Copy of a modest instrument that had a major impact on rock music
Silvertone was always just a brand name for guitars (and radios) sold through the Sears and Roebuck department store chains made by several other guitar manufacturers like Harmony and Dan Electro and Kay. And in keeping with that tradition, this reissue of the Silvertone model 1478 Silhouette, is made by the Korean manufacturer Samick; and as is always the case, they did an excellent job of it.
This guitar is a reissue of a guitar that made its debut in 1963. As I said in Sing a Song of Silvertone, this was the first guitar I fell in love with after I saw the Beatles on Sullivan and was out on the hunt for a guitar of my own. I thought it was gorgeous. What I didn’t know was that it wasn’t really a very good guitar, and that was by design.
It had awkward neck proportions, a floating wooden bridge, and a very primitive vibrato unit. But on the plus side, it had some extraordinarily good sounding lo-fi pickups from DeArmond, and it was cheap – less than half the price of a standard Telecaster. The price made it popular, and the sound made it legendary as a key component of the garage band sound. Plug it into any amp, but especially one of the primitive Silvertone models, and you have any level of distortion, from a whisper to a wail, right there at your fingertips. It was the kind of intoxicating power that launched countless garage bands throughout the country.
This new Samick reissue is not a truly faithful recreation of that original model and that’s a very good thing: the neck is a very comfortable C shape with a flat, 12 inch radius fretboard. The bridge is a well-made copy of a Gibson tune-o-matic, and the tailpiece is a copy of the venerable Bigsby unit (also very well executed). Overall, it’s just an exceptionally well made guitar as are all the Samicks I’ve had the pleasure of playing.
However, as much as I like this thing, I do have a few reservations. I wish they would have taken their redesign just a little bit further. Adding Fender style body contours would have been a welcome touch for those of us who regularly sit down with our guitars for hours at a time. But my main beef is with those pickups, not their sound but their dimensions. These single coils of indeterminant origins (though some say they are made by Altec) are very tall (14mm), non-adjustable, surface-mount pickups that, in my opinion, throw the whole geometry off.
The pickups sit up so high that the neck has to be much higher up in the neck pocket in order for the strings to clear the pickups. It all reminds me of a Japanese hollow body archtop of the 1960s. Though the original DeArmonds were also surface mount, I would have preferred adjustable pickups which would allow the neck to sit lower in the neck pocket like a Fender. But this is just my own personal preferences. I like the guitar very much and, aside from these few reservations, I recommend you try one out.
The Super Specs
Pickups – Single coil (Altec?) not exact copies of the originals
Pickup Resistance – Neck = 5.22k – Middle = 2.66k – Bridge = 5.47k
Body = mahogany with a maple top
Weight = 7 pounds 2 ounces
Neck = mahogany
Fretboard = rosewood
Scale length = 24.5 inches
Nut width = 42.6mm
E to e string spacing = 34.75mm
Neck thickness at third fret = 20.75mm
Neck thickness at 12th fret = 23.09mm
The tuners are above average Kluson copies, the tortoise pickguard is four ply, the neck binding is three ply, and the overall fit and finish is first rate. As I said, I really do like this guitar alot and so I say, “tall pickups be damned.” Me and this guitar are going to get to know each other better – I promise.
Bonus Tracks
Of course you’ll want to hear it for yourself, so here is a short YouTube video demonstrating the Silvertone Silhouette.