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Music Man Silhouette
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All user reviews of 5/5 for the Music Man Silhouette

Other Shape Guitar from Music Man belonging to the Silhouette series

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  • tjon901tjon901

    One of Musicmans first guitar designs

    Music Man SilhouettePublished on 07/10/11 at 21:00
    The Musicman Silhouette is a classic design now. It was first introduced in the 80s when Musicman was getting back into making guitars. They were already well known for their basses but they wanted to get into the guitar market. This guitar is bassically a modified strat with many improved features. The guitar has an alder body with many choices of finishes. The guitar has a bolt on neck which uses 5 bolts instead of the 4 that Fender use for an improved fit. The maple neck has 24 jumbo frets on it with dot inlays and comes with your choice of maple or rosewood for the fretboard. The pickups in this guitar are custom spec Dimarzios in an HSH configuration. The controls are pretty basic with…
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    The Musicman Silhouette is a classic design now. It was first introduced in the 80s when Musicman was getting back into making guitars. They were already well known for their basses but they wanted to get into the guitar market. This guitar is bassically a modified strat with many improved features. The guitar has an alder body with many choices of finishes. The guitar has a bolt on neck which uses 5 bolts instead of the 4 that Fender use for an improved fit. The maple neck has 24 jumbo frets on it with dot inlays and comes with your choice of maple or rosewood for the fretboard. The pickups in this guitar are custom spec Dimarzios in an HSH configuration. The controls are pretty basic with a master tone and volume knob with a 5 way switch. The bridge is Musicmans proprietary hardtail bridge which is a very beefy design and reminds me a lot of the Leo Quan Badass bridges people use to put on their basses back in the 70s. Up top is Musicmans traditional 4+2 headstock with Schaller locking tuners.

    UTILIZATION

    These guitars have always had great playability. Musicman guitars are known for their small necks. They are small in every way they are pretty narrow so it may take some getting use to for some people use to wide modern necks. The neck has a pretty vintage 10 inch radius so it is not very flat either. The large frets help make up for this by letting you dig in without fretting out. The locking tuners on a hardtail guitar are something I love. I wish every guitar came with locking tuners even if they dont have a tremolo. The neck joint is nice and sculpted and feels good when playing on the high frets. With the hardtail you do not have to worry about going out of tune and changing strings is easy. This guitar is nice and light so it will be easy on your back and neck. It is only around 6 pounds.

    SOUNDS

    With the HSH configuration you can get a ton of different tones with this guitar. The Dimarzio humbuckers are smooth and with the single coil in the middle you can add a little top end bite to every position to get some top end clarity. The bridge position is nice and beefy and has nice bottom. When you mix in the middle single coil with this pickup it just adds a bit of spank and sparkle on the top end and your chords and really shine out accentuating every note in the chord. With the neck position you get the super smooth tones of the neck position that you would expect. The tone here is super warm and fat. With some middle pickup mixed in with the neck you can get some extra clarity and add a crisp top to the smooth bottom.

    OVERALL OPINION

    This is a classic Musicman design now. This guitar has been made for about 20 years but it still is not a very popular model. Musicman has a ton of great artists playing them but normal every day players seem to ignore their guitars. Their basses are well known to be some of the best basses money can buy and their guitars are good too they just dont have the reputation of the basses. If you are looking for a superstrat guitar that leans more towards the strat end of the spectrum the Musicman Silhouette is a great option that wont break the bank.
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  • nickname009nickname009

    A perfected strat-style guitar!

    Music Man SilhouettePublished on 04/03/11 at 12:00
    USA Made EBMM Silhouette, specs:

    Alder body
    Maple neck/fretboard
    24 fret
    Dimarzio custom single coil pickup with PAF buckers
    H/S/H config
    musicman trem
    schaller locking tuners
    25.5" scale neck
    10" neck radius
    5 bolt neck attachment
    1 volume, 1 tone, 5 way switch



    UTILIZATION

    This is a SWEET guitar! Completely ergonomic in every possible way! Body contours, forearm contour, the 5 bolt neck joint is made well so you the upper frets are easily accessible. It's an overall, VERY VERY comfortable guitar. Especially the neck, the 10" radius neck is unique in the sense where it's not too big or not too small. Feels great for rhythm or lead work and very very comfortable.

    The musicman tr…
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    USA Made EBMM Silhouette, specs:

    Alder body
    Maple neck/fretboard
    24 fret
    Dimarzio custom single coil pickup with PAF buckers
    H/S/H config
    musicman trem
    schaller locking tuners
    25.5" scale neck
    10" neck radius
    5 bolt neck attachment
    1 volume, 1 tone, 5 way switch



    UTILIZATION

    This is a SWEET guitar! Completely ergonomic in every possible way! Body contours, forearm contour, the 5 bolt neck joint is made well so you the upper frets are easily accessible. It's an overall, VERY VERY comfortable guitar. Especially the neck, the 10" radius neck is unique in the sense where it's not too big or not too small. Feels great for rhythm or lead work and very very comfortable.

    The musicman tremolo systems are top notch! It's smooth! All their guitars have locking tuners to help keep the guitar in tune when using the trem. All the parts are top notch!



    SOUNDS

    Plugged this in through a few amps, blackstar ht-5, egnater renegate combo, koch studiotone, fryette pitbull...All the custom dimarzio pickups used for this pickup aims for complete versatility.

    Neck pickup (clean):
    Very nice, medium output that can shred depending on the amp you use. This pickup can get VERY clean, not strat-like chimey but still very very good.

    neck pickup (dirty):
    Thick but not too thick and dynamic enough to clean up with the volume rolled down. Under high can still retains its character.

    neck pickup w/single coil:
    the infamous strat sound! It totally nails it with the custom single coil pickup! Very nice!

    middle pickup:
    a good strat-like sound. Not completely noiseless however, but still quite good. Not as bright as a strat would be but close.

    bridge pickup w/single coil:
    The OTHER infamous strat sound! Again, great sound, plenty bright though not over quacky.

    bridge pickup:
    great pickup! Thick, not too bassy and not too bright either. Very dynamic, also cleans up well with the volume rolled down. Can get really shreddy if necessary!

    Overall the sounds are great and versatile. You should be able to achieve nearly any sound with this pickup config! I gave it a 9 just simpley cause the middle pickup isn't completely usable since it's not noiseless. Yes i'm spoiled! Iit's a near perfect guitar!

    OVERALL OPINION

    Overall opinion. A perfected strat is what I would say this guitar is. It's also one of the most versatile. I believe that was the aim of producing something like this. Not only is the entire guitar ergonomically comfortable with the neck being one of the smoothest playing necks I've ever played, but the setup is great out of the box too! I've noticed ALL music-man guitars are of great quality! From the finish, to the action, to the sound, to the fretwork! It's almost a shame they're not as well known to the main stream like fender and gibson. An absolute shame!

    If you're looking for a guitar to be the end of all guitars in a strat-like shape, the silhouette is definitely a worthy candidate.
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