YAMAHA PACIFICA 611HFM
Yamaha brings professional-quality tones to the
masses with this hot-rodded Pacifi ca. And it’s purple!
YAMAHA
PACIFICA 611HFM
£579
BEFORE
1990,
beginners’
guitars were a bit rubbish. If
you couldn’t afford a bona-fide
Gibson, Fender or another one of
the big boys, you were lumbered
with a plank with pickups. But in
that magical year Yamaha gave
us the Pacifica, and a generation
learned to play on a guitar that
looked good, sounded great and
performed just about well enough
to play those first sweaty gigs with.
Fast forward 22 years and
Yamaha has also made a strong
pitch for the mid-range market
with the 611HFM, loading it with
Seymour Duncan pickups, Grover
locking tuners and other high-end
appointments that ooze quality.
The Trans Purple body, with its
cheeky maple veneer, draws us
in like a magpie to a shiny thing,
but we’re not so wild about the
yellow tint on the neck, which is a
flattish C-shape. The frets are on
the thin side of medium, and the
fretboard edges are as smooth as a
baby’s bottom (albeit a rosewood
one). We also appreciate the fixed
Wilkinson bridge, with individual
Graph Tech string saddles, and the
Graph Tech Black Tusq nut. For the
uninitiated, Tusq is a compound
that’s naturally slippery, so there’s
less friction where the string meets
the guitar, meaning more stable
tuning and fewer string breakages.
The biggest difference to the
more humble entry-level guitars
in the Pacifica 112 range is the
YAMAHA PACIFICA 611HFM
REVIEW
pickups. These are a pair of
Seymour Duncans, a P90 in the
neck and a humbucker with coil-
tap switch at the bridge, so it will
do a passable impersonation of a
singlecoil, too. Reading the specs
list it’s clear that these are aimed at
classic rock and blues rock players.
Our favourite sound has to be
the P90 on its own. These pickups
are usually described as having
a soupy sound, and this one is so
thick you can practically taste the
lumps of oxtail floating in it. With
the gain on your amp turned down
and the volume turned up so your
tone is just about to break up, the
P90 gives you a sweet bayou sound
that fans of Creedence or Lynyrd
Skynyrd will go crazy for.
Move the pickup selector into
the middle position and pull the
tone control to bring the coil-split
into play and you get a fantastic
hollowed-out Strat sound that
sounds completely convincing,
and great with a clean amp
sound. As noted, the humbucker
is pitched on the lighter side of
classic rock, and that alder body
is pretty light, so it won’t give
you the sound of Slash: this is all
about clarity rather than crunch,
and dirties up into a nice Kings Of
Leon-esque rock tone.
It’s to Yamaha’s credit that all the
sounds packed into this guitar are
good enough to use at your next
gig. It blows the competition at this
price range out of the water, and
is easily as good as instruments
costing twice as much. All this, plus
a retro 90s logo on the headstock –
what more could you ask for?
Andrew Gregory
GRAPH Tech saddles
in the hard-tail bridge
and a Graph Tech nut
keep the sounds crisp
and should mean
fewer broken strings
BRIDGE
3
A BR ACE of Seymour
Duncans keeps the
tones coming on the
611HFM. You’ll be
amazed how many
sounds you can wring
out of it
PICKUPS
2
WE LOVE Grover
locking tuners. They
keep tuning stable,
look good and make it
super-quick to change
strings onstage at the
Dog and Duck
TUNERS
1
“ As good as
instruments
costing twice
as much”
AT A GLANCE
BODY: Alder
NECK: Maple
FINGERBOARD: Rosewood
FRETS: 22 medium
SCALE: 25
1/2”
PICKUPS: Seymour Duncan SP90-1
(neck) and Seymour Duncan TB-14
Custom V humbucker (bridge)
CONTROLS: 1x volume, 1 x tone
(with coil split for bridge humbucker),
three-way pickup selector switch
HARDWARE: Hardtail bridge with Graph
Tech saddles, chrome Grover locking tuners
LEFT-HANDED: No
FINISH: Black, Light Amber Burst, Root
Beer, Trans Black, Trans Purple (shown)
CONTACT: Yamaha Music (UK) Ltd
0844 811 1116 http://uk.yamaha.com
FEATURES
SOUND QUALITY
VALUE FOR MONEY
BUILD QUALITY
PLAYABILITY
OVERALL RATING
S U M M A R Y
152 JUNE 2012
TGR228.gear_yamaha.indd 152 4/24/12 5:50:33 PM