Sire Larry Carlton H7 Review: Larry Carlton’s Signature Semi-Hollow Does It All

Larry Carlton is one of those players whose name is practically welded to a particular kind of guitar. You know the one: double cutaway, two humbuckers, four knobs, enough jazz pedigree to make you instinctively reach for a major seventh chord. The Sire Larry Carlton H7 very much lives in that world, but spend a bit of time with it and you quickly realise it’s capable of considerably more than tasteful fusion and expensive-sounding blues licks.

First off, it looks the part. Sire has gone with its own headstock design rather than trying to disguise the H7 as something it isn’t, and I think they’ve absolutely nailed it. Designing a new headstock is weirdly difficult — stray too far from tradition and things get ugly very quickly — but this one manages to look familiar, elegant and distinctly Sire. Up front you’ve got the Sire logo and Larry Carlton’s signature, while the sunburst finish does a lovely job of showing off the flamed maple top.

The body is maple throughout, with a maple centre block, maple front and plain maple back, while the neck is mahogany and the fingerboard ebony. There’s some subtle binding around the body too, which gives the H7 a slightly more luxurious air without wandering into wedding-cake territory. Hardware is equally sensible, with die-cast tuners and a two-piece bridge.

The neck might be my favourite thing about it, though. On paper, the 43mm nut width doesn’t sound especially narrow, but both myself and Jonathan Graham came away thinking it felt slimmer under the hand than the numbers would suggest. I have fairly big hands and had absolutely no trouble with it, but I can imagine players with smaller mitts getting on particularly well here.

A lot of that feel probably comes from what Sire calls its “edgeless” fingerboard. The fret and binding edges are rolled so there’s none of that sharp, box-fresh feeling under your hand. Instead, it feels a bit like a guitar that somebody has already done the hard work of playing in for you. The neck itself still has a decent amount of substance — it’s certainly not some wafer-thin shred carve — but neither is it remotely baseball-bat territory.

The frets sit somewhere around medium-jumbo land: not especially tall, not tiny vintage wire, just a nice middle ground. Small block inlays keep things suitably classy.

Electronics are gloriously uncomplicated. You get two humbuckers wound to Larry Carlton’s specifications, two volumes, two tones and a three-way toggle. That’s it. No push-pulls, no secret switching combinations, no need to consult the manual before attempting a blues solo.

Thankfully, the basic ingredients are good enough that none of that stuff is necessary.

The neck pickup is thick and wonderfully fluty, but without turning into a blanket-over-the-amp situation. For jazz, I found the sweet spot with the tone control at around five, which gives you that warm, rounded sound without throwing away all of the top end. Open it back up and there’s still plenty of clarity.

The bridge pickup has much more bite and a really vocal quality that works brilliantly for rock and blues. Put some gain behind it and the H7 starts to show another side entirely, while the volume control does a good job of cleaning things up when you want to back off without changing channels.

And this is where the guitar gets particularly fun. Move to both pickups, bias the blend slightly towards the neck, and there’s a lovely clean soul rhythm tone in there. Go back to the bridge, add a compressor and some slapback, and suddenly you’re playing country on a Larry Carlton signature guitar. Why not?

For blues, a green TS-style boost, slapback and a healthy amount of spring reverb brings out that vocal bridge pickup beautifully. Then plug into a gainy gold-panel British-style amp and the H7 becomes a very convincing one-channel classic rock machine, cleaning up from the guitar’s volume control before roaring back into lead territory.

That’s quite a lot of ground for two humbuckers and four knobs.

The biggest surprise, though, is the price. I won’t spoil the fun — go and look it up — but I was genuinely staggered when I saw what these sell for. For an instrument of this quality, it’s nowhere near the figure I was expecting, to the point where I could quite easily see myself picking one up.

The H7 is ultimately a really lovely example of this guitar archetype. It has the warm jazz tones and vocal blues sounds you’d expect, but it’s equally happy doing soul, country and classic rock without feeling like it has wandered into the wrong rehearsal room. It’s comfortable, uncomplicated, great-looking and remarkably affordable.

That’s a fairly difficult combination to argue with.

Find out more about the Sire Larry Carlton H7 at Sire-USA.com