For a company like Westone the Frankfurt show is similar to an annual spring clean — time to bring some new models and either update the old ones or quietly forget them if they didn't quite catch on. The Spectrum guitars and basses are the newest which should be available in the UK about May of this year and very presentable they are too. The range will start with the ST at around £160 and go up to the SX with a straight through neck. The SX on review here falls slightly below the top of the range mark at £250 but gives a good indication of the direction that Westone are heading.

The Super Headless Bass has been with us for a couple of months already and isWestone's most expensive instrument and one that I've been looking forward to having a look at.

Both of the instruments featured here are quite conventional looking but Westone still have the more outlandish Dynasty and Dimension Series for those of you who like something a bit different. Above all, Westone still aim to provide value for money and judging by what I saw at Frankfurt they are containing to do so whilst improving their designs as well.

Super Headless Bass

Easily the most attractive bass with that Westone have ever come up with, the SH has been designed with Funk in mind! The body shape has been stretched from the old Westone design into a far more elegant form — the previously lumpy horns are much sleeker now giving the bass much more class. The construction is typically standard for Westone with a straight-through maple neck and maple wings. The front is a nicely grained slab of Bird's eye maple giving the instrument an interesting marbled effect under the immaculate see-through walnut brown finish.

The body has the usual two contours on back and front; as usual with a mass produced guitar these are left rather angular when really they should flow into the curves of the body shape. On the front of the body an area below the fingerboard has been removed to facilitate easier slapping techniques. This cutaway not only helps the playing but also the visual appearance of the bass, making it a little more interesting to look at.

With a headless neck it's very easy to extend the fingerboard to a two octave range as Westone have done here without upsetting the balance of the bass. Certainly balance isn't a problem and the 24 frets are a positive advantage. The board itself is rosewood with smaller than usual dot markers. Fretting is of a high standard too; medium gauge frets with a flat curved profile and nicely polished. Access to these extra frets is helped by the contouring under the base of the neck where the heel should be — for once the designer really has the players in mind.

One has come to expect a high standard of quality from Westone and his SH bass shows this facet of the company to the full. The neck shaping, for example, is not vastly different from the usually good Westone shaping, but the difference is enough to put the feel of the neck into the 'excellent' rather than 'okay' bracket. The only naff design point is the stub where the head should be which has been left very square and unsightly. It gives the idea that behind the Westone factory in Japan is a skip full of headstocks cut off above the nut!

Westone have never been noted for their strong visual sense but the SH shows signs that things are changing. The hardware fitted here looks immediately classy as it's all matt black, which compliments the Walnut finish beautifully. The tuning system at the base of the body is a fairly standard Steinberger copy but that's no bad thing; it works well with a smooth positive feel to each of the tuners. The white Westone logo on the tuner cover plate however looks out of place and doesn't really fit with anything else on the instrument.

The bridge design is rather nice too. It features four saddles over which the strings pass — rollers would have nice here — each saddle is adjustable for height and intonation. It's become fashionable to follow the Steinberger method of clamping the saddles together so that intonation adjustment is achieved by slackening a single screw and the relevant string and then moving the saddle manually. This Westone, however, while retaining a similar-shaped saddle reverts to the older method of intonation adjustment with no master locking nut, just a single screw and spring per saddle which cannot be faulted. Certainly the bridge seems very robust and should stand up to the rigours of being 'slapped'.

The other end of the tuning system features a graphite nut and string clamp. The nut is well cut providing a low first fret action but the string clamp is a little crude. The strings are inserted into a hole in the wooden stub at right angles to the string itself, the single clamp is then tightened via three allen-keyed bolts. Still, the clamp does seem to work okay and certainly, despite its rather simple appearance, in the time I had the guitar it proved no problem.

Westone have sensibly installed two strap buttons at the base of the guitar either side of the recessed tuning assembly providing a stable stand as well as an optional strap position.

The pickup layout is another feature which aids the slapper. The pickups are positioned in bridge and middle position leaving the neck position free, which is obviously very sensible. The pickups themselves are humbucking and enclosed in matt black covers resembling the kind of pickups fitted to a six-string rather than a bass. Westone call these units the Magnaflux RB pickups, but without any more detailed spec that in itself is rather meaningless.

I've always been quite a fan of the Westone circuitry; they always have a simple but effective circuit and the SH has exactly that. The three pots control volume, tone and Eq while the two mini-toggles control series/parallel pickup modes and eq in/out. Of course there is the usual three-position pickup selector as well. The layout of the controls is straightforward too with everything in a logical position and handy for swift changes. The active side of the bass consists of a single control with a centre detent which acts as a treble-bass boost. The passive tone control is very effective on its own. The power for the active Eq comes from two 9 volt PP3 type batteries which is quite unusual — most instruments have one. However, these are neatly tucked away in a separate back compartment. A nice touch here is that the back plate is held in place by two bolts which locate into brass threads inserted into the body — a much better and longer lasting idea than having a wood screw to hold this plate on.

The electronics themselves are housed in a larger back compartment which is all very neat and well screened with a combination of screening paint and foil.

A bass that looks as good as this and costs half a grand should sound good, and indeed I have no complaints in this department. The electronics are simple to get used to but that isn't to say that there is a lack of sound combinations and variations. Passively the bass is more than adequate — the tone control works well and the pickups have a clear tone. The active control adds another dimension to the sound without being too extreme. The treble boost, for example, is not overly sharp on its own but when combined with the bridge pickup and parallel pickup mode gives an extremely toppy and twangy sound. Mind you, the bass covers the full tone range as well and deep bass sounds are just as easy to achieve. Certainly it seems that the pickups on this bass are extremely good and it's a shame that more information on them is not available.

While the pickups and electronics on the SH are hot so is the set-up and overall feel. The action is very respectable and buzz-free while the additional frets are extremely useful. Mind you, if you strap the bass high on your body the first fret doesn't half seem a long way away! All in all it's quite a remarkable bass and I think it would be money well spent. As far as quality and price are concerned I think this is the best bass of '85 so far and frankly it's going to take some beating!

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Westone Spectrum SX Guitar

At £250 this is more the guitar that we associate with Westone, not stunningly original but one that delivers the goods in a no-nonsense manner. The Spectrum isn't so much a new guitar but an update of their previous models. The body shape has been altered to bring it more in line with a Strat while still retaining the Westone style. The gloss black finish on this sample hides a Maple body with typical angular contours on front and back. It's a good weight too — not heavy but weighty enough to feel very business like. The bolt-on neck is again maple hidden by satin finish black lacquer which feels very good and is another fashionable asset that every guitar must have these days to be in. The shaping of the neck is excellent; beautifully slim with a flat curved profile. Rosewood is used for the fingerboard but it seems to have been stained black — from a distance it looks like Ebony but the grain of the timber says different. 22 frets are fitted on this 25½" (Fender) scale board which has the small dot markers which add to the up-market look of the guitar. For the price the fretting is very good, although a quick run with a fine grade abrasive paper wouldn't go amiss on the fret ends.

Silver bullet

The truss-rod is adjustable at the nut end of the guitar with a bullet type nut which has a chrome finish. The headstock is a variation on the offset Fender design with the six-in-a-line machine heads. A gold Westone Eagle logo is included as well as the red 'Spectrum SX' model logo — once more this all looks very smart.

Interestingly the hardware on this model is chrome as opposed to black (apart from the anodised black control knobs and tremolo arm) and as one would expect we have another variation on the locking trem system. Based on the Strat spring balanced system the 'Bendmaster' is well designed with the trem pivoting on two fulcrum posts adjustable for height. The saddles are 'L' shaped and individually adjustable for height and intonation — the height adjustment screws sit in shallow 'tracks' to add a little more stability to the system. Instead of passing through the trem block the strings are anchored at the back of the bridge in small 'cups' under the micro tuner knobs. These tuners seem to work fairly well although they do seem a little still and unresponsive. One problem is that they are mounted at right angles to the string which means that when you go to use them it's impossible not to put a little bit of downward pressure on the bridge, which of course sharpens the note without actually changing the tuning. The trem arm is of the 'heavy' diameter and the action of the system is easy and responsive although the shape of the arm is a little flat and too close to the body meaning that you can't detune the system to its full amount without hitting the body.

Head tales

The locking nut is quite a sophisticated affair which works very well. It has three individual clamps taking care of two strings each which lock down onto a chromed block behind the nut — no problems here.

Mini Schaller copy heads are used, again chromed, they have the usual tension adjustment and when the locking nut is not used have a smooth action. For good measure a graphite nut is used on the guitar although it could have been cut a little deeper to improve the first fret action, which is a little on the high side...

The pickup configuration is once again very fashionable with a humbucker in bridge position and a single coil in middle and neck positions. For the record the open coiled pickups are of the Magnaflux variety, the single coils having a IV number while the humbucker is a II UBC (no it doesn't mean a thing to me either!). Each of the pickups has a surround as there is no scratchplate which looks okay on the humbucker but not so good on the single coils — the surround is a bit large.

Unfortunately the price of the guitar means that we have only passive controls (active controls aren't fashionable on six-strings anyway) although Westone have made the most use out of three controls and a five-position selector switch. The master volume doubles as a coil tap for the bridge pickup via a push/pull facility while the tone control for the neck pickup acts as a phase reversal in the same manner. The tone control for the middle pickup is standard. The jack socket is mounted on the face of the guitar lowdown and thankfully out of the way of the controls.

In action, this circuitry is rather unusual. Firstly, forgetting the push/pull pots, things are very straightforward — a Strat set-up with a bit more poke in the bridge position. The coil-tap on the bridge pickup is a useful addition, especially if you want to capture a more authentic Strat sound. The phase reversal function, however, is a mite strange — it obviously only works in positions two and four on the selector switch when two pickups are on and serves to reduce volume and give a non-descript weak tone. Now I don't want to get into the technicalities of phase reversal here but it would seem that a more useful function would be a wiring switch that put the two single coil pickups in series but out of phase and thereby created a pseudo humbucking effect between the neck and middle pickups. However, barring this rather useless function the rest of the guitar's options sound very good. All you would expect really from a Strat-type wiring with a five-position switch. As with the bass guitar the pickups on this Spectrum sound really very good with a fine depth of tone and with bags of clarity and sustain.

The trem system, however, didn't seem to return perfectly in tune after a good waggle and it's a bit difficult to isolate the problem exactly, although it's obviously caused by the strings sticking at either the nut or bridge end, plus the fact that the strings are probably new and haven't been stretched before the locking nut has been tightened. This, of course, is a problem on all locking systems — they don't work until the strings have been properly stretched.

Conclusion

Still, the Spectrum scores highly on playability despite the rather high action at the first fret the action over the 12th is good and access to the top frets is fine. Certainly the Spectrum has all the necessary sounds and functions to make it a very good guitar and certainly worth the money but with a little more care in the setting up and in the actual wiring design it could be even better. There is enough difference in styling to make it an alternative to a Strat and not a copy, although sound for sound it's a good quality fascimile. The Spectrum doesn't really offer the guitarist anything new but ensures that Westone stay firmly in competition with the likes of Aria, Tokai, Ibanez and Yamaha in having an 'improved' Strat guitar on offer.

WESTONE SUPER HEADLESS BASS — RRP: £550
WESTONE SPECTRUM SX GUITAR — RRP: £250