YAMAHA PACIFICA PAC612VIIFMX

Yamaha’s do-it-all workhorse range

- Stuart Williams

£886

Electric guitars tend to fall into one of two main camps. In one corner there’s the infinitely cool. In the other there’s the perfectly functional. If a hot-rodded mojo machine is the guitar equivalent of the weathered drifter who hangs around the bar at your local, encourages you to take up smoking and shows you how to cheat at sweep picking, then a Yamaha Pacifica is the respectable guitar teacher in your town. Perhaps not bursting with danger on the exterior, but it’ll see you right for years, and won’t try and replace you in your band...

It’s been three decades since Yamaha unleashed its answer to the west coast mod shop boom of the late-80s/early-90s, and the PAC612VIIFMX is the new flagship version of one of the most popular electrics out there. Granted, you won’t find pre-aged finishes. There’s no retro-inspired quirks or clunky period-correct hardware. What you do get, though, is a cocktail of everything you need to cover as much musical ground as possible. There’s the mediumweight, double-cut alder body, 25.5”, 22-fret neck and a versatile HSS pickup configuration. It’s backed up by a barrage of third party features, too, including Seymour Duncan pickups, Grover locking tuners, Wilkinson vibrato and a Graph Tech TUSQ nut and string trees.