beej
Moderator
Read through the Patent on the Silent Circuit the other day and I was just thinking how clever it is. Really deserves a thread of it's own ... it doesn't get talked about as much as the guitars do. (Neither does Dudley, though he's the master of clever ideas.)
For the unfamiliar, the approach with these kinds of devices is to use a second coil that just senses noise (and not vibration of the strings) and is subtracted from the guitar's signal to remove noise. This is the basic idea behind noiseless pickups and noise removing devices like the Silent Circuit, Suhr Backplate, etc.
But a lot of "dummy coil" approaches sound poor because the impedance from the dummy coil adversely affects the signal from the pickups. But Dudley has very cleverly incorporated a little op-amp (buffer circuit) that isolates the load from the dummy coil on the active coil. So though noise is subtracted from your signal, there isn't any change in tone due to the properties of the dummy coil circuit. Really great implementation.
It's one of the great many things unique to EBMM guitars. But I have to say, I think this device would be a great seller in it's own right! Could probably sell tons of them if it was offered on it's own as it will work with any noisy pickup. (I've got a second hand one now and will be having fun putting it into my Morse.)
So here's to the Silent Circuit!
For the unfamiliar, the approach with these kinds of devices is to use a second coil that just senses noise (and not vibration of the strings) and is subtracted from the guitar's signal to remove noise. This is the basic idea behind noiseless pickups and noise removing devices like the Silent Circuit, Suhr Backplate, etc.
But a lot of "dummy coil" approaches sound poor because the impedance from the dummy coil adversely affects the signal from the pickups. But Dudley has very cleverly incorporated a little op-amp (buffer circuit) that isolates the load from the dummy coil on the active coil. So though noise is subtracted from your signal, there isn't any change in tone due to the properties of the dummy coil circuit. Really great implementation.
It's one of the great many things unique to EBMM guitars. But I have to say, I think this device would be a great seller in it's own right! Could probably sell tons of them if it was offered on it's own as it will work with any noisy pickup. (I've got a second hand one now and will be having fun putting it into my Morse.)
So here's to the Silent Circuit!
