Opinions on this Aria Pro II LP

[dave_g]

 Sheer Harmony=Its all good until someone says something stupid................and they ALLWAYS do

[dave_g]

Heres a picture of 4 guitars from the Aria Pro II series (1976/7)......

Interesting footnote..

The White (deluxe 59er) guitar has a full laminated neck, solid body (no voids) block construction with a pickled (see thru) white finish.  I have similar guitars from Electra and Ibanez

The Artist shaped guitar also has a full laminated neck....

The Natural LP & Viner have the scarf joint/veneer on the headstock.....

[porkpie]

Dave, here are a couple pictures of the tobacco burst Leopard. I also have a cherry burst. The neck inlays are real mother of pearl, it has an exact copy ABR bridge and thin binding in the body cutaway. Aria really went out of its way to copy a '59 les paul. I love the use of "Leopard" to look like "Les Paul" on the headstock:)

[triumph]

The neck inlays are real mother of pearl... Aria really went out of its way to copy a '59 les paul.

Nice guitar, although I believe a '59 Les Paul has celluloid inlays rather than mother of pearl. The pattern is rather distinctive and the material quite hard to find.

[porkpie]

Nice guitar, although I believe a '59 Les Paul has celluloid inlays rather than mother of pearl. The pattern is rather distinctive and the material quite hard to find.

Triumph, you are correct, the Standard used celluloid but the Custom had mother of pearl. I was just trying to point out the quality that Aria put into the guitar. It also has fret edge binding, solid mahogany back and a carved maple top. The neck is three piece maple which is different from the old Les pauls.

[dave_g]

Hey Pork....Thats an awesome guitar.....sound as good as it looks ?

[porkpie]

Hey Pork....Thats an awesome guitar.....sound as good as it looks ?

Its a sweet sounding guitar. Clean distortion from the bridge pickup without any harshness. The pickups are Dimarzio PAFs and very similar to the Super 70's in my AR50 but a little smoother. the guitar weighs over 9 lbs so it that contributes to the sustain. The neck itself is a little narrower then I would like but it just takes a little adjustment.

[gemberbier]

Nice guitar, although I believe a '59 Les Paul has celluloid inlays rather than mother of pearl. The pattern is rather distinctive and the material quite hard to find.

Triumph, you are correct, the Standard used celluloid but the Custom had mother of pearl. I was just trying to point out the quality that Aria put into the guitar. It also has fret edge binding, solid mahogany back and a carved maple top. The neck is three piece maple which is different from the old Les pauls.

You're right about the first 1.5 decade or so, when Gibson used Honduras mahogany for the necks but...
did you know they made the Les Paul Custom with a maple neck and fretboard with black block inlays in 1976? I saw one at the guitar show in Veenendaal in 2000, where Harry and Hasy have their stand each year. It was the cheapest Les Paul around. They asked 1,500 guilders (originally they'd started at 2,300), but nobody wanted it. The guitar was red hot, and the serial number had been filed out of the headstock.

About these Aria LP copies:
Shiro Arai was the first who made Japanese LP copies.
Quote from the Hagstrom site, because someone has been changing the Wiki article about Aria and left out this part): "Meanwhile at the '68 NAMM show Mr. Shiro Arai,Arai and Company (Aria, Aria Diamond, and Arai Diamond brands, plus various importer names), viewed a reissue Gibson Les Paul Custom. He didn’t realise it was still being made, and seeing it was a copy of the original, he had a brilliantly simple idea...

...the Japanese designers soon whipped up their own version with bolt-on neck and deliberate points of difference including blade pickups. These Aria copies appeared in USA in 1969 along with a Merson Univox version. Ibanez followed soon after, and the Les Paul copies took off... "

Link for the full context: http://www.hagstrom.org.uk/copies_copies.htm

So they are historically interesting and the quality is very acceptable. Sometimes people decided to replace the pickups by Gibson humbuckers, because the woodwork is really nice, and the collectibility was not recognized by everybody. (It certainly improves the sound, but it is wise to keep the original pickups with the guitar.)

Dave_G is a good example of those collectors who DID recognize the quality. The value axes WILL go up. That goes for Dave´s carved Dragon strat too. I wish I had bought the one I saw for 650 guilders. I have the impression that quite often Hoshino used the same suppliers as Arai, like those Taiwanese wood carvers.
At Dutch music schools in the 1970s Aria was the brand you were advised to buy when you started playing classical guitar, in order to ensure that you wouldn´t start on a piece of firewood, so I have always had a special place in my heart for this brand.


Ginger

[rayspang]

Another note on Aria. In the 1976-1978 time frame, I went into a popular guitar store in Austin, Texas to look around. Everyone in the shop was going crazy over a batch of new strats that had just arrived. They were raving over the fact that they were of better quality and sounded better than the Fenders. They were a bargain price wise, as well. I happened to look them over, and saw Aria Pro on the headstock. I'd never heard of the brand, but was impressed by how everyone in the shop reacted to them. I've never forgotten this, the image is fresh in my memory even today. By the way, those Leopard models are super cool. I want one.