YAMAHA PACIFICA 1611MS £1,713
What You Need To Know
1 This isn’t a new model, is it?
No. The Mike Stern signature originally surfaced in 1998 as the Pacifica 1511MS and was made in Japan. There was a lower-ticket version, the 311MS, which ran from 1999 to 2003 and was made in Yamaha’s Taiwanese factory. Whether this was actually a Mike Stern signature is a moot point as Yamaha maintains that the ‘M’ stands for maple (fingerboard) and the ‘S’ for single-cutaway. Of course!
2 So, what’s this 1611MS, then?
Without a single parp of a trumpet the 1511MS became the 1611MS in, we believe, 2016. The specs remained pretty similar, although it was “refreshed” with Yamaha’s exclusive wood treatment – IRA (Initial Response Acceleration) technology – which “shakes off the stress often found in new guitars and makes them extremely vibrant and responsive”. The guitar’s one-piece maple neck is oil-finished, too.
3 Is it really Yamaha’s only signature electric guitar?
Yes. With great respect to multiGrammy-nominated Mike Stern, who was voted Jazz Guitarist of the Year by Guitar Player magazine in 1993, he’s far from a household name in today’s mainstream guitar world. That said, his signature model is now 22 years old, so let’s pay some serious respect where it’s due.
As an exercise in taking the essence of a classic and reworking it into an identifiable new design, this 1611MS takes some beating. You also have to remember that the Pacifica design was conceived 30 years ago at the birth of Yamaha’s custom shop, although it’s aged remarkably well, perhaps with the exception of the rather off-trend headstock labels.
The body outline perfectly reflects the design concept. It’s virtually identical in length and width to its obvious inspiration, if very slightly thinner at 44.5mm, while the binding at the top edge adds to the subtle makeover. The line from the upper horn flows a little more into the treble cutaway, which is enlarged, the horn slightly thinned. The treble-side waist is identical but the bass-side waist is slightly offset, even though the base remains symmetrical and pretty Tele-like. There’s no ribcage contour but the forearm is subtly contoured.
The wood stock appears very good. Perfectly centre-joined, the two pieces are mirror-matched in terms of their end grain, too, and overall it’s one of the lightest ash T-styles we’ve reviewed for a long time.
In terms of construction, the neck apes the original: the fingerboard is simply the face of the neck, not an added slab, there’s a rear skunk stripe, and truss-rod adjustment is
placed, vintage-style and rather unhandily, at the body end of the neck under the overhang for the 22nd fret. Also vintagestyle is the 184mm (7.25-inch) fingerboard radius – unlike the standard 350mm (13.75inch) radius of the more Strat-inspired double-cutaway Pacifica.
The hardware also retains a vintage vibe with the typical Tele-style control plate and its switch and control positions. Likewise with the walled stamped-steel base-plate of the bridge, although here we have six saddles with precise break points and through-body stringing, of course. The tuners, meanwhile, also have vintage leanings with slot-head posts – even the single string retainer for the top two strings is placed early Tele-style between the G and D string tuners.
While the controls stick to Tele style, the pickups don’t: the full-size Seymour Duncan ’59 at the neck is paired with a more polarising single-coil-sized Hot Rails at the bridge. There’s no way to split either (see p86) – what you see is what you get.
Feels & Sounds
What we get perfectly reflects the intended style: a souped-up hot-rod T-style. Actually, the pickup choice is quite inspired. Yes, on the one hand we lose the classic Tele voicing and often overbright ice-pick edge of the bridge, but it’s replaced here with some smoother attack and obvious humbucking heft. The neck humbucker is slightly pokier than the bridge as supplied but immediately feels like home with a really wide stylistic versatility from jazz through to seriously vocal lead wailing, the bridge pickup always just a shove of the three-way lever away for some rockier grunt. There’s an inherent clarity to the response, though, which that neck PAF-style pickup maximises: cleans, then, sounds big and bell-like, and the mix position is a little fuller than classic but oozes with that parallel-linked funk that is useful for so many styles.
Visually, not to mention in terms of feel, you’re definitely playing a Tele-style with a nice fight, but what your ears are telling you is more classic gutsy Les Paul. We examine