass, the tension on the B-string is less than the tension on the other four strings. That can often cause the B-string to sound weak in comparison to the other strings. I’ve played plenty of 5-string basses where the low B-string sounded so bad that I just didn’t want to use it.

So, how is the low B-string on the 5-string V7? It’s pretty good, which is actually a problem because the other 4-strings sound great, and the B-string only sounds good.

It’s definitely a better low B-string than many of the 5-string basses I’ve played. When you play it on it’s own, it sounds fine, but it just doesn’t sound as good as the rest of the instrument.

It’s probably the one area where the M7 beats the V7. The 5-string M7 has an extra inch in the scale length of the 5-string version, and that helps to even out the tone with the other strings.

One other issue I have with the 5-string V7 is the string spacing. The strings have a narrower spacing than on the 4-string. I know that this is something that a lot of bass manufacturers do, including Fender. But I wish they wouldn’t. 20mm is a standard string spacing for a 4-string bass. The V7 is a Fender Jazz style bass, and the only J style 5-string basses that I’ve ever played and loved, had a 20mm string spacing. When I try to play Marcus Miller thumb and pluck style bass lines with the slightly narrower string spacing, I find it harder to do.

My Conclusion

I think the Sire Marcus Miller V7 is a brilliant bass. I really love playing the 4-string version. The 5-string version is good too, but every time I pick it up, I find myself wanting to put it down and pick up the 4-string version instead. So, if you’re planning to buy just one Sire Marcus Miller bass, and you want my advice about which one to get, then I’m going for the 4-string V7.

The 4-string version makes perfect sense. Because it’s clearly based upon Marcus Miller’s own modified Fender Jazz Bass. Marcus Miller doesn’t play 5-string basses, and I can see why, because his style doesn’t suit a 5-string bass. He does sometimes play his bass with the E-string tuned down to a D, as I demonstrated in the video. And that also works well with the V7 4-string bass.

However, I feel like I should conclude by acknowledging that I’m in the fortunate position of having basses with really good low B strings. So I don’t actually need a 5-string V7. If you’re in the position where you need a 5-string bass, and you’re thinking of the V7 as an option. You probably won’t find many better 5-string basses at this price.

Sire Marcus Miller V7 4-String or 5-String? – Bass Practice Diary 85
December 3, 2019 jccoxjazzbass
Six String Fretless Bass Arrangement – I Know You – Bass Practice Diary – 19th November 2019

Multi-tracking fretless bass is a big challenge. It’s hard enough to get any fretless instrument to sound in tune on even a single bass line. But to try and get multiple tracks of the same instrument to sound in tune with itself is really hard. Because if any one note is slightly out of tune, then the whole thing sounds bad. So, I set myself a challenge this week to see if I could arrange a tune using only my Warwick Thumb SC 6-string fretless bass.

I Know You by Mike Stern

The tune that I chose was I Know You which comes from a collaboration between Richard Bona and Mike Stern on the album These Times. It’s a beautiful tune and I highly recommend checking out the original version. Richard Bona’s vocals and bass playing are just sublime.

My version probably doesn’t do justice to the original, but it kind of works in it’s own way. The intonation certainly isn’t perfect, but I include it in my Bass Practice Diary as a demonstration of the kind of ideas that I like to use to help me improve my intonation on fretless bass. If you have a loop pedal and a fretless bass, try multi-tracking some of your own fretless lines. It’s hard to get it to sound good!

Six String Fretless Bass Arrangement – I Know You – Bass Practice Diary 83
November 19, 2019 jccoxjazzbass
Truss Rod Adjustment & Setup on fretless Sire Marcus Miller M7 – Bass Practice Diary – 12th November 2019

One of the most useful skills that you can learn as a bass player is to set up your own bass. It’s easy. Two weeks ago I released my review of the Sire Marcus Miller M7 fretless 5-string bass. It’s a good bass, but the setup was a mess when it arrived. So, on the same day that I shot the review, I also made a video about how I set the bass up, and here it is.

Why you should set up your own bass

When I was younger, I always paid a professional luthier to set my instruments up. I thought that a really good instrument needs a professional set up, and if I tried to do it myself I might ruin it. But there was one incident that completely changed my perspective, and I’m very glad that it did.

I was in my mid twenties and I’d been playing professional gigs for a few years. And I always took my basses to the same bass shop to have them set up. A very good shop where they make their own high end custom basses. So they know what they’re doing. I had just spent a lot of money on buying what was, at that time, the most expensive bass I’d ever owned.

The setup was almost perfect on my new bass, but there was a small issue on the first string, with the action being a bit too low. And so, on a few frets, the first string wasn’t ringing clearly. Naturally I took it straight to my usual bass shop where I knew and trusted them. And I paid them to give it a full setup. I didn’t mention the issue on the first string, I thought I didn’t need to. I assumed that as professional luthiers, they would make the setup perfect.

You’ve probably guessed by now, that when I came to pick up the bass two or three days later. The bass was in exactly the same condition that I had left it. Same issue on the first string. And while I was trying the bass out, I over heard the luthier say to his colleague in another room, that he hadn’t known what to do with my bass because the setup had been perfect from the start.

Only you know how you want your bass to be set up

Naturally I was dismayed to have wasted my time and money on a setup that had made no difference to my bass. I asked the luthier to make some extra adjustments, which he did, and they also made no difference. Then I left with my bass, not knowing what I should do. I didn’t complain, because I didn’t want to humiliate the guy, he had done his best.

When I got home, all I could do was try and sort out the issue myself, which I did in less than 10 minutes and I got the bass playing perfectly. And this was a revelation to me. I had always assumed that I couldn’t possibly set an instrument up as well as a professional. But I had fixed a problem in a few minutes that a professional had failed to even identify in three days.

Now, I assure you that I’m not trying to say that luthiers are incompetent or a sham. There is a reason why the luthier couldn’t get my bass setup right and I could. And that reason is because I’m a musician and he isn’t. I’ve heard all of the luthiers in that shop playing basses before, and their bass playing is very rudimentary and basic. Their skills are in making instruments, not playing them. So, when they set up an instrument, their approach is to make very detailed accurate measurements.

The problem with that approach is that it doesn’t take in to account the idiosyncrasies of each individual instrument. The luthier had performed all of the measurements on my bass, and found that everything was as it should be. That’s not really surprising, because it was an expensive bass, and I’m sure that the manufacturer had also made all the same measurements when it left the factory and decided it was perfect.

However, neither the factory nor the luthier in the shop had picked up on the issue that I was having, because they don’t play the bass like I do. And that is the key point. Only I know how I want my bass to be set up. Paying somebody else to do it doesn’t make any sense at all. They can only give me a generic set up based on what they think I want. But if I do it myself, I can make the bass play exactly how I want it to play.

How to set up a bass

There are only really five things that you need to learn how to do. And most of them are extremely easy. The most important, and possibly most difficult, is to set the relief in the neck by adjusting the truss rod. I’ve demonstrated in the video how a luthier adjusts the relief in the neck. But I tend to do everything by feel. I make small adjustments and then I try it out to see how it feels.

I think that is another really key point. Everything you do, just make tiny adjustments and keep trying it out. It might take ages to get it right, the first time that you do it. But it’s the best way, and it minimises the chances of you doing any damage to your bass.

Apart from the truss rod, the other four things that you can adjust are the saddles on the bridge for string height, the intonation on each string, the pickup height and the nut height.

As I mentioned in the video, most basses don’t come with adjustable nuts. I wish they did, check out Warwick’s Just-a-Nut III here. I don’t know why other companies can’t come up with a similar idea. If you don’t have an adjustable nut, you can lower a nut by filing it down. If you want to raise it, you need to replace it with a new nut. This is something that you probably should get a luthier to do, but most bass setup’s can be done without needing a new nut. I’ve only ever had to have a nut replaced twice in over 25 years of playing bass.

Truss Rod Adjustment & Setup on fretless Bass – Bass Practice Diary 82
November 12, 2019 jccoxjazzbass
A Marcus Miller tune with Sire Marcus Miller Basses – V7 & M7 – Bass Practice Diary – 5th November 2019

Recently I’ve been trying out some Sire basses. You may have already seen my review of the M7 fretless 5-string bass that I released last week. And I’ll be following up with a review of the V7 4-string and 5-string versions in the coming weeks. But, it struck me this week, that what a lot of people will want to know is, can you make them sound like Marcus Miller? In an attempt to answer, I’ve recorded one of his tunes, Amandla from the album of the same name.

Do the M7 and V7 sound like Marcus Miller basses?

Yes and no… Yes for the V7 and no for the M7. Not that the M7 is a bad bass. It’s a nice sounding fretless bass, as I covered in my review last week, but it’s a very different style of bass to anything I’ve ever seen Marcus Miller play. The V7, on the other hand, is very much a Marcus Miller style of bass. It’s essentially a Fender Jazz style bass with an active preamp.

I should point out that my style of playing the bass is very different to his, and the basses that I usually play are very different to those that he plays. I love Marcus Miller as both a composer and a musician, but I’ve never tried to imitate his sound before.

So, when you listen to the V7 bass in the video, you should bare in mind that it’s being played by someone who is trying to imitate a playing style that he almost never plays on a style of bass that he very rarely uses. And with that in mind, I’m quite surprised how much the bass tone does remind me of Marcus Miller. I don’t think I’ve ever played a bass before that was so easy to get that kind of tone out of.

Tutu and Amandla

So, the tune in the video is called Amandla, and it’s one of my favourite Marcus Miller compositions. It’s also a great tune for demonstrating these basses, because the original version includes both fretted and fretless basses and both finger style and slap techniques. So it covers a wide range of Marcus’ tones and techniques.

Marcus Miller wrote and produced two albums in the 1980s for the jazz trumpeter Miles Davis, called Tutu and Amandla. He played bass on other Miles Davis albums, but those two were really his albums. Tutu is more well known. It’s probably Miles Davis’ most well known album from the last period of his career. I certainly remember listening to it a lot when I was in my teens. But as the years have gone by, I’ve grown to love the album Amandla more and more. It contains a few of my favourite Marcus Miller compositions including the title track.

If you don’t know them already, I would highly recommend checking out both albums. Many people see Tutu as a Marcus Miller album with Miles Davis on trumpet, even though it’s Miles Davis’ name and face on the cover. But Amandla feels more like a collaboration because there’s more input from Miles’ band. Which at that time included the brilliant improvisers Kenny Garret and Joseph “Foley” McCreary.

Amandla – A Marcus Miller tune Played on Sire Marcus Miller Basses – Bass Practice Diary 81
November 5, 2019 jccoxjazzbass

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Johnny Cox – Bass Photo Gallery
February 7, 2014 jccoxjazzbass

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