Question Replacing pickups on EBMM Silhouette Special

[Rivers]

I'm looking at replacing my EBMM Silhouette special pickups with a set of Suhr V63 pickups that I currently have (neck and middle, both are non-RWRP) and was wondering if anyone could shed some light if I should be installing a RWRP or non-RWRP version in the middle position, considering that there's the guitar already comes with a silent circuit.

Trying to understand if there would a be a difference in the hum for positions 2, 3 and 4 with a non-RWRP pickup vs a RWRP in place (with the silent circuit).

Thanks!

 

[tbonesullivan]

Probably best to contact EBMM customer service with the serial number / year to find out which type you need.

 

[jlf599]

And post the response you get here for those of us watching. Please.

 

[DrKev]

I'm looking at replacing my EBMM Silhouette special pickups with a set of Suhr V63 pickups that I currently have (neck and middle, both are non-RWRP) and was wondering if anyone could shed some light if I should be installing a RWRP or non-RWRP version in the middle position, considering that there's the guitar already comes with a silent circuit.

Trying to understand if there would a be a difference in the hum for positions 2, 3 and 4 with a non-RWRP pickup vs a RWRP in place (with the silent circuit).

Thanks!

No silent circuit on the market is 100% silent, so there will still be some noise present. With two non-RWRP singles togethers you'll still get more noise than either single on their own, even with the silent circuit. For best performance RWRP is still the way to go.

Wiring is difficult to answer here because there is no set industry standard for either magnet polarity or winding direction. I don't know how Suhr make their single coils compared to the stock Dimarzios. What that means is I cannot tell you with certainty how to wire them. You can guess but odds are that on first attempt you'll get either the silent circuit wrong (would add noise), or the single coils would be out of phase with the humbucker, or both. Anyway, if you really want to dive in, let me know and I'll make a longer post.

 

[Rivers]

It would be great if you could shed some light on this. My electronics knowledge could really do with some lessons!

No silent circuit on the market is 100% silent, so there will still be some noise present. With two non-RWRP singles togethers you'll still get more noise than either single on their own, even with the silent circuit. For best performance RWRP is still the way to go.

Wiring is difficult to answer here because there is no set industry standard for either magnet polarity or winding direction. I don't know how Suhr make their single coils compared to the stock Dimarzios. What that means is I cannot tell you with certainty how to wire them. You can guess but odds are that on first attempt you'll get either the silent circuit wrong (would add noise), or the single coils would be out of phase with the humbucker, or both. Anyway, if you really want to dive in, let me know and I'll make a longer post.

View attachment 43965

 

[DrKev]

I’m sitting on a park bench waiting for a medical appointment so I’m doing this with voice dictation on my phone. So excuse any weird words or obvious typos.

OK, so they’re nutshell version is that single coil pick ups are connected to ground through the silent circuit, which adds noise of the opposite phase to the noise being picked up by each pick up (it's a form of humbucking but without effecting the sound of the pickup). The stock neck pickup connects to the silent circuit through the blue wire for “normal” phase, and the middle pick up through l the violet wire, for RWRP with the stock pick ups. (The red wire is 9 V, the black wire is ground, and the yellow wire is it defeat, which switches off the silence circuit when the yellow wire is connected to ground also. Notice in the yellow wire on the switch in stock wiring diagram, the silent circuit is defeated in all positions, except neck up on its own. This is because it’s not really needed in the other positions which are all naturally canceling.)

How pickups from other manufacturers connect to the silent circuit will depend on how they are wound. For us that means clockwise or anticlockwise wind wrt the ground wire, i.e. which side of the coil is the ground wire coming out from. The wiring diagram is drawn correctly for the stock to pick up. Looking from underneath the pickup, the ground wire is on the left for the neck pick up, connecting to blue, on the right for the middle pick up connecting to Violet.

i.e. looking at the pickups from underneath...

Ground on LEFT = BLUE
Ground on RIGHT = VIOLET

Ok, that should get us correctly connected to the silent circuit. But we still may have magnetic polarity to fight with, which could still put our pickups out of phase with the humbucker coils. Or not, it depends how pickups are made. I'm not sure what the custom DiMarzio singles are doing in the Silhouette Special, so I'll have to test and get back to you later. And it's more thinking than my Long COVID energy levels can handle right now.

Later.

 

[tbonesullivan]

Looking at the switching diagram, another issue will be that both pickups are used in conjunction with one or the other coil of the bridge pickup to cancel out hum. I'm not sure how the magnetic polarity works in single coil pickups that have magnetic pole pieces.

This may be a "contact suhr" to see what they say, as I would assume dimarzio uses a standard magnet orientation for all of their single coil and humbucker pickups. I'm sure suhr would know if they are compatible.

 

[Rbg]

Or/and get yourself a compass Very useful tool if you work with pickup swaps.

 

[DrKev]

Looking at the switching diagram, another issue will be that both pickups are used in conjunction with one or the other coil of the bridge pickup to cancel out hum. I'm not sure how the magnetic polarity works in single coil pickups that have magnetic pole pieces.

This may be a "contact suhr" to see what they say, as I would assume dimarzio uses a standard magnet orientation for all of their single coil and humbucker pickups. I'm sure suhr would know if they are compatible.

There is no standard. And DiMarzio are not themselves do it differently for e.g. their virtual vintage vs their true single coils.

 

[DrKev]

Or/and get yourself a compass Very useful tool if you work with pickup swaps.

I will, but I need to find the compass, and dig out the original pickups.