Westbury Amplifiers?

[JayFreddy]

Recently inherited a very clean Westbury 212. It's solid-state and came with a nicely sewn brown corduroy cover.

On the front it says, "Model 1000", on the back it says, "Manufactured for UNICORD, Westbury, NY". Probably made in 1981, as the guitar it came with (different story) was purchased new along with the amp in 1981.

No country of origin label anywhere, but the footswitch (yes! it has the original footswitch!) has "Made in Japan" embossed in raised letters. From what I could find on the web, it was made by Matsumoku in Japan and appears to be an M1000 Dual Voiced Reverb Twin, which would have been one of Westbury's top of the line amplifiers at the time.

"Westbury amplifiers (ca. 1980 - 1982): Westbury was the company that manufactured the late Univox SS amplifier models for the Unicord company. Essentially, Westbury amplifiers just "replaced" the Unicord "Stage" amplifier line-up of the late 70's. Models were W250 Lead, W255/110, W250/115, W550 Lead, W555 Bass, W1000 Lead, W1000-M “Mini-Lead”, W1000-MF “Mini-Lead” with Fane speaker, W1005, W1005 Bass and Model 1000 Dual-Voiced Reverb Twin."

Clean sounds are very good with a nice spring reverb. The distortion channel is thin and weak sounding, but the clean tone makes up for it. I'm thinking this could be a good amp to run some pedals into.

Apparently these are somewhat rare, so I don't want to start beating on it if it's anything collectible, but my instinct tells me it's probably worth $150-$250, and not much more.

Anyone else have any info or experience with Westbury amplifers? I remember a friend of mine back in the early 80's had a 60 watt 112 that sounded horrible, but I don't think we even bothered trying the clean channel back then...
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[JohnSS]

One of the worst mistakes I eveer made was selling a silverfaced Fender Twin Reverb because I was too lazy to deal with tubes and purchasing a Westbury twin model like yours because of an ad I read that the guitarist from Hall & Oates favored the Westbury over the Fender in a blind listening test (I was 15 at the time - how naive!)

The Westbury has a good clean sound, granted, but terrible overdrive sounds. I had to use a DOD FX50 and an Aria DT-10 Distortion pedal with it to get a halfway decent rock sound.

 

[pchilson]

Nice. Never a bad thing getting an amp.
Maybe one of these days you'll inherit a camera?

 

[jrfrond]

Westbury..... Univox amps with an upscale name borrowed from the town where Unicord was located (now called Korg USA). The Westbury 1000 actually has a FET front-end that was meant to emulate tube distortion, but you know how THAT went! Anyway, they weren't terrible but the 1000 had a bunch of factory mods to keep them from blowing up. Since yours still works, it might already be modded.

 

[JayFreddy]

Westbury..... Univox amps with an upscale name borrowed from the town where Unicord was located (now called Korg USA). The Westbury 1000 actually has a FET front-end that was meant to emulate tube distortion, but you know how THAT went! Anyway, they weren't terrible but the 1000 had a bunch of factory mods to keep them from blowing up. Since yours still works, it might already be modded.

Great info, thanks! I don't know how much this thing was used. It was a present from Grandma, along with the guitar, and I think in the past 28 years, it's probably got no more than a total of 45 hours on it (first 3 months x 30 minutes per day) After that, it lived in a closet...

I'll try and post some pictures of it later. Nothing particularly beautiful or special to look at, but since there aren't too many out there, it's probably a good idea to put some pictures in the public domain.

ps. The guitar is an '81 Gibson Walnut 335 with a trapeze tailpiece. Still has the sticker on the pickguard.

 

[jrfrond]

Great info, thanks! I don't know how much this thing was used. It was a present from Grandma, along with the guitar, and I think in the past 28 years, it's probably got no more than a total of 45 hours on it (first 3 months x 30 minutes per day) After that, it lived in a closet...

I'll try and post some pictures of it later. Nothing particularly beautiful or special to look at, but since there aren't too many out there, it's probably a good idea to put some pictures in the public domain.

ps. The guitar is an '81 Gibson Walnut 335 with a trapeze tailpiece. Still has the sticker on the pickguard.

Damn!!! Nice grandma! The guitar MORE than makes up for the mediocre amp.

 

[lioncommandking]

Got a Westbury 1005W. It only has one channel (clean), a 12" ROLA and is supposed to be 100w but only sounds as loud as maybe 10w. Keeping it for the 12" ROLA which I figure is basically responsible for the crystal clear cleans. It also has no reverb. The amp sounds good just not loud enough for anything maybe except in home practice.