Looks Fairly Familiar

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Nice-looking-playing-sounding-Vintage-1970s-80s-Black-Les-Guitar-/141118858222?pt=UK_Musical_Instruments_Guitars_CV&hash=item20db56e3ee

Hoax

downbytheoldbargepier wrote:could do with a new set of strings...the ones on there at the moment are pretty old

  cheap bastid too.

Is it the same one?  To be fair, at leastthis time  the seller isn't making any spurious claims about it.

Its the same one. Look at the headstocks. The cut string ends are at the same angles.

Hoax

So....who's gonna be the first to tell him it aint a westone?
not that he isnt reading this...

Graham,  ever considered a career as a forensic science investigator.
Ok I'll do it - it aint a westone 

To be fair, gentlemen - and I use the term loosely!! - there are no claims being made in the listing that the guitar is a Westone, so it's up to a prospective bidder to do some due diligence.

Well he kinda annoyed me with his North v South jibe therefore on this occasion, I am going to break my self imposed refusal to comment on someone's sale. What I will say is this....

You have to be a bit smarter than moving the guitar from the living room to the bedroom to fool an old bloodhound like me.

And also ...... His lounge suite was an eyesore - it made me feel all "bitter and twisted"

Hoax

I think you are wrong there Hoax with your conspiracy theory...

The guitar clearly sold for £122, says so in the original listing, so the new owner is looking to flip it, within a day of the auction ending....anything other than that would surely be a breach of ebay rules.

I'm sure there's a perfectly rational explanation... 

Again ?

I almost want to buy the damn thing to get it of the market. The woodburner can always use some fuel.

HAHAHAHAAA
I can picture this...new...seller spitting out his alphabetti spaghetti reading this.

Catalyst wrote:I think you are wrong there Hoax with your conspiracy theory...

The guitar clearly sold for £122, says so in the original listing, so the new owner is looking to flip it, within a day of the auction ending....anything other than that would surely be a breach of ebay rules.

I'm sure there's a perfectly rational explanation... 

I just don't think that someone would be stupid enough to buy such a high quality, historically significant, one off, prototype trade special from the lawsuit golden era of Japanese guitar production only to flip it the next day??

I hear what you are saying about Ebay rules, and it is quite difficult to comprehend, but I stand by what I say.......

That pile of junk has been snuck off the hideous sofa and into the boudoir, extensively photographed and slapped back onto the bay.

Hoax

hoax wrote:Its the same one. Look at the headstocks. The cut string ends are at the same angles.

Hoax

Takes a mental note to self to adjust cut string angles if selling on a bodgey guitar

The pictures were taken at the same location, by the same person, using the same camera and......

he has a touch of arthritis in the index finger of his right hand and speaks with a strong cockney accent.

Hoax

Lay off that furniture Graham - thats a one off trade show special designed by Charles Eames, a prototype of the famous and iconic Eames Chair.  A conservative estimate of the value of such a rarity would be in the region of £ 10, 000.

And one more thing to note, the new seller has changed his ebay identity 13 times in the last 10 years. Not a good sign.

Clive Shakedown wrote:And one more thing to note, the new seller has changed his ebay identity 13 times in the last 10 years. Not a good sign.

Maybe he's just confused...

Anybody seen pictures of the inner secrets? Plywood? I wouldn't be surprised but a logo transfer on an older cheap knock off seems much more probable imho. That diamond inlay just stinks. Think you guys debunked it already but just for the record I checked what Thorn's opinion was about them for I remembered a thread on a Strat with an eagle logo.

Thorn: wrote:"Abacabb - your guitar is not a Matsumoku, it's one of the many copies of strats/Teles/Les Pauls etc available from www.westone-guitars.com . Do a search for Westone on www.ebay.de and you'll see lots of them. They are using a different logo now, but a year or two ago they did use the old Matsumoku eagle logo. (A clear sign that its NOT a Mat, as they didn't use that logo until 1984 by which time they'd stopped making copies) " - Mar 04, 2010

Here: http://forum.westoneguitars.net/t1020-westone-strat-copy-from-where-when-just-another-identifying-thread?highlight=strat+copy

If you read that thread and checked the links...
Look what is for sale as we are speaking: http://muusikoiden.net/tori/nayta.php?id=815315

Look familiar?

And when Thorn said 'They are using a different logo now' : 
Guitars with this 'Gretch-like' logo look were for sale in Finland and other Scandinavian countries at least the year before (2009).

At around 2010 Westones with both these logo's surfaced and were sold, either new or 2nd hand but not in every country.

After using that logo the German company swapped it yet again for a different logo (2012 ?), which can be seen and, for the period is more elaborated documented by Barry in the FAQ section:   http://forum.westoneguitars.net/t4302-german-westone-guitars-information