A fine practicing and performing guitar - reviewed.
At a Tommy Emmanuel Masterclass, I once heard him say "Practice whenever, and whereever you can - but do it alone. You may like listening to yourself play something over and over again. But trust me - no one else likes it." Whenever I bring out my normal acoustic and try to play in the living room, the reaction of my mom watching TV would be to turn the volume up. After 5 minutes of listening to me play "Drifting" 25 times, the look on her face says it all and eventually she explodes and berrates the playing as "noisy". Of course, this is extremely hurtful to an aspiring finger picker and it is inevitably a lose-lose situation.
In the course of my day job, I go overseas frequently and the guitar is always with me. The problem - Airlines are not always accomodating towards someone lugging a TRIC case around as hand-carry luggage. It definitely looks like it belongs in the check-in luggage. Previously my solution to this would be to summon all my good vibes and smile extremely sweetly at the air stewardess and ask if there was anywhere I could place the guitar. (The TRIC case rarely fits in the economy class luggage cabins).
Is it really silent?
It is with this in mind that the silent guitar entered my gear acquisition list. This guitar it touted by Yamaha to be "silent" allowing the solitary guitar player to practice via earphones plugged into the guitar itself. It has also been used by performers as a stage guitar due to it's high feedback threshold but mainly because it looks kind of cool. Played in a quiet room, the first thing you will notice is that it is not "silent". The volume emanating from this guitar is basically similar to that of an acoustically played electric guitar - maybe about half of an electric guitar's volume when played acoustically.
How does it feel?
The review model was the SLG100S - the steel string version of the silent guitar series.
The neck of the silent guitar has a 1/11/16" nut width which is typically of the average guitar. Hard core acoustic fingerstyle players may prefer a 1/3/4" nut width but it was pretty comfortable for me. The neck is not too thick and comfortable for asian hands. That said, it does not differ from the average guitar by much - it is clear that Yamaha's intention was to "model" an acoustic guitar's feel so that the practice done using the silent guitar "translates" accurately to a normal acoustic. I brought the Silent Guitar with me using the included gig bag for one of my work trips and it fits snugly into the check-in luggage cabin. I was happy.
Controls
There isn't a myriad of controls on the silent guitar. What you get is two types of reverb, a volume control, a bass knob and a treble knob. The only input is an auxillary input which allows you to insert a 1/8" jack input typically of a mp3 player or computer. Outputs include the headphone outputs and the 1/4" mono guitar jack. Believe me when I say that this is all you need. The beauty of the Silent Guitar is in its simplicity. Yet one may wonder if an upgrade to the silent guitar should be in the works - some microphone and guitar modelling built in would be nice to have. An AC adapter is included if you want to save on the batteries.
How does it sound?
The only pickup on the silent guitar is an LR Baggs Ribbon transducer. By itself with the reverb switched off, it sounds okay - a typically good quality piezo sound. However, with the reverb dialed in, the guitar sound becomes lush and surprisingly pretty usable. Reverb setting 1 to me sounds like a more natural low reverb setting. Reverb setting 2 is a concert hall kind of reverb. Switching between the two different kinds of reverbs gives the player a different vibe and was actually pretty fun. You cannot control the amount of reverb being dialled in but this is not something I missed. As I mentioned earlier, the beauty is in the simplicity. With the reverb dialled in, I would be comfortable playing fingerstyle in a live situation if portability was an issue.
Sound Clips -
(Dry with no reverb)
(Reverb 1)
(Reverb 2)
Conclusion
The Yamaha Silent Guitar is a well-designed piece of equipment, but may be in need of an upgrade in view of the numerous acoustic modelling technologies available today - more notably the Fishman Aura and the DTar Mama Bear. It would be nice to be able to dial in some good sounding acoustic guitar models to further enhance the sound of this guitar. It is also rather expensive for a guitar that has no body - the price may deter people from getting it. That said, the Silent Guitar served the purpose of allowing me to watch tv and practice at the same time without putting a strain on my family relations. It also relieved me of the need to butter up to the air stewardess after a long and tiring trip.
On a scale of 1 to 10, the Silent Guitar gets a competent 7.5 Singapore flags.
