Westone Spectrum 2

Westone are now defunkt to my knowledge. They made a series of budget guitars in the 80's. In the UK they were most famous for the Spectrum Bass series, which though cheap, were astoundingly good.
The 'Thunder' series of guitars were most common, but when thrash metal broke, they jumped on the Hammer/Charvel superstrat bandwaggon with the spectrum.

The girl I was living with at the time bought me the Spectrum 2 for 200 UKP (no bag or case), which was about the same price as a squire strat at the time. Mine is a shocking pink colour, perfect in the 80's.
It has all the usualy 80's superstrat features, a floyd rose locking trem (absolutly amazing, see below), humbucker in the bridge position 2 single coils mid and neck, angled headstock, a fairly flat and slim neck profile with hugely fat frets! etc.
One of the nice features is that on the back of the headstock is a little holder for the allen keys used on the locking nut etc. Neat!

The original pickups were truly dire, and becuase there is a lot of exposed metal (the trem, the metal toggle switches etc.) the guitar was very noisy. With the humbucker coil tapped the buzz was really very bad. The pickups weren't balanced either so the differnce in volume when switching between the bridge and neck was quite noticible.
In general the worst aspect of this guitar is the pickup selection toggle switches. On the FX series they replaced these with a strat style multipoisition switch.

Also, the guitar isn't made of some rare amazonian hardwood either!
Clean, it had no real character, like the tele or the strat, but with the Boss HM2 on it it didn't matter. I bought this guitar to play thrash metal, and it does that better than a guitar 5 times the price!
The guitar oozes harmonics. It's almost alive! with a bit of distortion you can get amazing wows/flutters and dives out of it.

This is a perfect guitar for 80's heavy metal.

The action is truly fantastic for a guitar of this price.
I had the frets filed on mine, and the action on this guitar is now better than the action on my 2500 UKP PRS custom 24! But even before that it was good.
In general the guitar is very well finished. The neck did have a hairline crack down it, but it's never grown and I've owned this guitar for 20 years!
As mentioned above, the original pickups are what you'd expect from a guitar of this price.

This guitar could have the same strings in it for 6 months of heavy playing with hard wammy bar action. The floyd rose is really kind on the strings. Also, because of the way the floyd rose works, if a string snaps, you can usually re-use it!
I've had it 20 years, it's never had a case, and i've used it hard. And the guitar still looks like it did the day I bought it. I have had to replace the volume pot though.

They're bust.. Forget it.

I had the frets filed, and replaced the pickups with top of the range Seymour Duncans, at a cost of 250 quid.
And I can say hand on heart, that I prefer this guitar to almost any other. I own a PRS and a customised Strat which I love, but this is the guitar I would never part with... Seriously.
With the new pickups the guitar even has the rich clean tone of an expensive guitar, and with the overdrive on it, this guitar is awesome.

-Floyd Rose copy, works well, locking nut
-1HB and 2SCs
-mine is kind of green/blue with black binding, well, that sucks ;-)
-3 toggle switches and 3 knobs
-Gotoh tuners

I play Death/Thrash, so the PUs were not really great, the HB is OK but the SCs...well, I built in a Shadow HB at neck position, now it's great!
There's a lot of bass in the sound, fine for Metal.

Fine

If you handle it right it won't break!

Never dealt with them, don't think the company does exist anymore!

If it was stolen I would not know what to do, this guitar suits me perfect, you can get almost every sound out of it, looks great if you have another finish than i do.
Rock on!

Westone Spectrum Series II. Strat shaped body with a pointy headstock. I believe this guitar was made in 1987, because the neck plate says "87 12 0332" , so maybe 87 indicates the year and 12 the month? 22 frets on a rosewood board. 3 small toggle switches for the passive no-name pickups (H/S/S). 1 volume and 2 tone knobs.

I don't know what the body is made of, but I'm guessing plywood. I believe it's a maple neck. It has some kind of Floyd Rose styled bridge called "Bendmaster Deluxe". 27" scale, Gotoh tuners. It has a quite nice neck profile actually, not too fat nor too thin!

I use 013-056 strings and tune down to B (B,E,A,D,G,B). I use this guitar for playing Death Metal and Grind Core, and it does that pretty well. I'm gonna switch the bridge p'up to an EMG-81, because the stock p'up doesn't sound too good for that kind of music!

I use it through an Ibanez SM-7 Smash Box and into my Hughes and Kettner Edition Blonde 50W combo.

I bought it used and have no idea how it came from the factory.
It is finished in black with a body binding (nice touch).

I've only had this for a couple of days, but it seems quite reliable.
The trem is blocked, because I don't use it on this guitar. I just want to be able to tune down and play crushing riffs!

Considering the age of the guitar, I would say that the finish is good. It has alot of dings on the back, but no big ones on the front of the guitar. The strap buttons seem solid, but I'm thinking about changing them to straplocks.

The headstock has a repaired crack in it, I just hope it holds up!

I think I would use on a gig without a backup, considering I don't have any other guitar tuned to B and with that heavy strings.

I haven't dealt with the company, so I can't tell you anything about them.

I've been playing for 8 years and I have a cheap Squier Strat and a Jackson Soloist (nothing that I've ever played beats that).

If it was stolen, I'd start looking for another one, I really like that it has a 27" scale, makes it better for playing low tunings!

I chose this guitar because I was looking for a cheap beater guitar to use for playing Death Metal. I wanted a strat-style guitar with a hockey-stick headstock. I wish it had an ebony board and an EMG-81.

This Westone seems quite nice for the price, too bad there's not much info on them on the web.

IM not sure when this specific guitar was made but the other review says 88 and id believe it by looking at its extreme looking head design. it has 22 frets. i think its laminate top. thers a volume and two humbucker controls and the selector. theres 3 humbuckers (im not sure what make) its got a bendmaster delux tremlo, apparently the kind van halen designed. im not sure what the bodys made from but the fretboard looks like rosewood, and the neck seems to be maple. theguitars done up all in black with white trim. since this is my first electric i cant really say if the neck has good action or not but it seems fine. i got it with a tremlo bar and a hard case, but these may have been aftermarket.

well ive started with some metallica stuff and it seems to distort quite well, but ther isnt much definition in the sound. im using a fender champion 110, 25 watt amp. the sustain is average, and seems a little too bassy. now the problems; if i hit the A & D strings i get some pretty bad rattling from the head area. theres a constant buzz coming from the guitar (which is the guitar because i played a nice strat on the same amp when i bought it and there was no problem). overall the sound is fairly good for being almost free.

when my dad got the guitar the neck was warped and theres a control knob missing, there were also some other problems with pickups, all this was fixed with 30 bucks at the guitar shop.theres also the rattle from the strings, but overall for a free guitar its fairly well made.

well since i just started playing not long ago it may be a while till i start playing but i think it could take a lickin and keep on tickin. the strap buttons are very solid, compared to a lower ens strat i once used where the strap was constantly coming off. it seems to go out of tune fairly quick.

well ive never heard of the company so im not to sure

well im already lookin for a new guitar (an explorer) but ill keep this one. if you found one of these i would recommendn it over more presigious companies with crappy sound for a comperable price.

It was made in Japan in 1988. Has 22 frets. Solid top, looks like a strat. Humbucker in bridge and 2 singles. Has a bendmaster deluxe tremmelo system. It came with a hardshell case. The pots had to be cleaned and the 5-way was broken. The guitar was factory defective, the bridge was too close to the neck. I had to move it back. It cost $100 to fix the whole thing.

I play it through a fender hotrod deville 212. Has emg selects. Sounds great for being so cheap. Could be better.

The guitar was factory defective. Bridge was misplaced. Broken 5-way.

This guitar is solid, has a bolt on neck. This thing is heavy. It always works.

Just got it fixed at a local place, never even heard of westone, bought it over the net.

Very nice guitar for the price. Tried alot of cheap ibanez and fender, felt like crap compared to this guitar. Very nice neck. I you have one I would love to hear from you. I don't know anyone who has one or has ever heard of the guitar.