First one to try this on an Anderson gets a giant rubber cookie!

[GaryMcT]

Pretty impressive A/B recordings of with and without the aftermarket Suhr silent coil stuff on a strat:

http://www.online-discussion.com/Suhr/viewtopic.php?t=703

I'm really curious how well this works with S and V-series Anderson pickups. If my split SA-1 neck position didn't have 60-cycle hum all of the sudden, I'd be very happy.

[tom]

john said it is somewhat pickup dependant. i belive roy said he would be sending us one to try.

[GaryMcT]

Cool. Please keep me up to date. Beyond working with S-series and V-series pickups, I'm curious in particular if it'll work with VA12 and VA23. I would expect that it would have to be modded with extra trim pots for the two different modes to both be hum cancelling, but I don't really know. I hear that it has two pots on it, but I'm not sure what they do. I expect that one is a volume pot for the coil for hum-cancelling against a single coil and the other is for hum-cancelling again 2 single coils. That's just a guess though.

[tom]

it would have to have different taps to work with the va12's.

[GaryMcT]

I believe there is a silent coil "volume" pot for the neck and middle and a pot for bridge so that you can mix in just the right amount of noise cancelling per pickup. It seems like if you had a switch on each line with extra pots for the two different VA12 modes, it might be able to work. I'm an electronics newby, so I might not have any idea what I'm talking about. :)

[tom]

it's not about a pot, the coil itself has to be different.

[BFC]

If John is interested in working with you on licensing a version specific for VAs you might be onto something pretty signficant. Sounds like John is already having a heck of a time keeping up with this thing. I would be all over a Classic with VAs and this system.

[GaryMcT]

Sounds like it would be a pain to make this work with a lot of different pickups. Having it work with SA-1 and split H2 for my Drop Top would be outstanding for me. I don't have VA's yet, but I could see getting an Anderson classic and putting V60lp's in it to get close to VA sounds so that the coil would work with it. I haven't compared VAs to Suhr's stuff, so I don't know what the tonal difference would be. I imagine that Suhr doesn't have anything like the SA1 though.

[tom]

it's not meant to work with a variety of pickups, so i wouldn't look for it in a guitar with a mixture of singles and hums. it is made buy an outside vendor, so it shouldn't affect john's production.

[GaryMcT]

I've read that the backplate aftermarket version has a separate internal pot for the bridge pickup and that it can be wired to work with a splittable bridge humbucker. From what I can tell, the neck and middle pickups need to be identical and the bridge pickup can be different.

Have they sent one over for you guys to try yet? If this works out, I may have to order a classic with VA's as my next guitar (along with the backplate system.) If VA12 and VA23 could work out with the coil tap, that's an extra bonus. :)

[tom]

haven't seen it. i don't imagine we are their highest priority.

[GaryMcT]

Hmmm, maybe I should just buy one myself and a set of VAs (without the RWRP middle) for my old frankenstrat.