Silhouette Sound

[daventech]

Just purchased an EBMM Silhouette after playing one at the local store. The fit and finish is wonderful. It's very comfortable and it plays like a dream. However I am dissapointed in the sound.

I bought the HSH non trem version so I could get a wide variety of tones. To my surprise, the guitar sounds like a hot Strat! Even using the bridge humbucker, I get a very thin-Strat like sound (as if the humbucker coils were wired in parallel instead of in series. It really stands out when playing the lower strings. I've tried many different amps and EQ settings. No change. My cheap ($50) Peavey Tracer sounds much better.

It's not that I do not like the single coil sound but I want the traditional humbucker sound when using those.

Is this guitar supposed to sound like a Strat no matter what pickups are selected? If so, would changing the pickups help?

I love the guitar but I am very dissapointed with the sound. I'd hate to have to sell it.

Thanks for any advise you can give,
John

 

[OrangeChannel]

Well for starters, methinks they put 250k pots in....swap em out for some 500k's...report back. You might also try replacing the pups with a DiMarzio Tone Zone (bridge), HS-2 (middle) and Air Norton (neck)....

 

[PurpleSport]

Hey John -

Although I don't own a Silo, I've read enough about 'em from the gang here, and looked at the specs to gather that it's going to have a MUCH airier thing going than something like a Les Paul, due to it's Strat-like construction and electronic components (which, by the way, are very close to early model Ibanez JEMs, the one's that Steve Vai plays). It's basically a tame version of the "super strat" concept.

Remember, Music Man was Leo Fender's company at one time. That's the historical base the EBMM gang built upon.

However...fear not!

The Silo was designed from it's inception to be upgraded on the fly. Dunno about current models, but the old ones had swappable pickguard/pickup configurations with non-solder connections to facilitate this (I believe the newer ones are bolted down, tho, from recent readings).

My suggestions:

- Swap the lead pickup at the very least. It's a DiMarzio PAF Pro...not bad, but not hot either. Works great in the neck (that's a PAF Pro too), but a touch wimpy in the back if you wanna really rock out. Try a DiMarzio Evolution, Tone Zone, Steve's Special, or Super Distortion/Dual Sound to spice things up (or any of Seymour Duncan's medium to hot output offerings, or Bill Lawrence's L-500 range - all are great). Think millivolts vs. ohms in how hard the pickup will hit the preamp to get an idea of how hot it is.

- Replace the pots with 500k units; the stock ones are 250k, like Strats. Gives ya some more high end and gain, like Les Pauls, and a cheap mod since they cost like $5-$10 a pop (and EB's pots are really good).

These two mods will definitely make a difference - I know, I've done 'em in other guitars I thought were a lost cause.

Of course, if you're not handy with a soldering iron, let an experienced tech do it! They're easy upgrades and shouldn't cost much at the end of the day.

Let us know what ya do and how ya fare! Plenty of differing opinions here on what sounds the best, but it's good to hear differing ideas to help you zero in on yer own tone....

 

[daventech]

Thanks!

I'll replace the bridge pu and the pot and see what happens.

 

[lock-ny]

I use a silo special as my main guitar and the first thing I did was swap out the bridge pup to a duncan distortion, the paf just doesnt have the balls I needed, so dont worry its definitely the pup and the pot swap will change the output as well although I didnt need to do this, I just changed the pup and it gave me what I needed, the silo is basically a strat tonewood wise, so change the pup and see the difference, then change the pot but I think a pup swap will do it, it did for me -

 

[kbaim]

Another pickup possibility is to put emg's in there.

Norm, on this board, did it very recently and with good tone results I believe.

 

[Jimi D]

It's true that the PAF Pro is not a particularly hot pickup - in fact, it is decidedly vintage in flavor - but it should be noted that this is the exact same pickup combination used by Steve Vai and Ibanez in their early Jem series guitars, and no one ever accused Steve of wimpy tone (Passion and Warfare is all PAF Pro's on the six-string stuff)! I think the biggest problem is that when you go from Hot ceramic pickups like you'll find on a low-end Peavey to something with a more traditional tone, you really have to radically change everything in the gain and tone stacks to adjust... The PAF Pro needs MIDS so you don't scoop on it, and it can use more input volume or gain because it's not hot, but it does have great breadth and played clean sounds really nice... I like mine as a different flavor to all my Axis guitars... It's a great pickup for Marshalls, imho...

As an aside, I don't think the Silhouette Special has a PAF Pro in the bridge - it's not a hot pickup, to be sure, but it's not a PAF Pro...

my 2¢

 

[ex3.8]

Well. Unless you change the pick ups on a silo. You will not get alot of output but. that is the whole point of the guitar. It's not an Axis. I too was disapointed of the output of the silo at one point but. After a while i realized that i wanted this guitar to do somthing it wasen't designed to do. I now love the silo stock.
The only thing i did was to bypass the tone knob witch give me
(mental or real) more highs. Straight threw a JCM800 this guitar is soooo sweet for old zz-top and stuff.

As far as the 500k pot, i think there is a misconception here.
After a lot of research. I was told that the 250K pots cut a little more highs. That is why they are used with single coillers.
The 500K lets more highs pass threw. That is why they were used on les Pauls to compensate for the lack of highs of humbi's.
I wouldn't canibalize the silo. If you want to change the pup's fine but. Pleeeeeeease don't make the same mistake i made with my 22 year old squire and try to transform a pinto into a Nascar.

At one point i was thinking of putting an EVO in the bridge and changing the pot to 500K. I think you may like this...
Good luck.

 

[BBD]

I've got one " out for delvery" today, I hope it works for me , I use single coils for the most part, so I hoping for a little boost from what I normaly use

 

[kbaim]

If you're wanting a bit of a volume boost, you may also want to try the boss bluesdriver pedal.

You can adjust it so it won't change your tone but instead boost your signal if you need a bit more oomph to cut through the mix during certain sections.

KEITH

 

[daventech]

The bridge p/u volume is plenty. I have no problem with anything about the guitar except it has that thin Strat-like sound when using the bridge humbucker.

One of the things that turned me on to EBMM is the Steve Morse Model. With all of the combinations available on that guitar I thought that having on one would be perfect. But I found a teriffic deal on the Silo I bought and figured that if it has a humbucker and single coil as well as coil tapping, I could get different sounds a plenty.

But no matter what I try, it sounds like I'm playing a Strat. I'd like to get as close to a Les Paul sound as I can when switching to the humbucker.

Make sense?

 

[PurpleSport]

I personally find the PAF Pro to be a great neck pickup in my JEMs, but even with lots-o-gain on the bridge, it wasn't cutting it for the heavy-duty shred-style stuff I was into at the time (admittedly, back in the day I also relied mostly on high preamp gain, with a TubeScreamer as my only pedal in the path to provide any extra boost, nothing else).

A switch to a Tone Zone solved the bridge output problem, but I wasn't a fan of it's thick tone which lopped off the high end. A switch to an Evo years later solved that, and provided a nice balance of zingy-er tone and output. The basswood bodied JEM is still a midrangey guitar to my ear, esp. when put up against my MM90-ed Axis Sport using the same amp settings.

I did recently compare a new Silo Special to a Morse in a store with a few different amps, and preferred the Morse's sound - again, the impression I got was the Silo was "tame" by comparison (not that it sounded or played bad on it's own, mind you)...although that forest of pickups, knobs, and switches on the Morse could certainly have played into it!

 

[kbaim]

Hey Purplesport,

A Morse? In a store?

AND IT DIDN'T GO HOME WITH YOU???

Something is very wrong here

You can always change your forum name to BLUEMORSE

Mine is going to Yosemite with me later this month.

The black sparkle finish is like a recreation of the night time sky there. Expecting plenty of inspired moments, but will settle for a few.

KEITH

 

[PurpleSport]

Heh heh....no Keith, unfortunately, the Morse didn't join me on the subway that day - I thought the asking price was a bit high (which stunk, 'cos I'm pretty sure they listed it on InstrumentExchange.com a few days later and someone got it for about $200 less). Plus, I felt with a guitar that versatile, I'd probably want to get one with a trem to cover all the bases. I agree the black sparkle would look great on one!

Regarding the possible "BlueMorse" name change..."BlueLee" makes more sense now, considering I just grabbed a like-new teal AL on eBay earlier this week. Guess there was a karmic reason why I passed on the Morse!

 

[DML]

Hey, you guys do not mention the number of frets. A strat has 21 or 22 frets, a Silo's got 24. Therefor the position of the middle and neckpup is changed, so this sounds different.
The stockpups are wired that the HB's split in #2 en #4 -> the inside coils of the HB's will sound in combination with the midpup. You can rewire the hot leads of all pups and change the polarity of the output jack. In this order the outside coils of the HB's will sound in #2 en #4 and deliver more strat-quack!!!

 

[daventech]

The weirdest thing happend tonight...

Before I decided to buy more pickups and pots, I decided to experiment with this sound problem. I kept having the feeling that there was more going on than just the bridge humbucker when I switched to it.

The Peavey I mentioned earlier has only one humbucker pickup so I thought...hummmm.....what if the Silo had only one pickup.

I dug out the soldering Iron and completely removed all the pickups and the switch from the circuit. I rewired the bridge pickup directly to the Volume pot so effectively this guitar now has only one pickup, volume, and tone.

What happened?????

This terrible sounding (to me) guitar that I was about to give up on Les Pauled up like you wouldn't believe. The thin sound totally went away. The lower notes are nice and 'brown'. This guitar sounds great!!

I can't figure out why this is so but I am going to have to engineer a different switch setup to have all the pickups working (ala Steve Morse model).

I'll keep everyone up to date..

 

[kbaim]

Maybe when you have a chance, you can go draw a mustache and glasses on the Mona Lisa.

Whatever works!

 

[OrangeChannel]

Good luck Dave Tech.

 

[JDouglee]

Could it be the Silent Circuit is the culprit??

Interesting

 

[Hookpunch]

Interesting - my Silo is from '97, not sure if it had a silent circuit or not, but I always liked the expressive bridge pick-up.

My view is its easier to add to the sound with effects, overdrive etc. than take it away.