Sigma S00R-45VS - Does anyone have one?

DavidR

Still hunting around for another Parlour/00 as my next guitar to buy in next year or two. Does anyone have one of these Sigmas? Mainly, how is it tonally?

It looks very beautiful, costs just over £1K and has a nut width of 46mm according to Sigma website. Not much UK stock but can be ordered.

S00R-45VS - Sigma Guitars - Legendary Acoustic Guitars (sigma-guitars.com)
Sigma Custom S00R-45VS All Solid Acoustic Guitar | PMT Online


2021 Sigma S00R-45VS – Bigfoot-Guitars      (For pics)  Pretty!

Thanks for more info.
:-)

bertie

46mm nut width !??!  wow  too wide for me - and its a V neck........

rustneversleeps

I’ve had one in the past.Nice guitar quite Martin like sound.

DavidR

That is interesting!

(Note only 25% the cost of Martin OO28 Modern Deluxe.)

GTC

I think I remember seeing one of these on Reverb or eBay a while ago. I think you'll find it very similar to the Blueridge BR-371 - although that has a wider 48mm nut.

DavidR

Similar aren't they @GTC

My ever-more-elderly choice pointing towards an open headstock parlour/00 spruce or mahogany top. Just about to start practicing now with a neck strain!

Despite not usually being a fan of bling, a bit of abalone/paua on these smaller instruments looks quite good though! 

There is only 1 Blueridge BR-371 available that I can find in the UK at present for example. (Hobgoblin, Bristol). I have bought from the Saga stable of companies before, a Regal. (Blueridge is Saga too). The Saga business model is very much Chinese manufacture/old name branding, but I don't have a problem with that. The Regal (resonator) has been fine.

DavidR

Look at the abalone purfling on the Sigma. How on earth can they do that for the price! And doesn't that look like Brazilian Rosewood? (spec says Indian).

bertie

DavidR said:

Look at the abalone purfling on the Sigma. How on earth can they do that for the price!  

  Indonesian labour ?  (Im assuming the customs are made in the same place as the others ?) 

I had a Crafter OM yonks back -  had abalone purfling everywhere,   OK, it was laminate bacl/sides but still only £225 

Tannin

^ Chinese, not Indonesian. The Sigma name is owned by German interests who contract with a manufacturer in China. 

Crafter is Korean. The minimum wage in South Korea is higher than the minimum wage in the United States. Mind you, that still isn't much by the standards of places like the UK, France, Australia, Germany, Sweden, and New Zealand. 

bertie

Tannin said:

^ Chinese, not Indonesian. The Sigma name is owned by German interests who contract with a manufacturer in China. 

Crafter is Korean. The minimum wage in South Korea is higher than the minimum wage in the United States. Mind you, that still isn't much by the standards of places like the UK, France, Australia, Germany, Sweden, and New Zealand. 

says in the tinternetz  they moved from China to Indonesia in 2007,    but another quick search shows moved back to China when the German company "took over"

Tannin

^ Ah, the old Sigma. Yes, the brand originally belonged to Martin. They manufactured in Japan, then decided that Korea would be cheaper, then China, finally Indonesia. (All this from memory, so cut me a little slack if I've messed up the details!) 

(LATE CHANGE: yes, I got that wrong. I wrote it up properly in this old thread - https://www.thefretboard.co.uk/discussion/200912/bit-of-a-strange-one - and promptly forgot the details.)

Eventually Martin got sick of importing cheap Asian guitars and shut the whole operation down. I don't know why. Maybe they were already planning their in-house Mexican manufacturing venture.

Anyway, the people in Germany who had previously had the distribution rights (for a now-defunct brand) saw an opportunity and bought the brand name from Martin (who no longer needed it). The Germans then started importing Chinese guitars and selling them under the Sigma brand. I believe (without actually knowing for sure) that the German owners have stuck with the same Chinese manufacturing company ever since. 

As you know, I refuse to buy Chinese-made guitars for ethical reasons. (Except for Yamaha, because they have a more-or-less credible sustainability policy.) But if I was going to make a second exception, it would probably be Sigma. The German owners seem like decent people with their heads screwed on, and the Sigma guitars I have played have been as good as anything I've seen around that price point and very often better. 

guitarjack66

Tannin said:

^ Ah, the old Sigma. Yes, the brand originally belonged to Martin. They manufactured in Japan, then decided that Korea would be cheaper, then China, finally Indonesia. (All this from memory, so cut me a little slack if I've messed up the details!) 

(LATE CHANGE: yes, I got that wrong. I wrote it up properly in this old thread - https://www.thefretboard.co.uk/discussion/200912/bit-of-a-strange-one - and promptly forgot the details.)

Eventually Martin got sick of importing cheap Asian guitars and shut the whole operation down. I don't know why. Maybe they were already planning their in-house Mexican manufacturing venture.

Anyway, the people in Germany who had previously had the distribution rights (for a now-defunct brand) saw an opportunity and bought the brand name from Martin (who no longer needed it). The Germans then started importing Chinese guitars and selling them under the Sigma brand. I believe (without actually knowing for sure) that the German owners have stuck with the same Chinese manufacturing company ever since. 

As you know, I refuse to buy Chinese-made guitars for ethical reasons. (Except for Yamaha, because they have a more-or-less credible sustainability policy.) But if I was going to make a second exception, it would probably be Sigma. The German owners seem like decent people with their heads screwed on, and the Sigma guitars I have played have been as good as anything I've seen around that price point and very often better. 

Sigma are very good. I would buy one in a heartbeat if I found one that had as wide a nut as the 44.5mm,or slightly larger, but is a concert or parlour.

Kilgore

guitarjack66 said:

Tannin said:

^ Ah, the old Sigma. Yes, the brand originally belonged to Martin. They manufactured in Japan, then decided that Korea would be cheaper, then China, finally Indonesia. (All this from memory, so cut me a little slack if I've messed up the details!) 

(LATE CHANGE: yes, I got that wrong. I wrote it up properly in this old thread - https://www.thefretboard.co.uk/discussion/200912/bit-of-a-strange-one - and promptly forgot the details.)

Eventually Martin got sick of importing cheap Asian guitars and shut the whole operation down. I don't know why. Maybe they were already planning their in-house Mexican manufacturing venture.

Anyway, the people in Germany who had previously had the distribution rights (for a now-defunct brand) saw an opportunity and bought the brand name from Martin (who no longer needed it). The Germans then started importing Chinese guitars and selling them under the Sigma brand. I believe (without actually knowing for sure) that the German owners have stuck with the same Chinese manufacturing company ever since. 

As you know, I refuse to buy Chinese-made guitars for ethical reasons. (Except for Yamaha, because they have a more-or-less credible sustainability policy.) But if I was going to make a second exception, it would probably be Sigma. The German owners seem like decent people with their heads screwed on, and the Sigma guitars I have played have been as good as anything I've seen around that price point and very often better. 

Sigma are very good. I would buy one in a heartbeat if I found one that had as wide a nut as the 44.5mm,or slightly larger, but is a concert or parlour.

I've had a mahogany topped 000 for about seven years. It's fabulous for the £250 I paid for it. Very good build quality and the tone is delightful. 

BillDL

I recently had the chance to hear and play the "42" version of the S00R-45VS, and I was throughly impressed with it.  The reason I specifically said "hear and play" was that I could hear it from the front and side with somebody else playing it rather than judging it solely on the sound drifting up to my ears, which I think is important.

The model I played is the S000R-42S (note the absence of the "V"):

https://www.sigma-guitars.com/acoustic-guitars/standard-se-all-solid-40-45/s000r-42s/

It has a 44.5mm nut as opposed to the 46mm nut of the S000-45VS, and most notably has a "slim" and "low profile" neck.  Otherwise it is much the same guitar with the same level of adornment and most importantly the neck joins at the 12th fret as with the 45VS, and not the 14th fret as seen on the OM size/shape S000R-42.

I actually found the nut to be just right for me, and it's the same as on my Sigma OM sized Sigma that I find really comfortable to play.  I mostly play electric and the jump to a 46mm nut might just feel a little wide on the string spacing but you never know.  I would, however, have preferred the neck on the S000R-42S to be slightly thicker in profile, and that is the only thing that would be the deciding factor for me.  I'm not sure if I would like the "Modified V" profile of the S000R-45VS though, but this is one aspect that you only really know once you have it physically in your hand.

I assume that the guitar I played will sound more or less the same as the one you are interested in due to having exactly the same woods and construction (other than 1.5mm wider neck).  I found that it was a lot louder than I expected.  The treble strings still have more "zing" than a larger guitar, but not as much as I normally associate with parlour sized guitars.  It had more bass response than I was expecting, but you still know it's a smaller bodied guitar.  Not quite as much bass as my OM size, but not really "lacking" in a bad way.  It didn't have nearly as much of a "boxy" tone I have experienced from (albeit a bit cheaper) parlour sized guitars I've played.  On all but one of other parlour sized guitars I've played, strumming was the weaker point for me because they sounded more obviously smaller bodied, but I'm much more used to boomier tone on an OM or D sized body.  This Sigma S000 has its own character when strummed, but I think that fingerpicking is really its forté.  It's much more balanced (perhaps the reverse of "boxy") than other parlours I've played.

The distinction I made above about strumming didn't hold true for one other small bodied guitar I played, namely the Levinson Sangamon LS-43.  This has purposely been built with a deeper body, and it compensates very well for the smaller body.  It's possibly a little larger than the Sigma in question - they refer to it as a "concert" - but it still has the nipped in waist and parlour shape.  That guitar had as close to a full sized body tone as I think is possible for a guitar body of that size due to the deeper body, and was much more balanced across the dynamic range than other similar sized guitars I've played.

As far as build quality is concerned, I would happily buy the Sigma equivalent of the Martin D-45 (SDR-45) and pocket the change to buy 5 more good guitars.  The "fit and finish" of the more expensivem Sigma guitars I've handled is as impeccable as you could get without inspecting them through a magnifying glass.

bertie

BillDL said:

 

The model I played is the S000R-42S (note the absence of the "V"):

https://www.sigma-guitars.com/acoustic-guitars/standard-se-all-solid-40-45/s000r-42s/

It has a 44.5mm nut as opposed to the 46mm nut of the S000-45VS, and most notably has a "slim" and "low profile" neck.  Otherwise it is much the same guitar with the same level of adornment and most importantly the neck joins at the 12th fret as with the 45VS, and not the 14th fret as seen on the OM size/shape S000R-42.

 

those spec's sound (to me) far more appealing  - looks like they do a Koa version as well

Shadow

I have no idea how the sound compares, but you can find a similar spec in the Eastman OO range. They have 1 13/16 nut and a pretty chunky neck. Not the OO SS though, they have a narrow nut and slim neck.

Smellyfingers

Although I was impressed by the cheaper circa £500 Sigmas I tried against similar priced Mexican made  Martins etc, there is no way I would fork out £1k plus for one without trying it first…. as tempting and briefly fullfiling as it may be topress that magic Enter button. Apologies if that’s stating the obvious.

Also, although it’s gross generalisation, I believe manufacturers who have made it their specialty to produce cheaper instruments, may be leaving their comfort or competency zones when they go up the scale. Just like I am sceptical about cheaper  Martins or Gibson/ Epiphones, at least as far as acoustics are concerned.

Yamaha maybe the exception to the above.

bertie

there's a tidy looking used 000-42R  in Barrow-in-Furness on the "Guitars for Sale" group on FB  £450  if anyones interested

 

BigPaulie

Tannin said:

As you know, I refuse to buy Chinese-made guitars for ethical reasons. (Except for Yamaha, because they have a more-or-less credible sustainability policy.) But if I was going to make a second exception, it would probably be Sigma. The German owners seem like decent people with their heads screwed on, and the Sigma guitars I have played have been as good as anything I've seen around that price point and very often better. 

Remember the chosen manufacturing partner for AMI's Sigma brand is Cor-Tek. It is for that reason exactly that I refuse to buy anything from them.

https://cortaction.wordpress.com/about/timeline/

https://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_national/891184

shufflebeat

BigPaulie said:

Tannin said:

As you know, I refuse to buy Chinese-made guitars for ethical reasons. (Except for Yamaha, because they have a more-or-less credible sustainability policy.) But if I was going to make a second exception, it would probably be Sigma. The German owners seem like decent people with their heads screwed on, and the Sigma guitars I have played have been as good as anything I've seen around that price point and very often better. 

Remember the chosen manufacturing partner for AMI's Sigma brand is Cor-Tek. It is for that reason exactly that I refuse to buy anything from them.

https://cortaction.wordpress.com/about/timeline/

https://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_national/891184

Interesting read - thanks for sharing.

Tannin

@BigPaulie are you saying that Sigmas are made by Cort. Interesting. (And not a good look for Sigma.) Cort also OEMs for Ibanez and Squire that I know about, doubtless many others.