A Lucky Vintage Find

My first electric guitar was a Japanese Aria strat copy that I purchased new in 1974 for around $220. That same year, I also acquired a used Fender 1960s strat, but I often found myself gravitating to the Aria, as the neck was flawless and it felt right. Back then owning a brand new guitar was everything. The word vintage was not in the mix like today.

I would purchase many more guitars from the 1970s onwards, but the Aria always stuck in my mind. It was made by the Matsumoku company, which produced some of the finest guitars of that era. The Japanese "Yairi" line also produced some exceptional crafted acoustic and classical guitars.

As luck would have it, I recently acquired a vintage 1974 Aria strat body from the Deep South. The body is solid and made of Sen Ash (ash thick cap over hardwood) and weighs in at 3.7 lbs. Full size 1 3/4" thick. Much to my surprise, a vintage Fender bridge and trem assembly dropped in perfectly to the existing routing and bridge holes, providing for a perfect 25.5 scale. The main difference I noticed is instead of a center channel for the pickup wiring, the channel sits below the single coil, because the Japanese Maxon pickups had the wires on the end and not center hump og the bottom bobbin like the American coils. So, I gently notched out each separate cavity to accommodate American bobbins and hand wound three AlNiCo 5 pickups.

I then fitted a non-Fender neck on it with a radius of 12 inches. A nice medium fat C profile that I finished in French polish. There is nothing quite like the sound of old tonewood that aged well. This is one of those times.

I have attached some pics and a blues track I recorded featuring the Aria strat on lead guitar and my Legacy Tribute on rhythm.

Best - CS

Last edited by CSVeteran on Tue Apr 07, 2015 5:37 pm, edited 2 times in total.

Here is the MP3 sample of the blues track:

http://k003.kiwi6.com/hotlink/4a737utcav/CSBlues.mp3

Last edited by CSVeteran on Wed Apr 08, 2015 11:43 am, edited 1 time in total.

Cool resto! It looks nice. What kind of neck did you put on? -- Darwin

Nice work. I like the vintage vibe.

Congrats on finding a long-lost favorite. I scored a mid-'70s Matsumoku Strat copy about 5-6 years ago. It was $120 at Sam Ash. The neck was amazing, but the body had an odd laminated softwood construction and never felt right to me.

You wind your own pickups? I'd love to hear more about that...

Ken

Darwin - the neck is an import that I had. I like fat necks and this one had flat radius and was super straight. So I stripped the poly finish off and finished it with French polish.

Ken - I started winding pickups back in the 1970s, because I couldn't afford the DiMarzio and Seymore Duncans aftermarket pickups that hit the market around that time. That's when I started winding my own, mostly rewinding dead coils or acquiring pickups that were swapped out for the hotter aftermarkets.

CS,

Thanks for sharing. The guitar looks killer and the playing was great.


y2kc

Much appreciated, y2kc, and my pleasure. Take care.

The attached MP3 is a tribute piece to Hendrix featuring the 1974 refurbished Aria strat panned left and the G&L Tribute Legacy panned right. The Legacy really holds its own in recording applications with a smooth midrange and top end. No EQ was used.

http://k003.kiwi6.com/hotlink/rapddkp14 ... endrix.mp3