Withdrawn - Shine SIL 510 £80 delivered

hobbio

Hiya

I've got a trans red Shine SIL-510 for sale. Professionally set up with a new nut, it's currently running flatwound Chrome 12's. I'll be chucking another set of these strings in with the sale too as it could probably do with a restring. Strap in pics is not included.

I'm only selling because I never use it. I even tried using it for open D tunings, but it's still just hanging there looking all sad and unloved.

These were never expensive guitars, but £80 delivered is a good price considering I had it professionally set up at Noise Works in Coventry.

 

Megii

Don't do it!  :-O  But if you really must @hobbio, then can I say these are actually fantastic guitars - I have two and use/gig them all the time. The stock pickups are fine, but the guitar is easily good enough to justify an upgrade if desired. Grover tuning machines - you should have mentioned that. Very comfortable, ergonomic design also. Anyway, £80 is a ridiculous steal imo.

hobbio

I never play it @Megii, and something's got to give. If I don't sell it I'll only end up putting it in garage for space reasons and that will kill it inside 6 months. I'd rather someone got to use it.

£80 isn't a lot of money for this guitar at all especially considering the set up.

Megii

Originally made to retail at around £350 to £400 ish I believe, and that was back in the early 2000's. I know they were being sold for a fair bit less by a certain retailer more recently, but from experience, they are just great guitars. I'm tempted myself, because I've come to rely on the two I have, but I just can't justify any more guitars now. Made in the same Korean Saein factory that has made guitars for Epiphone, Peavey and others in the past. Shine is the company's own brand. I recently put handwound zebra PAF type buckers in my red one (excuse to post a pic):

The guitar is every bit as nice as it looks there, £80's a bargain really. Sorry for the hijack, I'll leave your sale thread alone now @hobbio

hobbio

@Megii You're making me want to get it off flats and keep it...

Megii

hobbio said:

@Megii You're making me want to get it off flats and keep it...

Tee hee   I would say flats maybe not the best choice for the guitar (and I say that as someone who plays jazz). Awesome with 11s or 12s round wounds though, IMO. OK, I really will stop now...

hobbio

@Megii Flats don't suit it, you're right. Maybe I'll look through my strings and see what I have. 

Gru

I can vouch for the quality of these guitars as I also owned one, albeit in black. I also changed pickups to zebra style and changed to black knobs. It is a great guitar and super comfortable to play on the sofa.

I have already put my interest forward (I still have 2 more black knobs ready to use) but currently have a small stumbling block. These don't come up very often and hobbio is a great person to deal with.

hobbio

Withdrawn, at least temporarily. I'm going to try it out with a set of 11-54 rounds and see if I can get on with it again.

Megii

 @hobbio, out of interest, I have 12-52 rounds on mine at the mo, with a wound 3rd, and that's very nice for jazz use. Although it's not got that much chambering, I think with heavier strings, the light basswood body does get driven a bit, and the guitar can have some woody acoustic quality to the tone. Even with the 12s, I find I can bend the strings and use vibrato for bluesy stuff. For a long while prior to that, I was putting 11-49 gauge rounds on it, and that for me was really great for blues, and pretty good for jazz also - I may go back to 11s at some point, but both gauges seem to work well.

FWIW, there's some live tracks of me using my red Shine (admittedly with the new pickups, and through a Polytone jazz amp) to play jazz (or as close as I get to playing jazz) on the other forum:

http://www.guitars.co.uk/clip/autumn-leaves

http://www.guitars.co.uk/clip/moonglow

http://www.guitars.co.uk/clip/softly-as-in-a-morning-sunrise

It's a terrible thing to say, but I prefer my Shine SIL-510s to my Ibanez Joe Pass archtop, at least most of the time.

hobbio

@Megii I've picked up a set of EB beefy slinkies, 11 - 15 - 22 - 30 - 42 - 54 with a plain 3rd. They're designed for drop tuning really, but I wanted the heaviest set of 11's I could get because it was set up specifically for the flat 12's. I like the feel of heavy strings on the Shine, but the flats just make it sound so muffled, really woolly with no definition. It's even worse without a pick.

If I find these strings to be too, well, beefy I'll get a set of regular 11's and try those but I'm hoping that this set give me a similar feel but a ton more brightness.

I'll have a listen to your tracks when I'm home from work

Megii

@hobbio - of course you will have your own requirements/preference re string gauge - what you say makes perfect sense. Only really mentioning my own choices out of interest. Some while back, I came to the conclusion that flats on anything other than an archtop are not a good idea, at least for me. And I don't even use them on an actual archtop anymore either - I prefer rounds or half-rounds for that. Agree with you re the "definition" thing basically.

The tracks were recorded live, using a portable Zoom recorder, but if you listen through headphones or decent speakers, I think you can hear the guitar tone fairly well (as long as you don't get put off by the guitar playing  ).

hobbio

The gauges I've gone for are very similar to the Chrome 12's, slightly lighter up to the 5th where it's the same and a slightly heavier 6th. I've actually got a few sets of the Chromes that I'll probably sell on because I can't see me using them on anything. I'd love an archtop but new guitars are just not on the agenda any time soon.

I don't think I've ever heard you play mate, I'm looking forward to it. Autumn Leaves is one of my all time favourites too

hobbio

@Megii the strings have made a world of difference, but the pups need changing now I think. They're still very dark. At least I can play it again though!

Megii

hobbio said:

@Megii the strings have made a world of difference, but the pups need changing now I think. They're still very dark. At least I can play it again though!

@hobbio If I'm honest, I can't remember very much about the stock pickups, except they were "OK" - I think I found them just a bit brash and not sweet enough for my taste. Perhaps a bit over-wound in general.

On my red Shine, I had a set of Axesrus Bourbon City alnico 2 PAF types for a long while (the neck position one was something like a 7.5Kohm), which were imo pretty nice - they certainly were sweet sounding, but in the end, I did want just a bit more transparency, and a bit more zing and bite to the tone.

The zebra ones I recently fitted seem to have fixed this for me - at least talking about the neck pickup, which is the one that really matters for the stuff I play. So the new zebra coil neck pickup is a "low wind" type, wound to only barely 7Kohm, and with unequal winds on the coils (i.e. more turns on the coil with the adjustable screw poles compared to the slug pole coil). Also I went for an alnico 3 magnet, rather than alnico 2. As I understand it from reading up on the web, these are all things that should make for a more zingy and transparent sounding 'bucker - and for my taste, it does seem to have worked. Some people might still think my tone is on the darker side of things, but I do feel it has some zing and bite, along with the warmth/sweet aspect - I would hate to be accused of having the dreaded "muddy" cliched jazz tone. I have often found humbuckers a bit bass heavy - and I have to admit that I do have the bass control turned down quite low on my amp, and the treble turned up to about 3 o'clock, but I like the result, so the end justifies the means in that respect.

Having gone to hand-wound for this set of humbuckers, I really do think there's something to be said for that as well - it may be subtle, but for me it's there - just a greater sense of subtlety and complexity about the tone, and kind of like there is a bit more "air" around the notes, if that makes sense. I got my pickups from Chris Hernandez/Wound 4 Sound, in the states, and I personally like what he does, but of course there are excellent pickup makers here in the UK, including on this forum.

My trans-black Shine SIL-510 has a GFS Surf 90 humbucker size single coil in the neck position http://www.guitarfetish.com/GFS-Surf-90-Alnico-II-Rockabilly-Pickups_c_259.html  , with oversized alnico 2 polepieces, and I have to say I really love that also. That one certainly has that single coil "cut" to the tone, while being warm at the same time. The bass is not at all heavy on that one either - it makes a really terrific jazz pickup, and very balanced for chord work. Only drawback is that it can pick up hum from the wiring and lighting circuit in some places - so I find it a bit hard to use in some venues. But tone-wise, for a long while I would have said that was the best one I had - now I think I've got the red Shine to be in at least the same ballpark though.

So a load of pickup-related waffle for you to digest there!

hobbio

Thanks Megii!

I think that funds dictate that any tone improvements will have to come from my EQ pedal and the amp for a while, but in the medium term they'll want changing and you've given me plenty to think about.

Megii

No worries - and of course it's very true that the amp, eq, and how you set that all up, makes a huge influence on the tone. In a lot of ways, my messing about with different pickups has been fine-tuning and zero-ing in on the tone I want - but I would have to admit that my Polytone amp has a bigger overall influence really - I love what it does, but as a jazz amp, it is on the warm/dark side, so I've ended up using a humbucker designed to enhance that, but also not be too heavy sounding, and to have plenty of cut and zing in the tone.