Yamaha Pacifica 112V Electric Guitar (Sonic Blue)

Yamaha Pacifica112v

The Yamaha Pacifica 112v in my opinion is a superb instrument. Straight out of the box the instrument is eminently playable, the intonation was spot-on. The body is well balanced, and the neck with its satin finished rosewood fret board on maple has a beautiful feel. I felt the action was a little high for my liking. This is easily adjusted, however you must then readjust the intonation. The pacifica112v has been fitted with 2 single coil pickups in, neck central positions. A dual coil hum bucker has been fitted at the bridge. A 5 way selector switch is fitted giving, front only, front & centre, centre only, centre and rear, or rear only permutations. A pull switch is fitted to the single master tone control; this taps the hum bucker and effectively shorts out one of the windings. The pull switch selects the back part of the hum bucker closest to the bridge. I noticed that on my 112v I could not get the classic fender bell like tone, from the rear pickups. This effect is caused entirely by the phase relationship (distance apart) of the single coil units. I removed the back wiring plate and discovered that the 112v uses a double pole 5 way selector switch.
Although a pull switch to select a single coil position is fitted, for some strange reason Yamaha have used the second half of the 5-way selector to switch in the coil taps when moved to rear plus centre pickup positions. This sounds like a reasonable idea, however the rearmost part of the hum bucker is just too far away from the centre pickup to produce the classic sound we all expect from a strat style guitar. I removed the wire links from this part of the 5-way switch and reversed the positions of the wires from the hum bucker. The result is perfect, and allows still more flexibility.
I think overall this guitar is extremely good value for money. I think the quality of engineering, precision, and the standard equipment fitted is very high. I have seen many guitars costing twice this price, which quite frankly don’t come close.

Buy one you will not regret it.

Steve W 2008