This is Gary's Yamaha Silent Guitar - a focused, single-minded instrument that does what it sets out to do pretty well. I've played a couple of 'silent' guitars in the past; solid body guitars with no sound holes and a piezo under-saddle pickup providing the 'acoustic' guitar tone. I always thought that these instruments come into their own for live performance. i.e. give a decent 'acoustic' impression and are more or less unaffected by loud volumes and far less likely to feedback compared to a regular hollow-bodied acoustic guitar.
This scores highly with its removable upper bout of the body (making the overall footprint of the guitar much smaller and therefore ideal for travelling) and its simple controls - particularly the 'Aux in' socket. This means you can pipe in music from your smartphone and play along in your hotel room or swinging in your hammock on the desert island beach without disturbing anyone else with your playing.
The downsides of this guitar were two common problems found on SO many guitars: grippy plastic nut (causing pinging and tuning instability) and a default 'too high' action. In this set up I changed the nut out for a Tusq one, lowered the playing action via the saddle and re-strung with new strings. End result - a very playable, very convenient (and classy looking) electro-acoustic guitar offering a blend of signals from the under-saddle piezo strip and an internally-fitted pickup (of some kind).
![](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/vqc_EoNSBtA/maxresdefault.jpg)