Sire Marcus Miller P10 Bass First Impressions

I recently picked up a Sire Marcus Miller P10 bass. It was on sale at a price I could not resist. This is a PJ configuration bass with a roasted maple neck. The body is alder with a solid maple top and flamed maple veneer. Here are my first impressions.

Fit and Finish

As I write this, I have my Fender American Jazz bass next to the Sire P10. The fit and finish of these 2 basses are surprisingly very similar. The quality feel of both instruments is very similar. The one difference that stands out is the bridge and tuners. The Fender American bridge is definitely a high quality bridge. It has more mass and is more adjustable than what is on the Sire. The Sire bridge is nice but basic. It does allow to run the strings through the body though. Likewise, the tuners on the sire do not look like anything special. They get the job done. 

Considering that the Sire cost me half of what an American fender bass sells for, I am not going to complain. And to be honest, the flamed maple top makes the Sire look like a more expensive instrument than the Fender.

Electronics

I could not find that much information on the pickups on the Sire other than they are the Marcus Premium Revolution pickups. They are a step up from the P7 model's pickups as far as I can tell. The big surprise to me is how good they sound in passive mode. I was expecting that I would need to play this active bass in active mode all the time to get the best sound. That is not the case. In passive mode, these pickups have great dynamics, a warm tone, and just enough growl.

The bass has a master tone control that works in passive and active mode. The best I can describe it is that it is different than other tone controls I have used. I need to play with it more but, as far as I can tell, it does not have the range that is one the Fender. The Fender tone control seem to cut more highs than the Sire tone control.

Playability

I set the bass up with a medium action to start with. The sound is balanced throughout the instrument with no buzzes or dead spots. The neck is a little more chunky than on my Fender. It is just enough to be noticeable but not enough to impact the playability. It might be a concern if you have smaller hands. 

One of Sire's selling points is their Edgeless neck. They have a rolled edge on the Fretboard. It feels nice but I have noticed that it takes a little bit of the fret away at the edge. My Fender Jazz has just a hair more fret at the edge than my sire. This is probably not a big deal but I did catch the edge of the fret when doing a pull-off once. Because of this, I wish the bridge allowed for adjusting the string spacing.

Sound

The sound from this instrument has been great so far. It sits in the mix very well. The sustain is long. I am currently using DR Hi-Beams 45-105 on it. With those string, you can nail the Marcus Miller tone without any problem. Plus, the PJ pickups let you get a ton of useful tones out of the instrument.