oportunity?

Hi guys, i've got the chance tobuy this westie:



the man is asking 250€. Schaller floyd, goto tuners dimarzio pickups, new frets and electronics...

what you think about the deal? i think the work worth the price but as a westie.....

thank you guys!

No!  Don't do it! 
Unless you need a floyd and ugly scratchplate!

i seems a good deal as a simple guitar, but not as a westone...

Anyway, i got an original (1 knob lost) 84's spectrum III at sight 4 130€. 

Good deal to me, what's your opinion?

Oh deary me!

Some folks are just missing the part of the brain that says, "Don't do that".

Sorry barry, but my english is less than poor. what do you mean?

kulhom wrote:Sorry barry, but my english is less than poor. what do you mean?

Sorry kulhom, it means, some people think that they can make things better when they should just leave them alone. Many of us think that the changes made to this Westone are not improvements. They are just silly.

No need to apologize mate! thanx for the explanation.

There's a catch phrase in spain: Experiments, better with soda (quick translation :p)

Anyway, i like the concept of a thunder with tremolo. Unfortunately is not easy to find a original thunder III.

Barry wrote:

kulhom wrote:Sorry barry, but my english is less than poor. what do you mean?

 Many of us think that the changes made to this Westone are not improvements. They are just silly.

I get where your coming from Barry ,  feel like a bit of a hypocrite myself sometimes though, I gig two cutlass classics, one totally original and the other has a flipped Gordon Smith bucker with an out of phase option, they work for my sound, which I guess is the real point of a guitar if your going to play it, but it's a mod none the less.

However now, a little further down the path of Westone appreciation, I will normally now only consider an all original example of a particular model, for no other reason than the obvious, they made great guitars most of the time and it would be good to hear and use it as they first conceived it, (does that sound like a croc???) 

On the flip of that of course is the fact that someone during the guitar's life has decided to take the playability of the construction and materials and mod it out to suit their thing, each to their own I guess, I like that too 

Kulhom I reckon that thunder could be worth a blast if you reckon it will do the job..nothing ventured

i've got mixed feelings with that guitar. i think is a good price for that guitar, but as a Thunder it's value is 0.

I'm agree with you, meadows. it's OK to modify a guitar to fit your requirementts. But man! will you do that to a 60's LP? Changing a pickup is a minor mod, but, install a floyd on that thick and heavy body??? sustain? whats that?

There's a lot of guitars to experiment, there's no need to "destroy" a 30 year guitar with probably only a few hundred units available

We are all now cringeing at the mods on this, but maybe this guitar was modded some time ago, player needed a floating trem, had this nice playing and sounding guitar kicking around and put the two and two together.

Heck, so many old vintage guitars have been modded in the past.

How many vintage strats had locking trems fitted on them in the 1980s. At the time a 60s strat was a reasonable price.

Clapton bought six strats and parted them out to build up a few good ones.

Look what Steve Morse, Jeff Beck did to 50s Teles.

Look what Pete Townshend did to old guitars even.

Maybe thats why original examples of guitars are worth more, becasue people modded many of the others.

At the time this guitar was modded to suit a purpose, and the thing is with Westones is that the necks, bodies and pickups made them good modding platforms.

I've seen worse mods to Westones than this.

All true, of course, and I've done worse to guitars as well. 
Do my tribute Avengers fall into this category?

As a purist, yes; mods like this on this Thunder make me cringe a little but guitars are meant to be played and used to entertain; if a player was of the opinion that a certain mod would benefit that entertainment, then who are we to nay-say?!

Whichever way you preceive it, it's not worth 250euros.

The downside to the time when people were fitting locking trems onto guitars, is that it is more often than not a very invasive mod that is tricky to repair or return to stock.

A lot of timber gets removed, and leaves little to attach anything else too. Sure you can lock these things, but its still a tough one to rectify.

You can return most pickups to stock, even if someone adds a Bigsby all it really leaves is screw holes, but a Kahler is a different beast.

I am looking out for a Westbury Std at a reasonable price, I turned down one that had been retro fitted with a Floyd Rose. Not only does a trem not suit my style, but it would have been very difficult to return it to stock.

Would make a great guitar for someone though, and with the neck and pickups on those, in the right hands would still sounds great.

Thunders aren't exactly scarce and are cheap enough.
They might be 'old' but not a classic vintage instrument.

These days if you want a FR equipped guitar there's a ton of good cheap instruments out there.

Let's forguet the thunder. What about a full original (1knob lost) 1984 spectrum III silver stone finish  price set on 130€? i didn't find any sales records on ebay (only a spectrum III bass sold for 130€+37€ shipping) and i've got no orientation on the value of this model. Some advice?