Silent night, guitar night....

I bought a new guitar on eBay at the weekend. It arrived this morning. Its a Yamaha SLG100s - Steel strung 'silent' acoustic guitar. RRP £429, online new price £359, eBay second-hand (but 'mint' condition) price £265. Bargain.

As you can see (on the left), Brian May played one of these babys on stage on the 'Queen plus Paul Rodgers' tour last year. His was in red, which is only available in Japan, mine is the standard 'natural' wood finish, but still very nice.

The main point of buying this guitar (as opposed to any other guitar) is that I only really play acoustic guitar (indeed, I have no choice since I traded my old electric in as part payment for my 12 string acoustic seven years ago) but, as anyone with young kids and a full time job will tetify to, the only free time for guitar playing is after they've gone to bed, and after they've gone to bed you have to be quiet...

So the 'silent' guitar is a bodyless (and virtually weightless) acoustic guitar. Plug it in to headphones or an amp and it sounds like a very nice acoustic guitar. Don't plug in the amp and the player can noodle away in his private guitar world, not waking up any of the sleeping kids or annoying the neighbours.

It even features an 'aux in' socket so that you can play along to your favourite music and two reverb settings so that you feel you're being loud in a fair sized room. All very good.

Guess what I'm doing tonight?