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nickname009
Published on 04/05/11 at 20:51
I believe this pacifica was made in either indonesia or china or taiwan, though I can't remember exactly it was over 10 years ago. This was my very FIRST electric guitar. My mom was nice enough to buy this very first guitar for me, which actually affected my buying decision considering I wanted an Ibanez. Oh to be young and have no money of my own..
Anyhoo, specs:
alder? body
maple neck with rosewood board
22 frets
ssh pickup config with generic pickups
1 tone 1 volume, 5 way switch
some unknown trem with a bar
on paper it's a decent list of specs, everything you'd get on a more expensive guitar, just lower, generic versions of it.
UTILIZATION
It's basically a strat shape slightly modified but still has all the contours so it's comfortable. The neck joint was a bolt on but the upper fret access I remember was either just as difficult as a regular strat would be or slightly more difficult.
Everything worked on the guitar, I actually kept this for a very long time after I started to take guitar seriously and realized how much of a rip this guitar really was. In today's world, a guitar that's $300 COULD be a pretty high quality guitar, everything's gone up in terms of QC, but when I bought this, I didn't realize how crap it was until I played the Ibanez that I always wanted.
The one positive about this guitar was that it was my first so it has sentimental value and I could beat the crap out of it without worrying (this was years after I played a lot and acquired more gear of course).
SOUNDS
I used to use this through a peavey express 112 and then a peavey bandit 112. Both of which are essentially the same amp with a speaker upgrade and slightly different features. I'm reviewing this as based on what I now know and the 10+ years of playing guitar.
Sound wise, it was nothing to write home about, I knew nothing about what a good guitar was supposed to sound like anyway. Though I did own the guitar for a long time and modded the hell out of it with a huge variety of pickups over the years which improved the guitar a LOT more.
Basically both the neck and middle pickups were useless individually, the 60hz hum was always there. The blending position did sound decent. Though I never used it. I was almost always on the bridge position since I didn't know any better. But looking back, it was shrill and sterile and almost always too trebly.
OVERALL OPINION
This is a complete beginner's guitar. The trend for beginner guitar players is that they usually get something cheap that's been recommended to them by the salesman and just play it and work with what they've got. Some of this attitude is greatly under-appreciated as most advanced players nowadays have become DIVAS over the simplest things, while some of this attitude needs to be corrected.
From what I've learned, and to be very specific, it is generally not a good idea to get a cheap guitar begin with. Not only is the setup most likely going to be horrible but it has no resale value. Thus you will end up with extra junk in your household AND the way it plays can be a HUGE demotivator for the beginning guitarist. If you're gonna buy a cheap guitar, get it setup right AT LEAST, to get it going!
After I played on this guitar for years and learned more and more about guitars, setups etc. and modded this guitar, performed many experiments on it I came to realize that it's a good beater guitar for experiments. I've gigged with it too, and remember having tuning problems. So it's definitely not a performing guitar, at least, not for me it wasn't. I wouldn't buy this guitar again, it was too expensive for what it's really worth and I shouldn't have chosen this guitar as my first. I only did for the price point, but you get what you pay for. Haven't told my mom of course, she'd weep!!
Anyhoo, specs:
alder? body
maple neck with rosewood board
22 frets
ssh pickup config with generic pickups
1 tone 1 volume, 5 way switch
some unknown trem with a bar
on paper it's a decent list of specs, everything you'd get on a more expensive guitar, just lower, generic versions of it.
UTILIZATION
It's basically a strat shape slightly modified but still has all the contours so it's comfortable. The neck joint was a bolt on but the upper fret access I remember was either just as difficult as a regular strat would be or slightly more difficult.
Everything worked on the guitar, I actually kept this for a very long time after I started to take guitar seriously and realized how much of a rip this guitar really was. In today's world, a guitar that's $300 COULD be a pretty high quality guitar, everything's gone up in terms of QC, but when I bought this, I didn't realize how crap it was until I played the Ibanez that I always wanted.
The one positive about this guitar was that it was my first so it has sentimental value and I could beat the crap out of it without worrying (this was years after I played a lot and acquired more gear of course).
SOUNDS
I used to use this through a peavey express 112 and then a peavey bandit 112. Both of which are essentially the same amp with a speaker upgrade and slightly different features. I'm reviewing this as based on what I now know and the 10+ years of playing guitar.
Sound wise, it was nothing to write home about, I knew nothing about what a good guitar was supposed to sound like anyway. Though I did own the guitar for a long time and modded the hell out of it with a huge variety of pickups over the years which improved the guitar a LOT more.
Basically both the neck and middle pickups were useless individually, the 60hz hum was always there. The blending position did sound decent. Though I never used it. I was almost always on the bridge position since I didn't know any better. But looking back, it was shrill and sterile and almost always too trebly.
OVERALL OPINION
This is a complete beginner's guitar. The trend for beginner guitar players is that they usually get something cheap that's been recommended to them by the salesman and just play it and work with what they've got. Some of this attitude is greatly under-appreciated as most advanced players nowadays have become DIVAS over the simplest things, while some of this attitude needs to be corrected.
From what I've learned, and to be very specific, it is generally not a good idea to get a cheap guitar begin with. Not only is the setup most likely going to be horrible but it has no resale value. Thus you will end up with extra junk in your household AND the way it plays can be a HUGE demotivator for the beginning guitarist. If you're gonna buy a cheap guitar, get it setup right AT LEAST, to get it going!
After I played on this guitar for years and learned more and more about guitars, setups etc. and modded this guitar, performed many experiments on it I came to realize that it's a good beater guitar for experiments. I've gigged with it too, and remember having tuning problems. So it's definitely not a performing guitar, at least, not for me it wasn't. I wouldn't buy this guitar again, it was too expensive for what it's really worth and I shouldn't have chosen this guitar as my first. I only did for the price point, but you get what you pay for. Haven't told my mom of course, she'd weep!!