MADE IN JAPAN 1980 - WESTONE W40 - ABSOLUTELY SUPERB - MARTIN D41 STYLE - ACOUSTIC GUITAR

Westone W40 Acoustic Steel String Guitar

This very fine guitar was made in 1980 by Matsumoku co. in Nagano,Japan being the midrange model in Westone W series. Westone's catalog from late 1970s shows only 2 higher models: W60 and W80.

Westone guitars were sold in Japan by Kanda Shokai Co. since mid1970s through very early 1980s.

Matsumoku Co. is well known and highly regarded Japanese workshop making countless number of models for various foreign and domestic brands, various importers, and domestic trading companies.

If you are familiar with higher end Martin guitars (and their prices), there is a great chance, that you’ll be very happy with this amazing Westone W40 instrument. You may become obsessed with its gorgeous tonality.

Even though it is an "all plywood" model, this guitar sounds simply fantastic, easily beating many "all solid woods" modes currently sold in USA. It offers very impressive volume, super response and very rich, sparkly, yet sweet and lyrical tonality, with great deal of overtones and harmonics. It certainly deserves a title of Concert instrument. With its current action it plays easy.

This guitar was priced 40 000 yen in 1980, when 15 000 yen was enough to get decent beginner's grade instrument, and 35 000 yen was enough to get decent class solid top model. In those years several Japanese makers were making wonderfully sounding "all plywood" guitars sold for up to 80 000 yen.    

Despite just few small marks on its back, overall condition of this guitar can be described as “excellent+ for its age”. Guitar doesn't have any structural flaws, its neck is straight, fingerboard and frets in excellent condition, while its vintage sound surpasses sound of many brand-new guitars currently sold in USA for $3000+.  

Specification:

Top: Non-Solid Spruce/Martin style X bracing with not scalloped braces /urethane

3-pieces Back & Sides: Non-Solid Brazilian Rosewood with Chestnut center piece/urethane

“Laminated” is quite unfortunate term regarding Japanese made guitars. These plates were made from 2 layers of solid wood glued together with natural resins. They were made so well that they performed as good as solid woods while being far less expensive in guitar production and far more resistant to cracking in regular use. In recent years many guitar makers around the world adopted a new term "semi-solid" to describe these plates.

Neck: Mahogany with 2-way truss rod

Fingerboard: Rosewood

Nut width: 42.50mm

Scale: 650 mm

The action is set to 2.20 mm under E6 and 1.70 mm under E1, with practically no extra room on the saddle.

My posted for sale guitars are stored in climate-controlled vault already packed into shipping boxes, with loosen strings. Because the strings are loosened, they don’t pull the neck or soundboard, and the neck may relax (straighten more) and the soundboard flatten a bit, which may result with the string action being lower than my it was with my original settings and lead to buzzes and/or dead notes after guitar arrives to you. Such a change in neck curvature can also happen just because of vibrations during the shipment and/or temperature fluctuations. Therefore, you must be ready to make final action adjustment yourself and or have it done by professional. All that really needs to be done is the simple neck adjustment by using the truss rod (turning the truss rod counterclockwise will relief the neck and strings will move away from the frets).

THAT IS WHY TRUSS RODS ARE INSTALLED IN THE NECKS OF ACOUSTIC GUITARS!!!     

This guitar will be shipped in used hard shell case in very good condition.