Is there some reason that you wouldn't go for the Sire? It ticks all your boxes, and even at full retail is a quite reasonable price for the features it offers. Another option that I think could be cool, if you decide to go down the modding route like @garp suggested, would be to get one of these
Harley Bentons and put in a Nordstrand NP5 and Big Splitman with a coil selector switch, along with the preamp of your choice.
No real deal-breakers regarding the Sire, certainly. The P7 is a bit harder to find around here (meaning CONUS retailers buying wholesale and selling for less than MSRP), so the best total price including any taxes and shipping that I'm aware of is from Thomann over in Germany, which slows shipping and makes any possible return more of a pain.
Second, again not a huge deal: in an older "spend my $$$" thread when I last had the scratch to pick one up, the choice was bass or amp. The overwhelming consensus was "amp", and they got no arguments from me there once I'd "rubber-ducked" it a bit writing the thread's OP. However, I got more than one response going a step further, and asking why I was even considering the Sire at all, as it was a "downgrade" from my current primary Yamaha TRB. The answer being that the Yammie is a hell of a player, but it's a zingy, burpy, modern-jazzy toaster-top that doesn't always sit well in mixes, especially of more conventional pop/rock/country fare, and definitely in recordings of same. Hence the search for a bass to
supplement, not replace, the Yamaha, with a similar feel and flexibility to the player, but an electronics config that gives me some more conventional colors in its tonal palette.
The Sire is still the front-runner in that search, but that kind of response to what looks like a slam-dunk makes you second-guess whether they really are living up to the hype, and whether picking one up sight-unseen is as good an idea as it first seemed.
I have considered modding as I've done it before; were I younger, still single and thus with more free evenings to devote to such a project, I'd probably be looking harder at ricing out another inexpensive player. Between an MIM Jazz that was one of my first instruments when I did have such time, and a "Swiss Army Strat" I built from a Warmoth bill of materials a couple years back, I've kind of gotten that out of my system. I still tinker with both - I just put an Xtender on the Jazz, and a couple of days ago I tweaked the treble bleed on the Strat as it was staying too bright when turned down - but I'm not really feeling another big project right now. I would rather spend the money, get the bass, and go play it.
