Stupac
Member
Just Bought a Silhouette
Just purchased a slightly used Silhouette on ebay, got it for around $650 shipped. It was manufactured in 1994 according to the serial number. It's an SSH(no it's not a special), the silhouette was produced in the SSH configuration before the Special was released. The body is swamp ash, in a honeycomb sunburst, positively beautifully made(it's a 2 piece, but the seam is practically invisible). It has a finished maple neck with a rosewood fretboard and has a hardtail bridge. It really is an amazing guitar, as any silhouette owner can attest.
I have a few problems though, It had a beautiful, bright tone when I pulled it out of the shipping box and tuned it, but on the bass strings it has an annoying buzz acoustically and through the my amp. I took it to the MusicMan factory in San Luis Obispo, a fifteen minute drive from my home, I have a friend who is a sales representative for EB/MM and he had one of the techs look at it for me. He restrung it, adjusted the trussrod, did a nice fret polish, adjusted the pickup height and the saddles.
Unfortunatly he couldn't get rid of the buzz, and for some reason the guitar didn't sound as full when I got it back. It was shipped with slinky 10s, and thats what their tech replaced them with. My suspicions are the pickup height, my amp or my imagination. My amp is a Crate G40C with 2 Celestron G8L-35s, I got it for $25 from work(I work at an electronics store/service/repair shop), we had taken it in over a year ago for checkout and maintainence, since the owner never came to pick it up, I took it upon myself to take it home and 'test' it out(just to make sure it worked). It's a pretty old amp, sounded great, at least compared to my little practice amp. But it's a little touchy, sometimes won't go into channel A(distortion), it perodically will stop ampliphing for a while and have to be shut off and turned back on, and sometimes I can't turn off reverb after turning it on. Given that it's not a very reliable amp may be part of the problem.
Regardless, anyone have any ideas on the novel I just typed? I think I'm probably gonna need to have the frets stoned, I tried adjusting the trussrod, and got rid of the buzz by raising the action substantially, but it's not quite as comfortable to play now. Any idea how much it would cost to do that? Either way I'm having alot of fun with it, hopefully things will turn out for the better.
Also I was wondering if there was much difference between the silhouette and the silhouette special in terms of tone, besides the silent circuit, 24 vs 22 frets. And how much difference is there between swamp ash and alder? Too many questions. Maybe I should just play it and not worry about how it sounds, and so I digress.
Just purchased a slightly used Silhouette on ebay, got it for around $650 shipped. It was manufactured in 1994 according to the serial number. It's an SSH(no it's not a special), the silhouette was produced in the SSH configuration before the Special was released. The body is swamp ash, in a honeycomb sunburst, positively beautifully made(it's a 2 piece, but the seam is practically invisible). It has a finished maple neck with a rosewood fretboard and has a hardtail bridge. It really is an amazing guitar, as any silhouette owner can attest.
I have a few problems though, It had a beautiful, bright tone when I pulled it out of the shipping box and tuned it, but on the bass strings it has an annoying buzz acoustically and through the my amp. I took it to the MusicMan factory in San Luis Obispo, a fifteen minute drive from my home, I have a friend who is a sales representative for EB/MM and he had one of the techs look at it for me. He restrung it, adjusted the trussrod, did a nice fret polish, adjusted the pickup height and the saddles.
Unfortunatly he couldn't get rid of the buzz, and for some reason the guitar didn't sound as full when I got it back. It was shipped with slinky 10s, and thats what their tech replaced them with. My suspicions are the pickup height, my amp or my imagination. My amp is a Crate G40C with 2 Celestron G8L-35s, I got it for $25 from work(I work at an electronics store/service/repair shop), we had taken it in over a year ago for checkout and maintainence, since the owner never came to pick it up, I took it upon myself to take it home and 'test' it out(just to make sure it worked). It's a pretty old amp, sounded great, at least compared to my little practice amp. But it's a little touchy, sometimes won't go into channel A(distortion), it perodically will stop ampliphing for a while and have to be shut off and turned back on, and sometimes I can't turn off reverb after turning it on. Given that it's not a very reliable amp may be part of the problem.
Regardless, anyone have any ideas on the novel I just typed? I think I'm probably gonna need to have the frets stoned, I tried adjusting the trussrod, and got rid of the buzz by raising the action substantially, but it's not quite as comfortable to play now. Any idea how much it would cost to do that? Either way I'm having alot of fun with it, hopefully things will turn out for the better.
Also I was wondering if there was much difference between the silhouette and the silhouette special in terms of tone, besides the silent circuit, 24 vs 22 frets. And how much difference is there between swamp ash and alder? Too many questions. Maybe I should just play it and not worry about how it sounds, and so I digress.
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