longterm test
A few months’ gigging, recording and everything that goes with it – welcome to Guitarist ’s longterm test report
This Silvertone was never meant to be a longterm test; I was simply researching other available 14-fret electrics, inspired by B&G’s Little Sister design, and came across this contemporary version of an old 60s design. With a very tidy build, a light weight and perfectly good playability, it has been getting a lot of play time, one of those ‘house’ guitars that you just grab for a quick noodle. The thing is, every time I pick it up, I’m pleasantly reminded that it’s a very cool piece. And while the 14-fret-to-the-body design seems laughable in the modern world, as B&G’s Avi Goldfinger observed of the company’s Little Sister design, it’s very comfortable, not least played seated like an acoustic. But with the unusual Blender feature, I wondered if I could use it for a gig?
Despite my attempts to convince myself that the Silvertone had numerous failings, I was honestly struggling to find them, and the thing that was drawing me back to the guitar was quite simply its sound. Aside from its lively resonance, the Duncan Designed FG-101 pickups were intriguing to me. This line was conceived by Seymour Duncan back in the mid-90s, not to sell to dealers and end-users like its other retrofit pickups, but “at the request of several of our larger original equipment manufacturer (OEM) customers who wanted to offer a pickup tied into the Duncan identity on their midlevel instruments”. Evan Skopp was key to their development during his tenure at the Santa Barbara-based pickup maker. Always a mine of information, Evan had exactly the background I was looking for…
“The FG-101 was designed at the request of Schecter’s Michael Ciravolo in the late 90s or early Noughties. Mike wanted something ‘FilterTron-ish’ for their Diamond Series import guitars. He sent me a photo of what he was looking for and I forwarded it to Woosung Chorus, the Korean-based manufacturer of Duncan Designed pickups. WSC sourced the cover, bobbins, bottom plate, etc, and built a few samples, which we sound-tested and tweaked until we were happy with the tone.”
I’d mentioned the non-standard size, because, although it looks like a Gretsch pickup with a similar bass-to-treble width, it’s slightly narrower. And, of course, it’s mounted like a conventional humbucker in a metal ring that, again, is a non-standard design. A TV Jones replacement with an ‘English mount’ isn’t going to fit the narrower pickup cavity without some alteration.
“As for the unique size of the pickup,” continued Evan,“that was based on what materials WSC could source easily without having to tool up new parts.
“To jog my memory on this, I looked up the FG-101 on an old Duncan Designed price list and noticed the description was written as, ‘FilterTron-ish’. That was a little joke between Mike and me. The ‘101’ stood for a vintage wind. As it turned out, the 101 was the only FG ever built during my tenure with SD. It was available in chrome and gold and included four-conductor wire.”
Pulling out the neck pickup and removing the cover to take a better look, it’s very clear that these are nicely made pickups. WSC Music, presumably, still make it and, under its own Roswell brand, offers it as the FG20 – they even use the same description as Seymour Duncan that it “captures the big, brash sound of the great rockabilly hollowbody guitars with a touch of ‘snarl’ thrown in”. The DCR is low, 4.25kohms at the bridge and 4.22k at the neck, close to TV Jones’s Classic, and its Gretsch-y ‘single coil with a bit extra’ sound on this solidbody platform is perfect for a Gretsch-meets-Ricky clean jangle with just a little bite.
Now, the circuit is a little odd in numerous ways. First, there’s no way to voice the two pickups in a typical parallel linked mix, like virtually every other twin pickup guitar out there. The Blender position, as we said back in Part 1 of this test in issue 438, sounds a little out of phase, and while it’s good to sweep like a manual wah effect, I’m simply missing that classic parallel mix. The volume and tone linkages are a little odd, too, plus the tone cap value for the neck pickup 0.1microfarad sounds a little excessive and is really very woofy. There are no treble bleed circuits and when you pull back the volume the beautiful clarity disappears instantly.
Rather than muck about with the original wiring, I simply unsoldered the two pickups from the rotary pickup selector switch and set about loading in a more Gretsch-like circuit: three-way toggle pickup selector, master volume (with treble bleed), individual volumes and tones with a lighter tone cap on the neck pickup (0.047microfarad). Packed into a gigbag, the rewired Silvertone 1423 Mk II is about to take the stage. Crikey!
“The thing is, every time I pick it up, I’m pleasantly reminded that it’s a very cool piece”