How Effective Is The Silent Circuit?

[James Troska]

I bought a Music Man Cutlass SSS and I'm curious about other people's experience with the Silent Circuit.

Mine is far from silent. I contacted customer support and they were terrific helping me attempt to tune the circuit with a multimeter and internal trim pot. But I still couldn't get it working how I expected. I ultimately sent the guitar back to Ernie Ball for warranty work on the not-so-Silent Circuit. The guitar came back with the work order saying they replaced the preamp. But it's still humming.

I haven't fiddled with the trim pot since it came back from the warranty repair. But I may try it again when I next change the strings.

I don't have any other single coil guitars to compare it to. But i do have a humbucking guitar that splits. The Silent Circuit is definitely quieter than the split humbucker. But not as quiet as a full humbucker.

So do others find the Silent Circuit to be somewhere between a quiet humbucker and a noisy single? Or should it be closer to a humbucker, meaning I got stuck with a lemon?

 

[RichieZ]

There is a post about this that comes up every now and then. I asked a similar question regarding my Valentine when the new circuit first came out. The consensus is, depending on the environment, you’ll get a 50-70% reduction in hum... and that seems about right. I can tell you that, on my Valentine, when I split the humbucker there is a definite increase in noise. The noise level is the same with the bridge single coil. The full humbucker, obviously, is dead silent. My trim pot is set about halfway for both(the Valentine has two). Turning it up can reduce the him a little more but I like it better where it is.

 

[beej]

The Silent Circuit is a buffered dummy coil. It picks up noise only, which is subtracted from your guitar's signal. It does a really good job (I've put them in a number of guitars), but it's not going to be 100% ... "somewhere between a quiet humbucker and a noisy single" is a good description.

How effective it is depends on how much noise is in your environment and how much distortion you play with. The usual caveats apply- if you're close to a noise source it's going to be a lot worse, esp. if you have the gain dialed up.

For some people, in some situations, the answer is to go to noiseless single coils. That's something worth considering if you can't live with the noise. Alternately, you get used to having some hum, which has been with us since the dawn of the electric guitar. (One of those things you work around by turning down the volume knob when you're not playing, etc.)

 

[click track]

as for how it works in live settings, multiple styles from driving rock to low ambient sounds all in the same set.... the sound guys are very happy when I am on the schedule to play !! makes their job very easy.

Many have much love for the silent circuit !! just my 2 cents...

 

[James Troska]

Thanks guys. So it seems my Cutlass is working fine after all.

I got a little more scientific today to get a more objective idea of its performance and it's better than I had initially thought.

I compared the Silent Circuit guitar to my favorite humbucking guitar by pointing them both into the noise interference and noting how far down I could set my noise gate threshold to shut the noise out.

The noise from my humbucking guitar is usually stopped even when the gate threshold is set to its lowest -80dB setting.

The noise from the Cutlass is strong enough to open the gate at that setting. But is stopped when the threshold is raised to about -75dB to -72dB

The noise from the split humbucker requires the threshold to be raised further to about -65dB.

So the Cutlass isn't as quiet as the humbucking guitar. But it's about 7dB-10dB quieter than the split humbucker. And this is while deliberately pointing the pickups at the worst spot in the room.

Hard to get completely accurate as the results vary in different spots in the room. In some spots the difference is drastic. In others, not so much. But overall, I think we're getting about a 7dB-10dB improvement in noise reduction with the silent circuit.

When I used the Cutlass in a proper studio, noise was not as issue at all. In my bedroom, it can be mildly annoying if I think about it. But I can reposition myself to a better spot.

 

[DrKev]

So the Cutlass isn't as quiet as the humbucking guitar. But it's about 7dB-10dB quieter than the split humbucker. And this is while deliberately pointing the pickups at the worst spot in the room.

Hard to get completely accurate as the results vary in different spots in the room. In some spots the difference is drastic. In others, not so much. But overall, I think we're getting about a 7dB-10dB improvement in noise reduction with the silent circuit.

I think that's pretty good. Remember that a split humbucker is smaller than a regular single coil, which will generate more noise. So I'd say 7dB to 10dB, which already represents ~50% reduction, is probably a slight underestimate. Half-way between a humbucker and single coil is clearly about right!

Thank you so much for doing this. So interesting and I think we'll be referring back to this post a lot in the future!

And belated welcome to the forum family, James!

 

[edhalen]

Welcome James!!! Hmmm.....no pics of said guitar.....no guitar!!!!! That's our saying around here.

 

[James Troska]

 

[James Troska]

These are my two Ernie Ball Music Man instruments. Cutlass SSS guitar and Family Reserve Sterling HH bass.