Chad wants pics of the Sire, but they are going to look familiar!
My family gets me Sweetwater gift cards for birthday and Christmas and I had a few stacked and had been trying out guitars, trying to see what neck profile I liked before I ordered something. I didn’t have an electric so I was trying them all, but good Lord is Guitar Center a beating for trying out anything.
Electrics I almost bought while taking time to find the one that felt best:
- used Ibanez Prestige in salmon color (not great but I’m not exactly playing in front of people yet). It was $1200. They had it marked too low. Reverb had similar models much higher. The Japanese do good things in their guitar factories
- Fender Player Strat. Fret edges and fretboard edge felt rough compared to the Sire. That would have been $800
- Silver Sky SE. $899 or whatever they were. I wasn’t crazy about the colors, and they were not offering the maple fretboard yet. Plus, I knew I could never show my face here if I got one because Paul Reed Smith is an arrogant jackass, probably on the spectrum, is doing to Leo Fender what Edison is said to have done to Nikolai Tesla, and regularly fire bombs orphanages and no-kill animal shelters. (One of those might be true)
- Schecter Nick Johnston, used, was maybe $950, and was pink. That guitar played nice!
Eventually I saw a convincing video from that Canuck named Darrell Braun and he went on and on about the Sires. Then Lee and Pete at Anderton’s raved about them.
Yeah, their job is to sell guitars. But then there were demos for amps and pedals, and Lee kept reaching for the Sire even with a room full of sweet ass guitars.
I finally ordered an S7 vintage without seeing one in person. Sweetwater has a great return policy so no real risk, and there wasn’t a Sire in Texas for me to try anyway. It was $641 delivered. I bought a gig bag later.
Great guitar, feels like the easiest neck to play, was even still in tune out of the box. And less expensive than everything else I tried.
Lee Anderton changed the pickups on his but has no complaints otherwise. I’m not there yet with mine.