Yamaha Pacifica 112J is a Yamaha instrument geared towards beginners. It’s a good electric guitar if you’d like something that looks and plays like a Strat, yet comes with premium features.
I believe that everybody needs an electric guitar that sounds nice and plays great, and most importantly doesn’t cost a fortune!
In this review, we’ll take a look at the Pacifica 112J to see the quality of its components and if the playing experience is nice. Let’s get started!
Table of Contents
Overview Of Yamaha Pacifica 112J
Yamaha Pacifica Electric Guitar
What We Like
- Maple neck with rosewood fingerboard
- 22 medium jumbo frets
- Alder body
- Ssh pickup configuration
Our Verdict
The Yamaha Pacifica 112J is a budget guitar with fantastic build materials, a beautiful gloss finish, and excellent playability. It’s a great instrument for beginner players with little budget but it’s certainly not a shitty guitar.
Yamaha – The Brand
I’ve reviewed Yamaha guitars in the past, and if you’ve read through it, you already know what I think about the brand!
Yamaha is a quality manufacturer of all sorts of instruments and they do it for both beginners and serious pros. Founded in Japan in 1887, the company used to manufacture piano and reed organs and later switched to more instruments as well as products.
The brand’s got a legacy to live up to, so the Pacifica 112J is pretty well-built and offers great value for the price.
Aesthetics
The Yamaha Pacifica 112J electric guitar has a Urea nut on the headstock. Urea may sound unusual to some players but the Urea-formaldehyde copolymer is a pretty dense material used in the manufacture of many things like switches, hard-cases as well as wiring cases.
It keeps the prices low and is tonally quite similar to bone, so it’s nice.
The Yamaha 112J looks and feels vintage thanks to the Vintage style trem bridge with a whammy. Looks-wise, it looks like a Fender Stratocaster.
If I were getting this, I would go for the violin sunburst finish but it’s really up to you.
Tuning
The Yamaha Pacifica 112J has standard Yamaha die-cast chrome tuners which are good value for the price. The tuning machines are smoothly turned and do their job well for an entry-level guitar.
The strings are held in place by a Vintage-style tremolo bridge which is also a good quality bridge and helps the guitar stay in tune for long periods of time.
Neck
The Yamaha Pacifica 112J has a beautiful maple neck with a slim C-shape neck profile. Maple imparts warm tones and the characteristic tone is further accentuated by the gorgeous rosewood frets.
The slim maple neck is not only stylish but also very comfortable while playing and allows you to play pretty fast.
I wasn’t expecting rosewood on a budget guitar, so it had me by surprise but that’s just a testament to how much thought Yamaha has put in into the choice of materials.
The guitar is a full-scale one with a scale length of 25.5”.
There is, however, no binding on the neck or the body. While it would add creative detail, I can assume that it would increase the cost of the guitar. So, a simple elegant finish is quite sufficient here.
Body
The Yamaha Pacifica 112J has a Pacifica body shape and the body made out of Alder. Alder is a tonewood similar to mahogany but cheaper, and the build quality is fantastic.
It also makes the body lightweight and easier to hold while standing. The alder body also feels nice.
The body has two pointy horns that make it look pretty much like a typical Strat. There is a gloss polyurethane finish on the body which ages nicely.
There is also a beautiful pickguard that complements the body shape nicely.
As for the strings on this, the stock ones are D’Addario EXL120 strings which do sound nice. If you have a favorite set of strings, you can swap the stock ones for them very easily. I would prefer to have the D’Addario slinky ones but it’s really up to you.
Pickups and Controls
The Yamaha Pacifica 112J has three ceramic pickups that sound great.
On the neck and the mid position, there are Yamaha ceramic single-coil pickups that have a classic sound. The single-coil pickups lend themselves well to a classic rock sound.
There is a single Yamaha ceramic humbucker pickup on the bridge position which is good for a fuller sound ideal for blues. The humbucker bridge pickup is one of the things that I really love about this guitar, and to me, it defines the unique sound that Pacifica 112J has.
The ssh pickup configuration allows a variety of tones versatile enough for most styles of music.
There is a master tone control, master volume, and a 5-way pickup selector switch that lets you choose the neck, neck and mid, mid, mid and bridge, and the bridge pickup configuration.
How It Sounds
The pickups on Yamaha Pacifica 112J sound fantastic. The neck and mid position Yamaha ceramic single-coil pickups are good for playing old-school rock.
The combination of two single-coil pickups and hum at the bridge gives a pretty nice array of sounds.
I find that the single-coil pickups have a thinner sound, and so, I like to combine the ceramic single-coil pickup in the mid position with the Yamaha ceramic humbucker pickup in the bridge position to get a fat balanced tone.
The clean sound is rich for rock and played with a distortion pedal, the guitar has an aggressive edge.
It suits a variety of musical styles including rock and blues.
Who it’s For
The Yamaha Pacifica 112J is primarily meant for players just starting out on electric guitars. It’s low price certainly appeals to those with a limited budget but intermediate players can definitely find great use out of it.
The frets are well set up and the electronics are neatly done, so you won’t run into problems any time soon. Even professionals can use it for practice sessions.
I wouldn’t use it for high gain styles, but if you’re in a pinch, you certainly can use it for similar styles.
Since it’s inexpensive and has good value parts, I would seriously consider it if I were trying to find an instrument to gift my child. It is a decent practice instrument but really shines as an inexpensive first guitar.
Score
Bottom Line
If you’re fond of quality musical instruments, you’ll love the Yamaha 112J guitar!
With the great-sounding ssh pickup configuration and a slim C-shape neck that’s incredibly comfortable to play, the Yamaha Pacifica 112J is a hard-to-beat contender for the low price.
FAQ
Is Yamaha Pacifica a good guitar for beginners?
The Pacifica 112J is a fantastic beginner guitar and is comparable to Squiers. It packs the goodness of decent materials and excellent playability at a low price and so, anybody would be happy to learn on a Yamaha Pacifica.
Can you play metal on the Pacifica 112J?
I would choose a guitar more suited to metal than the Pacifica series if I were looking for something to shred on. The Pacifica 112J does have low action and a bridge humbucker but lacks the punch and cannot handle the gain that metal genres need.
As a beginner on a limited budget I’m now quite sure that this Yamaha is going to be the one for me. I’ll admit that I don’t yet understand all the technical aspects you refer to, but even I can understand that it’s easy to play, and is a good starter guitar that’s well constructed.
Thanks for an informative review.