On the Road With Westones - A tale straight from the mooses mouth!

As some of you will have seen in "Famous Westone Owners" thread, my introduction to the brand (and to the bass guitar, in fact) came from an early '80s alternative rock band called, New Model Army. They were a pretty "big deal" on the European punk/new wave scene and even had a couple of Top 40 UK hits, appearing on (the legendary) Top of the Pops on more than one occasion.

Anyway, their second bass player (after the original one left), "Moose" Harris, is still an active musician (with the immaculately named "Pie Shop Boys" ) and hosts his own website. I asked him for his thoughts on the Westone Spectrum GT (which I'd seen him using live once) and he kindly obliged, adding a few harsh words about the Thunder Jet Bass, which he inherited from the band's first bass player, Stu Morrow.

Here's the link, in case anyone's interested:

Link ...

Oh, dear - he wasn't a big fan then?!! Great link - thank you!!

Oh wow... he sounds like a guy I met once who would literally not touch an instrument if it wasn't a Fender. The guy might make good music, but it sounds like he hates anything that isn't a P-bass, so I really can't respect his opinion. It's people like this that make me want to avoid Fender so as not to become a smug jerk.

GRRRRR!!!!!!!!!

Don't you just love people like that? NOT!

All I can say is, I hope he never sets foot in these forums!

Pauline :flower: :queen:

Great link, was his guitar really that bad? Crikey, he wasn't sitting on the fence was he?

How to win friends and influence people eh? My knowledge is limited, but can anything be as bead as he describes?

mattcadders wrote:How to win friends and influence people eh? My knowledge is limited, but can anything be as bead as he describes?

Well, in fairness, by the time Moose got his hands on the Thunder Jet Bass, it had already been extensively abused by the previous bass player in the band (Stu Morrow).

YouTube link ...

Here's Moose on his first ever gig with the band, playing the hell out of the same bass.

YouTube link ...

As you can imagine, judging by the speed, complexity and relative aggressiveness of the bass playing - it's not hard to play a bass to destruction in that band .

He later switched to a 1970's Fender Precision. I had one myself (until recently) and I'd have to agree that there's nothing as indestructible as two tonnes of '70s P !

Anyway, I respect his opinions, although I still have a soft spot for the Westone brand.

fair enough

he does bring bad experience to a new level though.

...'s funny though how different people have different experiences; I don't claim to have done as much as Moose but I've certainly done my share of countless, thankless pub and club gigs and for the ones I played bass - (badly!) - I found my P-bass not all that good and used a friends Kasuga J-bass copy if I could. For some reason the fender was not stable in the tuning and I never quite got around to figuring it out - it needed tweaking on the 3 highest strings about every 2nd or 3rd song; I suppose it was just crappy machine heads and I was too young and stupid to work it out! I used a Gibson Ripper once and quite liked it but the owner wanted it back, as did the owner of the only 4001 I've ever used in anger; boy, they are just the coolest bass to play live - they exude rock'n'roll coolness, eh!!