Help! Silhouette Special 1995 pickup question

[deekayman]

Hi

Can someone please confirm that my 1995 Silhouette Special NECK pickup is original?

It is surprising to see it as a stacked single coil pickup as my other Silhouette Special (2001 model) doesn't have in it (both, neck and middle pickups are true single coils in that guitar).

In attached photo you can see that neck and middle pickup wires look intact and same color code as Dimarzio have and those cable ties makes me think that everything is original/intact.

I'm the second owner of the guitar.

If anyone knows more about this stacked pickup in Silo Special, could you please educate me about it?

 

[DrKev]

That's interesting. I'll bet they are the original stock DiMarzio pickups. That neck pickups looks like a standard single coil with a dummy coil stuck on the bottom and then there is the linear module next to the switch. Together that could be the early v1 silent circuit? (@beej, have you seen this on early ALs?)

 

[deekayman]

Here's some more photos of the wiring plus my hand drawing of the whole circuit.

I just run into another puzzle when I tried to get a resistivity reading out of each pickup when flicking through the 5 way selector.
With volume and tone pot fully open at 10, resistance reading on each 5 way position was approx 70-75 KOhm???

My multimeter probes were connected to white and black pins coming out of plastic male plug (that I disconnected from the other female plug which is joint to the input jack and battery).

I got reading of 6.25 KOhm out of neck pickup and 6.2 KOhm out of middle pickup when directly probing two solder joints at the back of pickup with my multimeter.
Is it possible that silent circuit is faulty (as I'm not sure how to test it )?

 

[tbonesullivan]

Definitely looks stock, and I would wager that is a type of silent circuit set up. That probably explains why the DC resistance out of the jack seems high. Is there any battery?

 

[deekayman]

Definitely looks stock, and I would wager that is a type of silent circuit set up. That probably explains why the DC resistance out of the jack seems high. Is there any battery?

Hi

Yes, there's a battery in there.

I just disconnected it by pulling that 3 pin plug out (female side) which comes from input jack/battery section.

My resistance readings are done without that section...as I disconnected the plug, my multimeter probes were connected to male side of the plastic white plug (white wire that is connected to viper of the volume pot and black wire that is ground).

Are you saying that resistance reading is normal to be that high or it's a problem caused by a faulty silent circuit?

 

[beej]

What an interesting find! I've never seen one of these before. This is an early implementation of the Silent Circuit.

Years ago, I had an exchange with Dudley (Gimpel, now retired MM designer) about this. I was experimenting with something similar (dummy coils on the back of pickups) and asked him if they had tried this approach. Here's what he said:

"The first Silent Circuit we made had stacked single coils, using a vintage style single coil pickup and a thinner hum cancelling coil mounted to the back. This was wound on 1/2 of a Dimarzio stacked humbucker bobbin, as you said. The problem with this approach is that the bottom coil which is only intended to pickup hum, also pickups up the string and when the phase is reversed to cancel the hum, wanted signal is also cancelled. We went to the current design as the coil is positioned to NOT pickup the string and so doesn't cancel out the desired signal, only the hum."

I wouldn't worry about the DCR readings you're getting with everything disconnected. In practice, the Silent Circuit is shorted out in positions 1-4 so the pickups should see ground, and not the 'virtual ground' of the SC.

With the pickguard connected, how does it sound in position 5 (neck)? Does the hum increase when you pull the battery out? That's the better way to know if it's working correctly.

 

[deekayman]

What an interesting find! I've never seen one of these before. This is an early implementation of the Silent Circuit.

Years ago, I had an exchange with Dudley (Gimpel, now retired MM designer) about this. I was experimenting with something similar (dummy coils on the back of pickups) and asked him if they had tried this approach. Here's what he said:

"The first Silent Circuit we made had stacked single coils, using a vintage style single coil pickup and a thinner hum cancelling coil mounted to the back. This was wound on 1/2 of a Dimarzio stacked humbucker bobbin, as you said. The problem with this approach is that the bottom coil which is only intended to pickup hum, also pickups up the string and when the phase is reversed to cancel the hum, wanted signal is also cancelled. We went to the current design as the coil is positioned to NOT pickup the string and so doesn't cancel out the desired signal, only the hum."

I wouldn't worry about the DCR readings you're getting with everything disconnected. In practice, the Silent Circuit is shorted out in positions 1-4 so the pickups should see ground, and not the 'virtual ground' of the SC.

With the pickguard connected, how does it sound in position 5 (neck)? Does the hum increase when you pull the battery out? That's the better way to know if it's working correctly.

Yes, the hum definitely increases when I pull the battery out. So I guess then that's my answer that silent circuit is working.

Well, the reason I started this post is related to the overall sound of the neck and middle pickup compared to my other
Silhouette Special guitars.
The sound of the neck single coil is my favorite of any guitar but this one sounds nothing good like that.
It is very week and nasally sound in all the positions apart from the position 1 (full humbucker).

I tried raising neck and middle pickup nearly close to the strings, just to see if the overall signal can be boosted.
After doing that, I got slight improvement in the strength of the single coils in the mix but it just doesn't look right.
Even after lowering the humbucker all the way, and raising single coils up, the output level is not balanced.

I'm very close to removing the silent circuit and rewiring everything, using the existing 5 way superswitch...I just need to find the right
schematics and I'll give it a shot.
If that change doesn't make an impact, then I'll install some different single coils and keep the original humbucker as I really like how it sounds.

If you have any cool and versatile schematics for HSS (I'd like to re-use existing switch and pots) please feel free to send me some photos or links.
Regards

 

[beej]

Does the pickup sound different with the battery out? (That's what it should sound like with the SC out of the circuit.)

Granted, not all of the switch positions use the neck pickup. But see if there's any change.

 

[beej]

One additional thought- given that this is an early revision of the Silhouette Special wiring, you might try contacting Music Man directly and see if they'll send you a full pickguard assembly with everything on it (pickups, Silent Circuit, switch, pots, etc.).

 

[deekayman]

Does the pickup sound different with the battery out? (That's what it should sound like with the SC out of the circuit.)

Granted, not all of the switch positions use the neck pickup. But see if there's any change.

With the battery out, pickups sound pretty much the same (plus some extra noise).

 

[deekayman]

One additional thought- given that this is an early revision of the Silhouette Special wiring, you might try contacting Music Man directly and see if they'll send you a full pickguard assembly with everything on it (pickups, Silent Circuit, switch, pots, etc.).

I'm in Australia, Adelaide and being a second owner of this guitar, I'm not so sure if Music Man would generously donate all that to me .

I never contacted them directly before nor I'm sure how would I approach them for this problem...but one thing for sure is that I'm definitely obsessed and in love with a Music Man guitars...so I'd like to keep this one all original if possible.

I do own a small collection of Music Man guitars (11 at the moment and I had more than 20 at one stage).

 

[beej]

Sorry, when I said "send you" I meant sell you an assembly. This way you'd end up with a functioning Silent Circuit as well as pickups.