Westbury Standard

neck thru body construction. dimarzio super distortion in the bridge (though i changed it to a a seymour invader) and a dimarzio PAF in the neck. i recently a/b'd it with a $1400 les paul, and it EASILY held its own. and he paid $1400 for his! sucker...

awesome. the only thing i wish it has was coil taps, so it gets a 9.

it sounds great. i get niel young and spiritualized and dead kennedys. i play this one through a vintage club 50 with 3 10s. before i changed the bridge pickup, it was a little shrill ( i hate thos dimarzio SD's). now it rocks. i will say that the bridge PAF is super sweet. a credit to the DM guys.

action is great. it plays great. matsumoku rules. i wish to GOD they were still around. all this new crap is crap. no kidding, they had it going on.

held up all this time...

they are gone.

i have been playing forever. i am old. i play prfossionally for a band that wears masks. i am not allowed to say which one by contract, but let's just say i do very well...

if you are looking for a GOOD guitar for reasonable amounts of $$$, get something from the matsumoku factory. let's face it, working sucks. and you have to do it to get the money. why waste it on the crap McGuitar center pedals??? if you are not sur which guitars matsumoku made, got to therathole.org. it will do you young whippersnappers well.

Black body with cream pickups.

Perfectly suits my psychedelic prog rock style. Increradable screaming lead. Quite trebley really. But that may have been due to the fact that I got it second hand and never got round to fully fixing the rhythm setting, however I love that sound. Powerful, Harsh and cutting.

Got mine 2nd hand 20 years ago and Im not good a t fixing things so there is some sort of intermittant cutting out of the rhythem pick-up - I just stopped using that one (pick up setting) 19 years ago and just love the treble settings.
Love the sliky smooth action - had very thing strings for ages and then changed to thiker ones - more for practical reasons - they dont break so often.
I love the feel of the neck - very smooth covered in that black laquer of some sort.

I gigged it for 20 years - every gig I ever played. Travelled well and rarly went out of tune. Lasted very well. Have worn the frets now to look like hair combs. Strap buttons are solid. I depended on it untill I wore out the frets. I never had a back up.- in my gigs.

Unknown - never contacted them.

Been playing it for 20 years. Love it through my Ibanez Super Metal foot pedal. I always DI'd it straight our on stage mixer and the house PA. Bought a strat to replace it when the frets ran out. It just feels right and that sound is fat and heavy with plenty of treble. One of the best #50 I ever spent and am going to keep it - you'd have to offer me much more to part with it.

I just saw the reviews here and was reminiscing.

I had a wine red Westbury Standard from 1982 to around 1994. It was a great guitar and I don't know why I ever traded for a TPOS Dean/Rich lookalike.

I have warm memories of the guitar. I played it in Jazz Band in high school for several years. I made the mistake of leaving it in an unlocked cabinet in the band room and some nimrod dropped the guitar and knocked a chip out of the finish.

I was a good, solid guitar with a nice tone. Held up pretty well for being a "road" instrument (the band would go on tour in the spring each year).

When I started college, I had little time to play or practice and mostly carried the guitar around from place to place.

If I could find one for cheap, I'd love to have another.

Well it has what everybody else says it has. I don't know much about guitar tech. so have given it an 8 - coz I guess if the parts were rubbish it would sound bad - right?

I guess as a player you need to know that the frets are flat and smooth and that the neck is as broad as say a folk acoustic. It will feel like a plank to strat player no doubt. It does indeed have dimarzio pickups. If you want to play jangly chords it'll be fine and if you then want to switch to lead it'll be great for that to. It's configuration makes it a pretty good all rounder.

I bought the guitar because someone once told me if a guitar sounds and feels great and sustains great acoustically that's a sign that it's a great electric guitar. (You have to be quiet when doing this test - obviously a solid body guitar played acoustically is not very loud at all). The Westbury sounded absolutely fine without any power connected - you could feel the sound ring properly through the body whereas some others in the shop despite being more expensive just sounded lifeless. I still believe this advice is true and is what helped me to pick what now seems to be a bit a of a gem. Having said that - as others have commented the pickups have an excellent tone anyway. They also have a good range from high to low and the pickup switch makes a discernable difference as do the tone selectors. A Westbury is very far from being a one-sound guitar.

My westbury had a small flaw for a long time - which was that the G string would snag on the zero'th fret and then suddenly whap through de-tuning the guitar. Andy's in Denmark street fixed it. If yours does this it's a simple and very cheap repair.

Well I bought it new and its still with me and its still well in one piece and well in tune. The tone and volume controls have got a bit crackly and the two way switch has come loose but I guess both are easily fixed and so don't count as major issues. You can't expect a potentiometer on anything to last 22 years without a crackle anyway (E.g. knobs on old radios)

Never had the need, and you can't buy one new anyway so what do you care? However I have never had a complaint from a guitar shop about it being hard to service or anything and I guess if you can't get manufacturer support that's the next best thing to know.

I have only ever played this electric. When I try strats their sharp pingy sound makes me jump! A Westbury has as others have said a deeper soulful sound more like a Gibson. But I don't like Les Paul's because the frets are like railway sleepers whereas as a Westbury has nice low ones that work just fine. AND FINALLY - I would like to thank this site, as being a roughly one guitar now and always person it's made me realise it's not just me that likes Westbury. These guitars really are as good as I alway thought they were.

I found it works for rock and blues the best (mostly what I play). Sound good for some metal work too. I can get some really wild sound out of it when I push it hard. Has good harmonics.

Action is good.
Considering its age it is holding up great.
Finish has lots of personality.

Well it must have taken some abuse back in the day, but keeps right on sounding and playing great.

Considering they went out of business a long time ago... none.

If this guitar were stolen I would cry then find the butt-hole who did it and beat him to death.

This was my first guitar and I haven't found a guitar I like better yet. Truthfuly I haven't been looking that hard because I like this one.

All the features you need just read other reviews

I bought this guitar yesterday and plug it into a Hiwatt amp and she sings, I bought her to plug a hole in my guitar collection, and she will be doing the job of a Les Paul which from early impressions she can easily cope with, this a very phat sounding beast.

she plays very well, as I say I just picked her up and she 20 years old with the odd knock everything works fine after all this time, I've only got one job to do that is one tone control is a bit bent but thats not hard to fix.

solid built guitar which will last the course of time and abuse ( I prefer not to abuse my guitars) I've got a Westbury bass which is why I jumped at the chance to buy this baby

what can I say

All I can say if you live in Cornwall UK and you see a Westbury for sale don't give it the time of day just give me a phone call and I will do duty and take the beast away for safe keeping, my advice is go and buy a Stagg or Tangelwood

This post is to inform everyone who is interested that as of November of 2003, ?Westbury guitars Inc.? is back in business and will have their product out by mid summer. These guitars are high end but affordable and not made at Matsumoku or in Japan, rather, right here in the U.S.A.---100% U.S.A. made guitars. Other high-end guitars say they are made in the U.S. and indeed are not. It is my obligation to expose companies like Brian Moor and PRS who have their guitars made over seas in Korea and assembled here in the U.S. and are legally allowed to put the U.S.A. stamp on their product. There may never be an Uncle Mat again but there will always be an Uncle Sam and Westbury Guitars Inc. realizes this and that?s why there will be a 100% USA made stamp on the new line of Westbury Guitars. (Not at all affiliated with Univox)
Prototypes are being made in PA and LA and Westbury Guitars Inc. is very close to Ok-ing the design and will begin production in April. Low serial numbered models can be ordered through www.westburyguitars.com and the site will also have a ton of information on the vintage models.
Westbury Guitars Inc. P.O.Box 10582 Westbury N.Y. 11590-3226 info@westburyguitars.com

Made by the japanese Matsumoku guitar factory between 1979 and '81
I have two of these babies, the first one I got for free when I was working at a mental hospital. One of the patients bought it on his I'm-gonna-be-a-rockstar mania. Said that I would be doing him a favour if I just took it, looking at it would only bring him down again.
I loved that guitar so much I went on ebay and bought another one.
I also made the other guitarplayer in my band buy one!
It has basicly the same features as a les paul.
The bridge pickup is a DiMarzio SuperDistortion and the neck one is a DiMarzio PafSomething.
It's all you need!

It has all the range of tone you want, from warm bluesy sound to trebly lead sound.
Tremendous output!!
I play a lot of different music styles with a few bands and it suits every one of them, from punkish pop to heavy stonerrock and it really just kicks ass!!
I use a Marshall JCM900, a fuzz face and a big muff

They're about 25 years old and play like new.
A few dings on the paint, but nothing serious.
No wear at all.

25 years and no maintainance needed, ever!
Only have a backup because i tend to brake strings

The company is long time dead.
But a few guys are starting up a site on www.westburyguitars.com
They say tthat it's possible that these guitars will be made again.

The best thing you could ever buy.
Just as good as a les paul.

Westbury STandard, wine cloured finish, 2 brilliant dimarzio humbuckers, don't know too much about the rest

this guitar is unbeleivable, it sat in my bedroom for 6 years and i'd never played it, i'd had a strat and then saved up for my dream guitar, a fender jaguar, got bored of looking at it there and fixed it to make it playable and the jaguar hasn't been played since! the sound is truly breathtaking, and when played on the top pickup setting through my boss ds2 and fender twin it's great, get a really heavy but defined sound if that makes any sense???

i bought this second hand and it's condition wasn't great, not through poor manufacturing just that it'll lay in someones wardrobe with allsorts of crap piled onto it for so many years, the action is perfect, better than my jag and as good as any les paul i've ever played

would never think to bring a back up for this guitar, for the hard life it's had it's agood as the day it was made, no tell tale backs where the neck joins the body, the pickups are still nearly mint, theres a slight crackle if you keep on twisting the tone knob but why would you do that only to look for a fault?

the body has been badly mistreated by the previous owners and there some pretty deep scratches, you'd only worry about them if you were into your image while you played

?????????

i've been playing for about 8 years now, i will never part with this guitar. if somebody stole it i would want another one badly, but looking at the prices on here i'd have to delve a bit deeper this time.

the reason why i never played it in 6 years was when i bought it there were 2 machine heads missing and i was too lazy to buy new ones, i'd always planned to ripp out the humbucker snad fit them into my jag but then decided to at least try it out and bought the machine heads, so glad i did, this guitar and produces tones like nothing else, and don't even mention sustain, with the distortion on you can hold a hammer on around the middle of the neck for over 3 minutes!! believe me, i've done it.

if you'rre thinking of buying one of these, DO! you won't be dissapointed, and if you are, mail me and i'll buy it off you!

I've played a lot of guitars. This is by far one of the nicest weapons you could get. Most people want a les paul but this is the closest I've ever felt... Just great

Warm, trebly, what ever you want. You can play pumkins to hard thrashy lead. No limits

I have a black one. Its simple looking but sexy. The cream and black is funky. The neck is so solid, I've had mine nearly 10 years and the neck is mint. I've had les paul owers wnting to buy it...! The finish is good for what it is. Its a paint and as I say I have it 10 years nearly and theres only one mark that went down to the wood

Not one problem ever...

who gives a s**t its great for the money.. I bought it second hand anyways..

No words really I love it..