YAMAHA PACIFICA 1611MS
Yamaha’s custom shop is celebrating its 30th anniversary. We catch up with its founding father, Ken Dapron
PRICE: £1,713
ORIGIN: Japan
TYPE: Single-cutaway solidbody electric
BODY: Light ash
NECK: Maple bolt-on
SCALE LENGTH: 648mm (25.5”)
NUT/WIDTH: Synthetic bone/ 40.53mm
FINGERBOARD: Maple, black dot markers, 184mm (7.25”) radius
FRETS: 22, medium jumbo
HARDWARE: Hardtail 6-saddle bridge w/ through-body stringing, vintagestyle tuners – chrome/nickel-plated
STRING SPACING, BRIDGE: 54mm
ELECTRICS: Seymour Duncan Hot Rails single coil-sized humbucker (bridge) and zebra ’59 standard-sized humbucker (neck), 3-way lever pickup selector, master volume and tone
WEIGHT (kg/lb): 3/6.6
OPTIONS: None
RANGE OPTIONS: It remains the only single-cutaway Pacifica in the Yamaha range. Other Japanese-made models include the Revstar RSP20CR (£1,496), the long-running SA2200 (£1,978) and the modern SG 1800 trio at £3,200 each
LEFT-HANDERS: No
FINISHES: Natural (as reviewed). High gloss body, oil-finished neck PROS Beautiful ‘simple is best’ design and build; good weight, beefy but versatile voicing; quite the journeyman guitar
CONS No case, no colour options, no left-handers and a complete lack of fanfare
Yamaha might be one of the biggest names in the musical instrument world, but it is a company that tends to plough its own path – almost, it seems, avoiding the fickle world of musical fad and fashion by design. As we report, for example, Yamaha’s only current artist signature electric guitar model is the 1611MS Mike Stern, a guitar that was conceived back in the mid-90s and that, aside from a relatively recent refresh, has stayed exactly the same.
It’s not that Yamaha doesn’t do the artist thing. There have been a great many over the years – Ty Tabor, Frank Gambale, Sammy Hagar, Wes Borland and Troy Van Leeuwen to name a few – but as Ken Dapron, the founder of Yamaha’s LA’s custom shop, or Yamaha Guitar Development (YGD) as it was originally known, comments, “A lot of signature models – and this applies to many companies – don’t actually last very long. That might be due to genre changes, but guitar players do seem to shift around more than bass players.”
Unless you’re Mike Stern, of course, a signature guitar player who’s been happy with his Yamaha for over 20 years. Based on the very early Pacifica models (specifically the USA1) that were originally conceived by the small YGD team of Ken, ex-Ibanez designer Rich Lasner and luthier Leo Knapp, the Telecaster-inspired style of Mike’s signature also remains a rarity – it’s the only single-cut Pacifica in the range and has been for a long time.
Famously, the design of the Pacifica was more of an exercise: Yamaha wanted to see what YGD could do, remembers Ken.
“‘Let’s see Yamaha’s approach to a ‘better’ Strat-style guitar. While you’re doing that let’s take the next iconic instrument; let’s see our version of a Les Paul. But do them differently, you know?’ We wanted something that looked comfortable to the eye, close but not too close to the original. This led to the first products, the Pacifica and the Weddington,” which, with the Billy Sheehan Attitude bass, were released in 1990.
If there was any doubt about the potential of the new LA custom shop, it was immediately scotched, says Ken.
“I believe there were around 16 Pacifica models that went into production within a year of us prototyping them. These were all coming out of Japan at the time,” although it was the lower-ticket Pacificas, like the 112 – made in Yamaha’s product factory, then in
Kaohsiung, Taiwan – that really illustrated how the custom shop could play a huge part in Yamaha’s future. What started as a custom design became one of the best-selling massproduced electric guitars and “by far and away the biggest-selling Yamaha electric guitar… by quite a margin,” Ken told us back in 2003. “Outside of the classics, it has to be one of the most popular electrics ever.”
While artist-conceived models might be a rarity today, these instruments have been central to Yamaha’s history, helped by the company’s ability to work with players in Japan as well as the USA.
“All of the early original artist contacts, with the exception of Billy Sheehan, were made in Japan,” offers Ken. “Mike Stern had a pretty incredible background and he
“Outside of the classics, the Yamaha Pacifica has to be one of the most popular electrics ever” Ken Dapron
was pretty famous. He was having problems with his ‘mutt’ [see Mike Stern interview on p88] and it was falling apart. We already had the Pacifica in the line-up with the single-cutaway shape and its slightly different body contours, so we started with that. He was a little bit more keen on trying new things when he was younger, I guess, but he was very tight with not wanting to change things too much. We were working with him for three or four years before we did that first signature model, and it was all about getting the right weight.
“Even after we produced the signature, Mike was still seen playing his old guitar for the first year or two. He’d take his Yamaha out and play it on a couple of songs before he shuffled back to his old ‘home base’, so to speak. But after a couple of years I never saw him playing his old guitar any more,” remembers Ken.
“I’m kind of a one-guitar guy,” relates Mike Stern in the History Of Yamaha
Guitars by Mark Kasulen and Matt Blackett. “There’s just something about an old guitar that I like, so when I got my Yamaha I wasn’t totally comfortable with it at first. But they told me, ‘Just keep playing it, break it in.’ So I did and now this thing plays like it’s old. The difference in tone is subtle, but I think the Yamaha has more presence and a little more clarity than my mutt.”
Yet, as Ken states, it’s the bass players’ signature models that seem to last the longest, and we can apparently look forward to more of those this year.
“The BB shape was really the front door for almost all of our bass artists,” says Ken, “and a lot of the guys that have stayed with us are bass players: bass and acoustics guitars were always our really solid lines.”
Long-standing Yamaha signature artists Nathan East and John Patitucci – both monsters in their worlds – had their first signature models released in 1994 after Billy Sheehan had kicked things off four years before. Much more recently, following a need for a travel-friendly bass for a lastminute gig with Chick Corea, Nathan sat down with YGD’s current senior guitar designer and luthier Pat Campolattano to create a six-string headless bass.
30 Years On
There have been many changes to Yamaha’s custom shop since its first designs launched in 1990, not least its name and location. From the original Weddington Street location in Hollywood, via Burbank, the facility is now housed in Calabasas.
“We moved here to merge with Line 6 and Ampeg to form the Yamaha Guitar Group,” explains Ken. “So we’re still called Yamaha Artist Services Los Angeles (YASLA) but in respect to the original ’shop and its history we are going to be using YGD as just the name of the facility, part of trying to pull back the respect for the original building and what we did there.”
Today’s facility is even more like a small guitar factory than the original Weddington Street location, as Ken explains.
“It kind of seems overkill to have what is effectively a factory here, but that’s what you need to do unless you’re doing it all by hand. And you have to have the space for the machinery and a safe environment that’s all permitted. You see, we’re not just doing artist stuff, we’re also doing R&D and that has to be done to a level where it can be passed on to the next level of engineering.
“There’s always been a motive at Yamaha to improve and be a ‘solutional’ company that has the insight to see what some of the obstacles are in some of the earlier classic designs in everything we build [including motorbikes], and in guitars especially. For guitars, basses and acoustics we’ve been lucky to have input from so many artists to find out what’s working or not working for them. It’s really helped the guitar department worldwide: this expertise and knowledge makes it into all of our guitars, not just the artist models we make here.”
Today’s facility is staffed by three luthiers: “Pat Campolattano is our senior luthier; Pat builds electrics and basses. Then there’s Andrew Enns who builds all our acoustics. We’ve never had an acoustic luthier and he is so amazing. Then we have Rafael Barajas, an experienced luthier and paint specialist.”
Ken Dapron is slowly stepping away from the facility he kicked off 30 years ago.
“I still assist on purchasing and have many other roles, but I’ve become kind of the historian and mentor to the staff. I still help look after our legacy artists but I work with Scott Marceau and Matt Ferguson who are in charge of artist relations.”
The seeds sown by Ken and the luthiers – past and present – while working tirelessly with top-flight artists are still bearing fruit. Rodrigo y Gabriela are good examples with their input into the new range of 2020 Yamaha NX nylon-string electros.
“The Pacifica – our first assignment – is still in the line-up,” beams Ken, “and there’s a whole bunch of products that have been born out of those original prototypes. And I think we’re going to see some new ones soon.”
The spirit of that original custom shop on Weddington Street remains unchanged today. Here’s to another 30 years!
“The difference in tone is subtle, but I think the Yamaha has more presence and clarity than my mutt” Mike Stern