Silhouette pickup problems!!

[The P-Man]

Hi,

I purchased my Ernie Ball Music Man Silhouette Special around six months ago I had some replacement pickups fitted as I thought the stock ones were a bit bland – not bad, but just not to my taste.

I fitted two Rio Grande Halfbreeds (Medium-hot Strat pickup) and a Rio Grande Muy Grande (hot humbucker). Basically, I’m still not satisfied!! I gig with a single-channel master volume amp and I like to be able to clean up my sound by turning down the volume on my guitar. However, when I do, the pickups tend to lose their tonality sounding almost like I am playing through a half-cocked wah pedal. I understand that, particularly with the single coils, the pickups might be too hot for this application and I am therefore considering a more traditional strat replacement (Seymour Duncan Alnico Pro II?). However, are there other reasons for this? It has been mentioned to me that there might be issues regarding the need to fit a capacitor or that the tone pot rating of 250k might need changing as the single coils currently sound incredible dark as opposed to the bright sounding humbucker (bearing in mind that this combination was recommended as a good match by Rio Grand pickups). Might there even be complications with the Silent Circuit?

You might be able to tell that my knowledge is quite sparse and whilst I don’t expect you to accurately diagnose the problem without seeing the guitar, I was hoping that someone might give me a few ideas that I could relay to a guitar technician.

Finally, I was wondering if anybody knew of any success stories regarding replacement pickups for the Silhouette Special. My tastes range from Hendrix, to Alice in Chains style rock to more progressive stuff like Beck and Satriani. Whilst I don’t want to nail these tones exactly, I did buy the guitar with the hope that it could get me in this tonal ballpark. I was contemplating putting a Seymour Duncan JB at the bridge and two Alnico Pro II’s at the neck and middle. What would you suggest?

Thanks guys,

Pete

 

[NorM]

I got my fourth silhouette back in Feburary and I was concerned that I would have to replace the pickups. Two of my silhouettes have EMG's (bridge to neck 85, SA, 89) with a Steve Morse style bridge switch. This setup is not cheap but anything is possible with these pickups. Since I have been playing my new one I find myself loving the tone. Reviewing a performance from a TV show affirmed I want to keep the stock pickups in there. If you are using anything other than the PAF pro's your special came with then I would suspect the silent circut could be part of your problem. Since you already have the battery compartment the EMG's would be a snap to install. See if you can find a LUKE model in your area to try out what it would sound like. If you decide to put the PAF's back in and it's just not heavey enough for you then try putting a ProCo Rat in line. That will give you the boost and edge you need. As for the pickups you put in there I cannot speak on those. But thanks for letting me share my expierence with you.

 

[lock-ny]

The Luke is an alder guitar with EMG's, so its very similar in tone of you were to put EMG's in, the JB will sound thin in that guitar, its an alder bolt on so you would need to put something heaver in, I have a silhouette special with a duncan distortion trembucker in there, duncan has now made an even hotter trembucker geared toward strat guitars and im not talking about the invader, that pup is muddy, so I guess my point is give the two duncan distortion trembuckers and try, they are both winners and they wil make your silhouette sound mean, for the satriani stuff the dimarzio evolution pup is cool, but I dig the duncan more, has more growl, the evo is a bit smoother but is lacks bottom end, good luck