Ben C wrote:

Yay I’m so glad you got one. I look forward to hearing it, and your thoughts on how it compares to your other guitars. The P90 on my Pacifica is brilliant. I assume they will be the same?
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I’ll be interested to see what you make of the Focus Switch too. I’ve not seen it on any other guitars and I don’t know much about them, but it seems like a cool addition

It should be here tomorrow. Haven’t told the wife yet 🙂 Oh look what summer Santa sent me.

I did so much reading comments on it, my head is spinning. I understand that Yamaha has changed the way the selector switches typically work so position 2 & 4 are both out of phase slightly. The focus switch goes through tiny passive transformer that boosts the signal, but at the same time rolls off highs and boosts the low to mid-range.

My understanding is that rolling the volume knob back can have a good effect while using the focus switch engaged. If volume too high, then tone gets muddy. Also, if you dial all your pedals and sound in with it on, then it becomes easier to switch back and forth between the two modes without getting too muddy sounding.

Supposedly, it works really well with high gain type sounds by reducing the shrill highs. So any pedal that likes to pierce your ear drum will sound much better under the focus setting engaged. Mind you, this is what I read. I have no idea if that will even be a thing for me.

Some have opted to go back to a three position selector switch and remove the transformer. I will likely not change anything unless I absolutely have to. The input jack is probably the only mod I’ll do on it as it is of lessor quality and has failed on some performers, so they swapped it out for a Switchcraft jack.

My Strat is sounding much better after I swapped strings and raised the string height a little. I was getting some buzzing. One of the frets is high, so raising the height bypassed that problem until I can get my repair tech to look at it. It’s perfectly playable and sounds even better than it did originally. I tried the tapping the fret down with a small hammer trick, and it didn’t work. So I’ll have someone look at it eventually.

It came in yesterday, but I’m really feeling under the weather and it’s really dragging me down. My initial thoughts are the string gage is too much for me. They all come with 10’s and I prefer 9’s, so that’s an easy fix. The nut needs some work to lower the action at the first fret just a little. The jumbo frets are awesome. I’ll have to see if can play them with a set of 9’s on there without making it go out of tune. That’s the trade off with jumbo frets is you can easily press down too hard and go sharp with bendy strings. The 10’s are not a problem because more pressure is required to fret. I’m hoping when I go to 9’s I don’t have any issues.

There might be some adjustment needed with the pickups. The low E-String has a very low bass sound to it that I’m not used to. I could EQ that out, but acoustically, this instrument sounds very good in every area except for one. There is a lot of resonance and sustain on the high-E string. That is really nice, but the B-String has a definite issue with it not sustaining and it has a very weird metallic resonant sound that I have not figured out yet. All open strings ring out nicely with no issue. It’s just the fretted B-string notes past the 6th fret are not quite right.

The neck profile is just a tad bit thicker than my Strat so all good there. I played it with sweaty hands no problem, so the satin finish is very nice. I also like how easy the access is to the upper frets.

So I have to make a decision now.

It’s the next day now and I already took it back to the shop and traded it in for something else. You will see what I ended up with in the new thread. I just had a bad feeling about keeping it and mucking around with it to get it playing like I wanted. I really liked the jumbo frets though.

No, they didn’t even have one of those for me to try. It was an unexpected choice, but I totally based it on the way it felt in my hands and the way the neck played nice and smooth. All the other guitars I wanted to like failed in that department. I’ll post the choice shortly.