A fellow forumite kindly asked me what I thought about my Silo, so I decided to make my impressions public for all of you to read, discuss and add:
I can't really compare this guitar to other MMs because I haven't tried any others through a quality amp. I bought mine sight unseen, knowing of the flawless Quality Control of Music Man. What I can say is it is one of the most confortable guitars ever. Both the neck and the body are smaller than the usual, but I'm fairly tall and have big hands and neither is an issue to me.
In terms of sound, this guitar is designed to be whatever you want it to be. The stock pickups are very dynamic, low output. I get all my distortion from an all-tube pedal (Damage Control Solid Metal), which is plenty, so I don't mind the low output, and being a trained classical musician fulltime, I appreciate the expressiveness they allow. The name of their game is versatility.
I have found I prefer not to dime the distortion on the pedal, it can be too much and will take away some of the nice qualities of the bridge pickup (the sweet singing tone and the expressive dynamics). On the upside, you get a huge sustained and screaming yet always controllable tone. On the downside, it is not the most articulate, and for fast metal runs in the low strings there are better choices.
The neck pickup will cope though anything and will do neoclassical, prog, jazz, you name it. It always retains this musical, vocal quality which I love, yet it might not be for everyone.
If I had to say where the pickups excel, it would be cleans. Any position of the 5 way selector will produce the most amazing, musical cleans I have ever heard.
Now as I said before, the idea of the design is that you can turn it into anything you want. Just build an alternate pickguard assembly and in minutes you'll get any guitar tone you want. The pickugard comes attached to the body by a special connect (molex?) so no soldering is required to change it!
Slap some EVOS on it, and you'll get almost exactly a JEM, except for the ebony board and the Floyd. Slap some EMGs and headbang on all the Metallica or numetal you want. Put some DiMarzio Areas to go from Malmsteen to Gilmour. Or any other single pickup of your choice (though 24 frets won't provide the optimum position for the neck single coil).
The reason I got this guitar was because I wanted a quality guitar that would last me a lifetime, be easy to use (I got a hardtail) and, because it would be my only guitar, was able to play any genre. I think I got all that in spades. If I were able to choose again, I might have gone for a trem, now that I know that MM's are fantastic, and maybe a cooler color. But this was the only one I found in stock when I was shopping. I don't regret it one bit!
Oh the picks! They've been posted before, sorry, it is all I've got:
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Originally Posted by jamminjim
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