Westone original prices

[bowenjaybee]

I keep reading about how Westone guitars were budget guitars, but looking at the 1981 UK price list a Thunder 1 bass for example is £124.

http://www.westone.info/cats/81/09.html

I thought £124 would have been a quite a bit of cash in 1981, considering a budget bass these days would be about the same cost. I was only 9 years old in 1981 so I just wondered if anyone older remembered the average UK price of a new standard Fender P-bass in the early 80's as a comparison to the Westone bass prices, or a Fender Strat compared to something similar in the Westone range.

[corsair]

I don't know about Westone, but my Vantage VA900 in 1980 in Australia, cost me a 1958 fender telecaster and about A$200. From memory, which these days is not an instrument to be relied upon!!

(The tele had been ..... modified. A lot.)

[Steve777]

£124 in 1980 would be the equivalent of £353 in today's money (National Archives calculator). However, having taught this to Marketing graduates, there are many variables and dependencies that need to be understood including which inflation indexes are used. So, the £353 can be only assumed to be a guide value. It does not take into account how much it would cost to manufacture a thunder 1 today.

The average wage in 1980 in the UK would of been about £6000 per year (Guardian news article). There again, one would have to know the average wage of the guitar buying public to calculate disposable income. I would suspect that the average, spotty faced, fame aspiring, youth earnt far less than £6000 per year and therefore, £124 would taken a sizable chunk out of his or hers disposable income.

!980 was also a recessionary period. Petrol was 28p per litre, beer was 35p a pint, bread 33p, and milk 17p.

[bowenjaybee]

great answer!! so that makes today's average £100 beginners bass worth around £35 in 1980. I paid £104 for my Thunder 1 bass in 2009 so that makes it an absolute top quality bargain!!! Yippee!

So kids don't waste your money on cheap crap go find a Westone today!!

[Warrn]

I got my Spectrum GT bass for $50 in 2008. Bargain for sure.

[bowenjaybee]

Bargain for sure

ermm $50 US = £33 UK.... wow! I'll have one at that price please!

[Steve777]

To put all this in context, in the year 1300, £124 0s 0d would have the same spending worth of today's £64,174.96 !!.

But hey, its only money .....

[Warrn]

ermm $50 US = £33 UK.... wow! I'll have want one at that price please!

Well, it is a bit beaten up, the bridge pickup has recently stopped working (though I never used it, it was very weak), and the neck sort of leans toward the treble horn (very little space between the edge of the neck and the G string while there's 4-5 times as much space between the E string and the opposite side of the neck)... but I love it anyway. Not only does it sound great on the remaining pickup, but the neck feels wonderful and it introduced me to Westone and Matsumoku. I will never part with it. The guy also sold me $5-600 worth of amplifier for $200...

[bobroberts]

I'm pretty sure I paid £150 for my Thunder 1a, back in the day*. Scary thing for me, is how relatively expensive some of the cheap crap was, back in the 70's! Quality really has gone up, as relative cost has gone down over the years.
Good times!

*Actually, come to think of it, my Mum might have bought it me...

[Krysbass]

Edit: Just remembered - when I bought my Thunder III in 1985, I had to order it, as the shop (Hesseys in Liverpool) didn't carry any in stock. Before I placed the order, the guy in the shop was trying to persuade me to take a Fender USA Jazz bass instead - this was priced around the same as the Westone (about £350.00), though I can't remember the exact amount. Suffice to say there was no comparison in my view - it was a bit like trying to compare a Model T Ford against the latest top-of-the range Japanese supercar!

Of course, had I bought the Fender, it would be worth a lot more than I paid for it now, whereas the Westone is probably worth around the same as I paid. But there's more to this than mere money - I still know I bought the better bass!