New member, also X390 owner

Well, it's like buses, none for ages and then two X390 owners turn up. Mine's also pearl white with the Kahler trem. I've owned a few Westones over the years - the first electric I had a lot of access to was a Thunder I in the 80s, I have a pretty bad Concord bass still, and I've also had a Spectrum FX with pull-for-middle-pickup, which was great but the pickups were very squealy.

My Pantera has more of a story to it though. In the mid-90s I was living above a music shop with a friend. One time I got to poke around in the back of the shop at all the broken stuff and rubbish. To my surprise I found this Westone that had been cannibalised for parts. I swapped it for a Tokai strat I had paid £180 for, and set about fixing it up. The very tip of the headstock was broken off - I could live with that. The bridge pickup was also missing - I put a Select by EMG humbucker in there as it was all I could afford at the time. And many bits of the Kahler trem and locking nut were missing. This was the 90s and you couldn't get Kahlers in the UK at the time, but I managed to get in touch with their old dealers John Hornby Skewes and get some of the parts I needed.

Since then I've swapped the pickups for a pair of Seymour Duncan '59s that came out of someone's SG, changed the knobs for Gibson-style speed knobs, had the Kahler set further into the body of the guitar to improve the break-angle of the strings over the bridge, and had a Roland GK pickup installed, complete with buttons on the body. I'll post pictures when I can find my camera battery charger :-)

I was considering selling it recently, but then I found they made less than 100 of them, and it's been one of my main guitars for 15 years or so, so I think I'll stick with it. And the pearl white has mellowed to a more yellowy colour over time which still looks quite good.

The one bugbear on this guitar for me has always been the top E-string tuning. Because of the extreme angle that the string goes through between the nut/string clamp and the tuner, if you're not careful it can stay at the extreme edge of the string clamp and not get clamped properly. And even if you pull the string so that it travels through the clamp straight, I've found that it slips anyway, or eventually grooves get worn in the clamp and it slips. My current solution is feeding the E string off the B tuner, and the B string off the E tuner via a string tree, to get the strings to line up better with the nut. Sounds weird, but it works!

The other thing is that the neck gets tiring if playing in thumb-behind-the-neck position for too long, but is comfortable for thumb-over-the-neck, which I found odd in a guitar obviously designed for shredding, but whatever!

Yes, I do still have the OFC pickup I took out of the neck. :-) I've always thought this guitar would sound nice with single coils - perhaps Seymour Duncan P-Rails? There still hasn't been anything quite like it for reasonable money - amazing access at the top of the neck, ebony 24-fret neck, Kahler trem and curvy downsized body. It's a keeper...

Oh and for some reason if you pull up on the Kahler and return to pitch, it's very slightly sharp. My repair guy couldn't work out how to fix it. It's liveable with though.

Welcome, Sean, and as with any thing on the web... pix or it didn't happen!!! We live for photos of peoples guitars in here, so we'd love to see yours!

I can't comment on the Kahler trem as I've never ever actually seen one, but on my Bendmaster Deluxe, FT and Precision equipped Spectrums and Genesis, the answer was a Goldo backbox, which I've described in here someplace. It's a tremsetter which is easy to instal and actually does what it says on the box; i.e. returns the floating bridge to the same position every time you swing on the bar. Worked for me, anyway!

Kahlers don't have springs in the back cavity, so tremsetter-type devices don't work. Good idea otherwise. The Kahler has two springs inside the unit itself.

I'd like to see close pics of the bridge modifications to see exactly what ya did there.

For the clamping down the E string, have you thought of not using the locking saddle and use locking tuners instead?

sean wrote:Kahlers don't have springs in the back cavity, so tremsetter-type devices don't work. Good idea otherwise. The Kahler has two springs inside the unit itself.

Oh. Bugger! I've not seen one of these; any chance of some close up pix??

I wonder if your strings are slipping a bit at the lock when you pull up.

Funny, one of my X-390s was missing some parts as well including the Kahler and string lock. And Oliver had one that was missing its Kahler asw well.

sarcaster wrote:have you thought of not using the locking saddle and use locking tuners instead?

I've thought of it but a) the headstock is so tiny that it probably wouldn't support locking tuners, and b) the fan-out of the strings from the nut to the tuners would just lead to problems I think, even with e.g. a teflon nut. The top E tuner is at least an inch laterally from the top E nut slot.

I just wondered if anyone else had come across slippage on the top string. The 3-clamp locking nut locks two strings at a time, so when the gauges vary, one string will be held and the other may have room to slip. e.g. D string plus G string. Wonder if anyone makes a six-clamp locking nut that doesn't go through the neck.

http://www.wammiworld.com/Strings%20101.php says "The cure is simple... Crank the string lock allen head more and/or lower or clean the rollers."

PS this is what the Kahler looks like: http://www.wammiworld.com/images/hybrid-blowup.jpg

So belatedly here's a picture. I managed to find the deluxe string lock, where you can just flip the levers over each pair of strings to lock/unlock the nut. So far this is keeping the top string much more in tune. See also the Roland hex pickup, up/down switches, guitar/synth selector toggle, and Seymour Duncan '59 pickups.

Oh and I still have the original metal knobs, just don't like them that much.

Here's a couple of close-ups showing how the vibrato was recessed and the greater break angle over the rollers:

Found in a dumpster, eh... nice one!

Oh and when I was a kid, a Thunder I was the first electric I spent any quality time with. It belonged to my room-mate at boarding school, and we were in a band together. I did like the wide flattish fretboard and biggish frets, but eventually got a Squier Bullet because I was more into strats at the time.

Ahhh, the indiscretions of one's youth. Very good to see you've managed to find the path though.

The headstock tip repair seems to have gone rather nicely on yours. Do you find that flattish fingerboard to be to your liking as well?

Thanks for posting. I like to see guitars with different pickups.

Welcome, sean. You really know how to make an entrance. ;-)

sean wrote:...had a Roland GK pickup installed, complete with buttons on the body

I recently installed that pickup, with outboard controls, on a client's G&L Legacy (a very tight squeeze by the way!) Unfortunately, the amplifier portion had not yet arrived in the shop at that time so I didn't get a chance to play wif it. By my next scheduled day in the shop it had arrived and had been picked up by the customer.

So...how do ya like it? Especially on this machine?