Westone Thunder III

This is an honest, hard-working top of the range Thunder - like so many, it took a tumble and suffered a cracked neck. Nothing horrific, and we have repaired this as part of a general recommissioning and preparation for sale. Whilst still visible, run your thumb over it and it isn't there.

The Westone range of the early 80s was short lived and quite complex, but the III model was fairly consistent in that it had all the toys and 2 octaves worth of frets on that delicious thru' neck. Still with its brass knobs, the controls are all fully functional - master volume, PEQ tone, and a pre-amp volume; 3 mini switches for the coil split, phase reversal and pre-amp on/off.

This configuration deserves more than turning everything to full, and blasting away. The variety of tones on offer here is immense - subtle use of the pre-amp with the split humbuckers, and the phase reversal unlocks a lot of fun and expressiveness. The PEQ control is centre-indented, and works differently in passive and active modes - in passive mode, just the lower portion of the control acts as a traditional tone control but in active mode, the lower portion boosts the bass and the upper half boosts the treble. It turns our OD-3 into a DS-1! Anyone who is of the opinion that phase reversal is a tone-sucking gimmick may just change their mind once the Peter Green and Jimmy Page sounds are found.

The MMK45 pick-ups are as good as their reputation suggests - based on the soul of a Super Distortion they not only kick out the rock tones brilliantly, they don't get too mid-heavy like the super-hot ceramics, and split to singles extremely convincingly, especially when that pre-amp comes in.

The one great characteristic of Matsumoku guitars from the beginning to the end was the feel of their necks. Having 24 frets on a 10" radius ebony board feels great and looks great. The very comfortable heel encourages you to explore the upper end. 4.3kg sounds heavy, but this is beautifully balanced seated or strapped on. This nut width is 43mm.

A fair few folk of my age will have lusted after these in the guitar shops in the early 80s, but budgets hardly stretched to a humble 1A, let alone a III. The Alembic influence was fading into the shadow of hair metal pointy headstocks, but note how timeless this design appears next to a Charvel Model 5.

Its a high quality, brilliantly designed and constructed Japanese made guitar that will last forever if serviced properly. They deserve a re-fret when the time comes, although this one is a long way away from needing it. 

This one is fully recommissioned and ready to go.  I have opened a can of worms with suggesting this can be upgraded - whilst it may sound like heresy to remove MMK-45s, we have put a set of TV Jones Classic Plus into one of these before with fabulous results.