My wife bought me a Yamaha Pacifica for my birthday 18 months ago and I absolutely love it. I mostly play it using a headphone amp which doesnât disturb anyone else but also gives me some effects like distortion. I donât know about Fenders but the Yamaha is fantastic for my needs. I do also have a Benson amp, but it doesnât seem to have much in the way of effects, so I wouldnât recommend that one. The Boss Katana seems to have a lot of good comments on various sites, so I am thinking of that for my next purchase.
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Consider the Boss Katana Head. Fully functional like the 100. The small speaker is more than enough for home use. It gets loud. What are you really going to do with a 12â 100 watt speaker? Other than go deaf. Takes up less room as well.
The Head is similar to the Yamaha and Spark in size. There are smaller Spark mini and Katana mini (and air) I think. Donât know about Yamaha. All good and versatile amps. The small ones really are enough if you arenât outside playing to crowd. I already have tinnitus, donât give it to yourself!
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At that price point, of those two guitars, I would go the Yamaha.
The Squiers single coils will have a lot of electrical noise when using distortion, the humbucker wonât.
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Iâd recommend:
- Katana 100. Easy to use, with knobs and buttons instead of digital menus (but if you want digital menus you can hook it up to an tablet or computer and use the software). Good sound from a full-sized speaker with a big enough cabinet. Settings for low volume playing (you donât have to blow the windows out). Itâll do anything from headphones to bedroom to gig on stage. It has more built-in effects than youâll ever use. You can record into a computer with USB, or use a line out, or use a mic. You can connect the GA-FC footswitch to control it with your feet (unlike the 50W version). It has an effects loop (unlike the 50W version). Basically, you can buy this amp and it will do everything you want it to do with no compromises, and you wonât âoutgrowâ it.
- Yamaha Pacifica in an HSS configuration. Although Iâve also seen some Pacificas with a bridge humbucker and a neck P-90, and that would be pretty cool, too.
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Thanks all for the information given.
This is helpfulâŚYamaha is going to be my choice.
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Hi Silvia,
Single coils CAN have noise, but that is for poorly grounded amps, poorly powered pedals, bad cabling, and/or a lot of local noise. But it is not a guarantee.
I only get noise on my single coils when it is on the stand and I have something using the graphics card intensively. The guitar is next to my computer. If I were to move it away, like set it on my practice chair, the noise doesnât happen.
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imho, just muckin about will get old pretty fast as it wonât sound good, clean or distorted. As you know, you have to invest much time with a guitar to make music. I have a pretty good ear and feel rythym too. That donât mean I can play something thatâs pleasing to my ear. Clean or distorted. If it sounds like s**t, Iâll likely give up pretty fast. Itâs just not fun to hear. Unless I got motivation to really learn what I need to do to make music.
imho, near any amp can get distorted if you turn it up loud enough.
Also fwiw. I thought I wanted to play distortion guitar too. The longer I play, the cleaner I want the tone.
For what your wanting. Anything folks have talked about above will do. Go cheap imho.
Iâd just go to craigslist or whatever want ads you have around you. Go scope out some cheap used gear. Play some different guitars (no brand in mind as long as it plays good), play some different amps (no brand in mind, as long as it sounds good to you). I see plenty of them on my local CL (same stuff recommend above) for near pocket change that comply with above stated amps and guitars.
See where that leads him.
For just muckin about with no goal in mind, near anything will do and most will get you your distortion noise.
Distortion is easy to come by I think. A great clean tone, not so easy to come by. I think good cleans are where to start, then you add in you distortion, or any other effect available for that matter. I understand thatâs not the goal here, itâs just food for thought.
One last comment. imho, get a amp with a master volume control. I personally find it easy to get âampâ distortion as long as I got a master volume. Ya just turn up the gain/vol. (preamp) knob for more distortion. Then adj. how loud ya want it via the master volume. You should be able to get your distortion at vol. so low that youâll hear the strings of the guitar over the amp. In other words, volume lower than bedroom volume. Plain quite.
Many of the amps listed above all have switches to add in your distortion too. Myself, Iâve got amps with switches too. I leave them off and get my tones (distortion) from adj. the vol/gain knob and master volume knob. Generally, as sometimes I do run a overdrive pedal (or switch on a gain switch on the amp) as the amps I have are not modeling amps. So I am not opposed to distortion, I like it. I just find distortion has itâs place and sometimes it has no place.
Good luck in your quest.
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Big thanks to all of you who gave advice! So now I have a Yamaha Pacifica Electric GuitarâŚbut thereâs no charger in the boxâŚonly the guitar! How do I charge it?
And since you all reccomended Boss Katana I got this one, which is a Mini Boss Katana, but seems to be more than enough for our purposes. But itâs a battery Amp, it wonât charge the guitar for sure!
It seems to have quite a few things to explore
Stupid question, but really I know nothing about this stuff⌠Can I maybe charge the guitat through my Acoustic Amp? I apologize if this sounds very silly!
Silvia, there is no charging required. You just need to plug the guitar into the amp using the guitar cable like this, turn on your amp and turn up the volume on the guitar and the amp and you should be good to go.
Donât forget to put the batteries in your amp first.
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Hi Sylvia. That little amp is very good. You can get a power supply for it and it is more than powerful enough for the guitar. Even in battery mode it works for a few hours.
Have fun.
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Either we have done a superb job with that joke or you are doing a superb job with fooling me. 
Electric guitars donât need to be charged. The electricity comes from the nickel/steel string wiggling across a magnet. That voltage is fed into your pedal/amp signal chain where it is amplified to drive a speaker.
Just plug it in and start fiddling. More questions will probably come to your mind!
Just for clarity, there are some guitars that have a battery in them for a different type of pickup. You donât have that.
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Silvia, no charging needed. The Mini Katana was my first amp, it works okay. Just insert batteries to the amp, connect the cable between guitar and amp. Turn on amp⌠And play 
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You did a superb job I would say to make a fool out of me! 
But you all are forgiven as you all are so helpful when I need help! 
Thank you all @TonyHS @sequences @SgtColon
@JokuMuu you said Electric guitars need to be charged! 
but youâre forgiven as well
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Iâm sorry⌠I thought, you had understood that itâs irony 
Mea maxima culpa 
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I thought it was strange but they said it needed to be charged 
even Rogier @roger_holland said his acoustasonic needed chargingâŚwhat do I know?! Glad you had a good laughâŚI donât mind much it was at myself 
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No No Lady ,leave me out 
âŚmy electric acoustic needs a battery (which I have to charge 
) but the American version has a USB cable âŚand there are more guitars that need to be charged otherwise they donât sound normal âŚBut I also had a good laugh about it , But I have crazier stories about people asking questions about my electric guitar 
and also exactly this question âŚ
Hey itâs a good dayâŚyou learned something and I (we) laughed a bit ⌠again 
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So my question wasnât that stupid, after all 
no harm indeed! Have a good afternoon Rogier! 
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I had to bite my lip in a charity shop recently when overhearing the conversation between a staff member and a young teenage lad who came in to donate an old Les Paul-a-like electric.
The lady on the counter said she couldnât accept it due to âelectrical safety issuesâ and was totally unable to get her head around the very polite explanation from the lad who looked as bemused as me with his charitable donation being declined.
I would have offered to have taken it off his hands but I expect I wasnât the demographic he had set out wanting to help. Plus I already have an Epi LP and I didnât particularly like the solid body colour âŚ! 
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Thatâs such a pity!