Guitar identification please. Now for sale! 06/10/2013.

Well Ian, your friend did very well there fella! Somebody else will hopefully be able to elaborate more but back in the early 90's when I used to read Guitar mags and lust after such things, Aria Pros an ok brand. We;re not talking anything too special but I think they were J made I think and a friend had one. A teacher of ours was session musician with Jeff Beck in a previous life and it got the thumbs up from him so it couldn't have been that bad to a man who owned some choice instruments.

Kahler made some good trems - they made some Floyd Rose trems under licence and they were pretty well regarded. By the look of it you have a locking nut which will keep the thing in tune nicely.

Overall, a nice instrument for less than the price of a guitar mag! Well done fella

I'm actually on the look out for something similar myself at the moment - I want to jack up the bridge and learn me some blues slide guitar. If your mate wants to sell it, drop me a PM

Aria are indeed of Japanese origin. They were one of the forerunners in a MASSIVE copywrite scandal in the 80's and 90's. Basically, the big J companies were blatently ripping off fender & gibson designs and selling over there. They started bleeding through to the west in the early 80's (although, many japanese guitars came over in the 60's...mainly through big american stores re-branded to sound more american. Teisco was one of the biggest manufacturers).

Basically, they ended up having to 'warp' the designs to avoid copywrite laws...thus you have a 'melted' Gibson Les Paul there. The hardware may have been upgraded during it's life as I don't remember Aria ever using American parts in the 80's as most wouldn't trade with them to keep their american contractors sweet. Fender now actually embrace their J side and have a seperate 'Fender Japan'! The trouble was...the J stuff was mechanically lower quality but the build quality blew Fender USA out of the water, so now you have the option of buying a cheaper J fender thats built like a tank and upgrading the hardware to US-spec thus getting an 'uber-Fender'...my jazzmaster is one of them.

Either way, for £2 I'm jealous and you got a right deal.

I used to collect vintage 60's Japanese guitar oddities, and at one point had around 20+. They were worthless when I owned them...and a few I smashed....... one of which is now worth many thousands of pounds to collectors

oh lordy this is the sort of thing i love, i love J les pauls! your mate was one lucky dude!

it is standard with the kahler, looks like a kahler7200, it was made in 1985 if I'm thinking right. it looks tidy as it is i wouldnt refurb it, just clean it down, oil the fret board and give it a polish, new set of strings and play it!

only thing that baffles me is the headstock, it looks like the ones on later Korean arias, so possible not japanese. look to see if it says anything about japan on it.

also if you tap the lower half of the body on the top, it might sound hollow or just be solid, that will help say what it is. also if he takes the neck pickup out there are alot of signs to be found in there in regard to how it was made/what its made from

even so if your buddy wants to sell it let me know as i collect japanese guitars of this sort from this era!

out of interest johhnyS what uber valuable guitar was it that you smashed up?

and take the back plate off and take a look see at the pots is another way to tell more of its origins

Oh, and a good place to see if it is a J or korean Aria is on the butt of the neck...but I see this is glued

Otherwise, blitz the internet with the serial

My mate had one of these as his main axe and it played really nice. I had a play with it and it was a fine piece of kit.
Top purchase by your mate.

I used to work in a guitar shop in the late 90's during my guitar phase (when I owned my Aria) and looking at it, the pickups look like the standard units, but the bridge and nut don't look standard

Let me see if I can pull out a pic of mine, It was brand new in something like 1996 if memory serves.

Yeah here they are.









As I say I bought it new in around '96 and rocked it for about 10 years before my life changed and I gave up playing, and regretfully had to sell it. Still made good money when I sold it.

Very good guitars. Good allround or value for money, sound, playability etc etc.

Lewis

Sorry to hijack the thread, but does anybody know if a tanglewood is any good, as a customer on a plumbing job offered us his old guitar and amp as payment when we quoted for a job tonight (job was quoted at £210)

all I know about the amp is thats its BIG (about 3ft square), and the guitar looks like this one, except the colour is a greeny colour (sort of laquered wood effect ), and also it says 'tanglewood' on the head