IN THE REAL WORLD
Studio ace, touring musician and Guitarist contributor Adam Goldsmith shares his experience with Yamaha’s Pacifica 1611MS
“I wanted a guitar that I could do anything with,” says Adam of his 1611MS.“I toured with Beverley Knight last year and I used it on that gig and it was brilliant. I like doing gigs where I don’t have to put down and pick up another guitar. In the studio, which is my main gig, that’s different: I take loads of guitars. But live, I like to do the whole gig on one guitar. You get sweaty and you get into it – it becomes part of the gig.”
Adam also took advantage of a bit of modding.“I had a coil-split added to the neck humbucker, so I could make it sound like a traditional Telecaster-style guitar,” he says. “Obviously, Beverley is a soul artist so I needed a pretty clean sound. I used the coil-split mostly in the mix position, almost a Strat-y kind of sound. When we played her songs from the 90s it had a bit of chorus and delay.”
As we found with our review sample, in output terms, it is quite a hot guitar. Adam says,“The thing is Mike Stern is a soloist – that’s nothing against his rhythm playing – but his gig is playing solos and lead lines. That’s what stands out about the 1611MS – it’s got a lot of presence in the midrange, which is good for those lead lines. But, yes, that’s another reason I had the coil-split fitted – to take the heat out a little bit.
“I have a half-jazz/half-rock background so I was aware of Mike Stern and the guitar he plays. And the price point [of the 1611MS] is good. Yamaha makes good stuff you can take out on tour – if I dropped it or it fell off a truck you could buy another one and it’d be exactly the same. Whereas with my ’67 Fender Telecaster, you don’t want to drop that – and if you did, a replacement probably wouldn’t be the same. It’s not worth the risk. In the studio, I think it is worth it, but live, by the time your sound has gone out to the front of house, it’s not worth it.”
Adam admits to liking his older Fender, Gibsons and Martins: “They have a vibe to them. But I found that the 1611MS had a bit of a vibe to it, too. It’s light and you could chuck it around. It just feels a bit raw and I like that.”
Adam concludes by saying,“For the last two tours, I’ve only taken a couple of guitars. It’s one thing when you’re using a loud backline amp, but with the current trend of using Kempers and the like, the guitars all sound fundamentally the same – take a Strat and a Les Paul and you’ll be fine. I understand you might need spares, but other than that everything is DI’d and goes to the front of house. For the jobbing musician you don’t need it. I’ve done it when I’ve had a dedicated tech but when you’ve got to do it all yourself, no way.”