Westone Raider

i bought my westone raider for ??60 with hard case worth about ??30 which was great. the finish is satin black with red lettering.the body style is an explorer shape wich is great for the style of music i play (metalica,slipknot,system of a down and nirvana).the bridge style on mine is a floyd rose wich keeps tune very easily.the tuning keys are non-locking also satin black.the neck scale is thin full scale and made from rosewood.its a bolt on neck.it was made in 1983 just before the manufacturers changed.it was made in i think korea.it has 22 jumbo frets and has a solid top.its got a vollume switch,2 tone switches and a 3 way pickup switch.pickup config is h/h the make im not sure about. it has passive electronics. the body is maple and neck is rosewood.

this guitar suits my style very well because im a hard metal fan i play slipknot,pantera,korn,system of a down,metalica and so on. my amp is a kustom arrow 16dfx and i usually use my korg ax10g and put it on fuzz amp type and on ambience i put it on air and on modulation i have it on feedback. its only noisy if can make it noisy.its a great sound for death metal,blues,light rock like PINK FLOYD.the guitars sounds can be raunchyand loud all the way to quiet and peacefull. what i dont like about it is that the paint chips easily.

the guitar was set up quite well from where i bought it from and the action was very good and you only have to touch the strings.the pickups needed moving about a bit but now there ok.the guitar guitar was well adjusted.the guitars lead input buzzes a bit andthe back of one tunning key is missing.

this guitar would live till the year 3000 its that good.the hardware will last but the pickups might have to be changed sooner or later.the paint might need re-ferbishing in the next 20-30 years.the strap buttons are really solid and will last and i can definatly depend on it. i would love to use it in a gig with no backup it could take the floor

ive never had to get it repaired and it doesnt have a warranty. ive never had to deal with the company.

i have been playing guitar for around 2 years and have an aria stg4 a wesley flying v a tanglwood rebel 4k bass guitar and a cb drum kit with medina crash cymbal a paiste 101 12" splash a mapex double bass pedal and unknown extra floor tom.i wish that before i bought i had asked how much it would be worth in a few years time.if it were stolen i would either buy it again or buy the ibanez iceman ic400.i love the range of sounds you can get out of it.i hate that it chips easilyand my favourate feature about it is that everyone that see's it wants it. when i was buying it i was comparing it to bc rick and dean dimes i chose this because of the range of sounds and because it was cheapest.i wish it had a whamy bar for it because it has the hole but no bar.if your looking for a great guitar look for a westone raider 1 go for the one made in 1983 downwards. and how much are they worth.

1 pickup 1 volume knob, simplicity is the key, wonderful sparkle finish, amazing shape, very metal, i have five of these guitars all fitted with seymour duncan jeff beck or dimebuckers, they sound awesome through my marshall tsl 100.

i play live 3/4 times a week, i play metal, punk and everything in between, i use a marshall tsl 100 with a 1960a 4/12 cab, an original ibanez super tube screamer and a boss noise gate, i use the lead channel on the amp with everything turned up to 10 except for the volume(2ish) and the presence(5), the tubescreamer is set as follows, drive 0, level 5, mid boost 6, tone 5/7. the tone and sound are totally awesome. there is not much variety of sound just the volume knob to play with. i luv em!!

i have bought all of my 5 raiders second hand on ebay, not one has needed setting up, the action on all of them is set not to high not to low, they are strung with ernie ball power slinkys, 48, 38, 28, 18, 14, 11, considering these guitars are over 20 years old they are all lasting well and seem to be very well made.

i hammer the hell out of my raiders and they take it really well, they just go on and on, i always carry 3 with me but only because i snap strings a lot, im very heavy handed (15 songs max for a set of strings) you can totally depend on these guitars, they stay in tune forever. the finish on them is amazing, the sparkle paintwork is 10/10 and is covered in very thick lacquer

i have been playing for 23 years, these raiders have replaced 2 les pauls, a custom black beauty 3 pickup and a standard, i am not kidding they just sound better play better and stay in tune better. i also own 2 ibanez rocket roll flying v's, an aria pro 2 zz custom, a fender tele, a westbury standard, an epiphone les paul gothic and a gibson thunderbird bass. if my raiders got lost or stolen i would cry first then look for some more.

don't know the year that my westone was made but I bought it from a second hand dealer in the mid 1990's I have heard that they are japanese.

left handed

apparently they are built with only 1 pickup a humbucker at the bridge, which is a stratocaster type with a whammy bar. and they only have I knob(volume). when I got my guitar it had had another humbucker added near the neck and also a switch was added to change between the too.

the shape of the guitar was very glam rock with a massive horn at the bottom half of the guitar near the neck and then another on the top end of the guitar. it resembled a lightning bolt.

chip or ply wood

you would buy this guitar because of the price and the glam rock look of it.

it did not sound extra great because of the low quality pickups and no tone knobs. I always thought that the high pitched ring that came from it was because OF the pickups but now I think that maybe it is frome the wood of the body

I got this instrument as my first guitar and I didn't know much but I always thought that it was slightly out of tune but maybe that was the intonation definately this is a low quality cheap instrument. but it was second hand so what do you expect

I use to play gigs with this guitar. I had no other to back it up. I used to go crazy rolling around on the ground. it is very srong very thick laquered.

I know nothing about the company until not long ago but I thank them for fmaking left handed guitars when I couldn't find any other cheap dodgy ones

I bought another second hand one buy the same company. A WESTONE THUNDER BIRD. it was more expensive and had more features

this was my first electric guitar and I have been playing for 10 years now with it. There was a time there when I stopped using it at gigs in favour of other guitars that I had acquired, because it was slightly out of tune. Recently I had seriously been thinking of adding good pickups to this guitar and using it as my main guitar, but now I think that may be it is a low quality instrument and I don't care if I never use it again because I have just bought a brand new 899 bucks,Ibanez RG270 JB.
The only thing that I really ever liked about my Westone was the shape.

Outfitted with a single passive humbucker at the bridge, and only one knob to control it's volume. It had a place for a whammie bar when i purchased it but none was attatched. It looked a bit like some kind of hackneyed gibson explorer knockoff with a glossy two-tone metallic silver/blue finish. Pretty ugly, unless you are some kind of retarded glam rocker. The wood was well covered by the finish so i could never tell what kind it was, though from the sound i always assumed it to be chipboard. the fretboard was rosewood.

One would expect that a guitar with only one pickup- located at the bridge- would have a pretty solid high end/lead tone. Not quite the case. The poop body on this thing, which i can only assume to be chipboard and 50% glue, causes the most ugly high mid tin-can sounding tone that i have ever heard from a guitar in my life. Even acousticly without an amp, the aforementioned sound is very evident. It is also very inflexible in this area given that it has only one knob- for hte volume of the single pickup... nothing to control the tone.
It CAN, admittedly, cut through pretty effectively as a lead instrument. As soon as any chords or rhythm need be played, however, you can forget about getting any sound even remotely appealing to come out of this thing.

Mysteriously enough, the action was remarkable for what is otherwise a cheap pile. The intonation was near-perfect and it stayed in tune FOREVER- i once left it in it's case for three months and when i took it out it still played perfectly without needing to be tuned even a little bit. Granted the wood was obviously very low in quality, but i am going to have to give the guitar a '10' in this area for being able to play and hold up so well despite it's other more obvious flaws.

despite sounding terrible this guitar DOES seem pretty sturdy. I would have no problem taking it anywhere or even fixing wheels onto it and using it as a skateboard without worrying too much about it's durability.

I have multiple guitars and a bass, as well as some electronics and a few effects processors. This was my first electric guitar and i used it for quite awhile mostly to learn the basics. For that it was great, especially for the price, but it was certainly not an instrument that i would want as a permanent part of my collection. It sounded terrible and, in my opinion, looked pretty silly. I eventually sold it to a friend who was in need of a cheap guitar and didn't care about appearance or sound quality... which was for the better since this guitar didn't really stack up in either catagory.