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andym72

New member
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Feb 10, 2025
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Hi everyone, I’ve just signed up to the Forums. I bought a SBMM Axis last year that I’m very pleased with.

My favourite EBMM body shapes are Axis, Silhouette, Luke and Valentine.

And last night the penny dropped why that is, when I saw a picture of a Reflex next to a Valentine.

They all take the waist down part of the body shape of the original Stingray Bass, and reuse it. That slightly squashed circle of the lower body, flowing into two waist curves that are slightly offset from each other.

The Silhouette, the first guitar of the EBMM era, is a Stingray Bass body that’s scaled down, and then has SG-like bevels from the waist up to the horns.

The Steve Morse is scaled down pretty much the same way, but looses the bevels, keeps the small Stingray Bass corner radius. And has a similar pick guard to the Silo, changed slightly because it’s 22 frets.

The Luke looses the pick guard entirely, and has a larger corner radius all over, much more rounded.

The Axis takes that Silhouette lower body shape and size and pairs it with a Telecaster style top left bout and top right horn, for a single cut look. Also the slab top and slab edge have almost no corner radius at all, like a Tele.

The Reflex scales up and elongates the Axis shape, so the lower body circle is back to Stingray Bass size.

And the Valentine re-profiles the upper left bout of the Reflex into a second horn, it’s basically a double cut Reflex.

And now we have the Cory Wong Stingray II, that looks like an unaltered Stingray Bass body, turned into a 25.5 inch scale, 6 string Guitar.

Why didn’t I see this before? 😳
 

andym72

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Joined
Feb 10, 2025
Messages
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Location
UK
Just to make it clear… it’s pretty obvious the Silo was based on the Stingray Bass, and then the Steve Morse is based on both of them, and the Luke is based on the Silo.

But I hadn’t spotted the Silo, Axis, Reflex, Valentine connection.
 

fogman

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Dec 27, 2004
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Location
ontario
Welcome to the forum!
Interesting that you posted this as I presented similar to some guitar buddies a few weeks ago.
I was looking at the Valentine and had a thought. It appears it's just the 25th Anniversary model, they changed the top horn, added the new bridge, and slapped on a pickguard. So I Photoshopped each model then superimposed them.
Yup. One of the guys said they thought the Valentine body might be thinner. I have a 25th Anniversary (Reflex), but no Valentine to compare.
Very similar if not exact for sure.

473185001_1171432597647941_2420667369201569995_n.jpg
 

andym72

New member
Joined
Feb 10, 2025
Messages
3
Location
UK
There are a few other differences. The Valentine is an Ash body, not Basswood with a Maple Top. They are either string through body hard tail, or with a Bigsby, not a decked trem. And I think your friend is right, it’s thinner.

The new (ish) Valentine HH has a 5 way switch with split options on 2 and 4, very Super Sport…

People who are missing the 25th / Reflex should check out the Valentine HH as the next best thing.
 
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