Hi
I’ve been the very proud owner of an Aria Pro II Les Paul for around 13 years but I actually know very little about it. Having come across this excellent site, I’m now really interested in its history. Here’s the details that I think may be useful and I’ve also attached some photos (although I seem to be limited to just 5) to help with the identification.
Weight: 9.5lbs
Colour: Tobacco, I guess. (There is a darkening of the colour towards the edges but I’m not sure I would class this as ‘sunburst’).
Body: Mahogany with arched maple top. Bindings front and back. The mahogany looks to be two slices sandwiched together and the back piece appears to be ‘butterflied’, there’s certainly a line down the middle. The maple top also appears to be ‘butterflied’.
Neck: Looks like three pieces, possibly maple spine sandwiched between two strips of mahogany. Long tenon glued into the body with two additional screw fixings within the neck pickup cutout.
Fingerboard: Rosewood with 22 frets and fret bindings. Large block mother of pearl inlays. Really low action without any buzz.
Hardware: Gold, good quality tuners and gold bridge and tailpiece. All are showing some wear to the gold finish. The underneath of the tailpiece is marked with “MADE IN JAPAN LP-S”. I presume the LP-S stands for Les Paul Standard. The underneath of the bridge is stamped with “L S BRIDGE MADE IN JAPAN”.
Controls: Usual two volume, two tone. Gold coloured Speed Knobs. 500kohm pots mounted on a circuit board. Usual Les Paul type 3 position switch.
Headstock: Not the ‘open book’ style, it is more dome shaped. Bindings to front. 3 screw truss rod cover. Split diamond motif, although this differs from the diamond motifs on the other Aria Pro II Les Pauls that I’ve seen online. No serial number anywhere on this guitar.
Pickups: Black Humbuckers of unknown make.
Both pickups have what look like inverted T’s in the centre of both coils. To one side both pickups have an H with a P in the top half of the H and an I in the lower half .The Bridge pickup has a 1 on one coil and a 3 on the other. The neck pickup has a 2 on one coil and a 4 on the other. The cable to the pickups, which is just a single core co-ax, is marked as ‘Mogami Wire Cable Corp’.
Although the pickups performed reasonably well, I have recently changed these for a pair of IronGear Rolling Mill handwound pickups from axetec.co.uk. These have made a very marked improvement in both tone and definition. Excellent pickups for the price (only 26GBP each!!).
This guitar has a real quality feel to it and plays really well, unlike me! Basically, It Rocks!!
It would be great if I could put a date and model number to it….maybe even a value, although I’m not considering selling it. I bought the guitar second hand for 200GBP in 1995 so it would be nice if it had appreciated a little in value.
Any assistance would be greatly appreciated.