Question Silhouette Special Silent Circuit Corroded Battery Compartment

[Peter Scully]

Hi there.

I own two Silhouette Specials which I hadn't played in a while. I decided to get them and clean them up to find that the batteries in the silent circuit battery compartments have corroded. This is only on the positive terminal. I tried to clean the terminal and removed most of the corrosion and then inserted a new battery. This hasn't seemed to have helped as the circuit is still producing a fair amount of hum.

Please can you tell me whether the battery corroding would had affected any of the other electronic components in the circuit or whether maybe I just need to do a better job of cleaning the terminal. Any tips on doing this correctly would be helpful.

Thanks,
Peter

 

[Spudmurphy]

Hi Peter
welcome to the forum.

The corrosion shouldn't have impacted on anything else.

I use one of these, they are fantastic at removing corrosion, and you could use it to try improving what you have currently done in your cleaning process?

D02266 DURATOOL, Pencil, Fibreglass, Propelling, PCB Cleaning, 4mm | Farnell element14

Alternatively you can get a new battery compartment box from customer service - a quick way (and I would recommend doing it this way) is to cut the existing wires to the old box -creating in effect a fly lead. Get the new box and some shrink wrap tubing. Solder the new wires to the old and protect with the shrink wrap. Excess wire can be pushed back into the guitar cavity.
Why do I do it this way? Well, if you try soldering your existing wires to the terminals of the battery box, you could melt the housing causing the contacts to be loose - resulting in more problems.

I had to change one on my MM guitars and using my procedure, had no problem.

 

[beej]

As Spud says, the only item affected will be the terminals of the battery box, so you don't have anything to worry about.

It's happened to me before (happens with kids toys all the time at my house too), and I've used a small piece of sandpaper to scrub the corrosion off.

 

[DrKev]

If you have a multimeter perhaps you can test for continuity from the side of the battery terminal to a non-corroded part of the contact.

If you need to change it it's a Gotoh BB-04 battery box. You can buy 'em easily online. If you are good at soldering it's an easy install, or a good tech can do it for you in little time.

BTW, the silent circuit will not remove all buzz, though it's very effective at low frequency hum. It can also be adjusted via the trim pot on the top of the silent circuit unit.

 

[Spudmurphy]

If you need to change it it's a Gotoh BB-04 battery box. You can buy 'em easily online.

Dr K the image I have just googled seems different to the mm one -which has screws in the top of the box - or have they changed them recently?

 

[DrKev]

The one on my silhouette special has screws. And so does this...

BB-04 | G-GOTOH Ltd.

 

[Peter Scully]

BTW, the silent circuit will not remove all buzz, though it's very effective at low frequency hum. It can also be adjusted via the trim pot on the top of the silent circuit unit.

@DrKev, you say you can adjust the silent circuit using the trim pot. I'm assuming there's a trade off here. Otherwise why wouldn't it just be defaulted to the least hum. Do you have any more details on this?

Otherwise thanks all for the help. Much appreciated.