This is not a coincidence, as Matsumoku built those Aria Super Basses too!īut, there are a few important differences. Anyway, it has a clear-finished laminated Canadian ash, maple and walnut body, rosewood fretboard, 2-on-a-side tuners, and a brass nut and bridge. Of course those Super Basses looked a lot like the Alembics that they were copying, but that is a yet another bag of snakes.
#WESTONE GUITAR X PRO#
If you look at this Thunder III, the most obvious thing is that this looks an awful lot like an Aria Pro II Super Bass. Not many of their guitars were imported to the US, and it seems like most of their products went to the UK. Their products were never a big hit and in 1987 Matsumoku sold the brand to a Korean company, and by 1991 the brand was gone. They built very good instruments, including copies of popular American instruments that caused some legal difficulties.Īfter building instruments for other companies for all of those years, in 1981 they decided to start their own brand and Westone was born.
Matsumoku was a Japanese company that specialized in making guitars for many brands, including Aria, Epiphone, Vox and more. Well, today we are looking at really sweet one: a minty Westone Thunder III bass from 1983.įor those of you who have no been studying the history of Japanese guitar builders, here is a quick run-down on the brand. In China, manufacturers have also commercialized copies of traditional US guitars with the Westone brand.I have had a decades-long love for vintage Japanese guitars and basses since I purchased my first Aria Pro II bass back in 1986, and since then I have owned and played more instruments from Japan than I would dare to admit. Another revival of the brand came in 2010 when German company Musik-Meyer began producing Weston-branded copies of traditional instruments from other companies, such as the Fender Stratocaster, Fender Telecaster and Gibson Les Paul. In 1998, renowned luthier Sid Poole built some prestige guitars in England under the Westone name. Many Westone guitars and basses have since become collectors items. Though initially popularized as inexpensive, entry-level guitars particularly useful for students, the transition to Asian manufacturing in the 80s brought a fundamental change in production, with designers emphasizing features such as custom pickups and electronics. Louis Music replaced the Westone brand name by Alvarez in 1991. With Matsumoku ceasing operations in 1987, production was moved to Korea in 1988 and most of the innovative models disappeared. The majority of Westone guitars of the 1980s were made by the Matsumoku factory in Japan and imported by St.
In 1984, they merged both brands to make the "Electra-Westone" brand, before dropping "Electra" from the name entirely from 1985 onwards. They began importing the Westone-branded guitars to the United States as a replacement for their previous line of Custom Kraft–brand instruments manufactured for them by Kay and Valco since the mid-1950s.
Louis Music registered the Westone mark in the United States in 1976 to market Matsumoku instruments in the country. The first guitars to bear the Westone name were made by manufacturers in East Germany and Italy until 1975, when Japanese company Matsumoku acquired the rights to the Westone name, producing acoustic guitars and copies of some US models.