1970s Aria-made? Les Paul Copy Electric Guitar

A friend of mine dropped this off for setup. It looks like a late-70s Aria to me... but that's speculation. It's a solid body (two halves glued together top to bottom like many 70s Gibs, for that matter). I added a new nut, did a light dressing on the frets, and set it up with a set of 10s. It had some huge strings on it before which had given this some pretty severe neck warp. I just managed to get the truss to take the warp out but it's maxed-out, now.

Anyhow, aside from the replaced pickup, this is a pretty fun guit. It handles like you'd expect one of these to (Gibson feel) except for the bolt-on neck and, of course, the non-Gib-style pickups. It's heavy as heck. You'd never see me hanging this off my back for more than a few songs in a row... but I know folks that don't mind that at all (poor devils). You also wouldn't see me rocking gold hardware... but at least it's got a bunch of patina to it now so that it looks more like a "brass, cream and black" bit of gear instead.

As a Les Paul copy goes... heck, why not buy one of these older guys? This is so much more quality guitar for your money these days than a cheap modern LP copy will get you.

Someone upgraded to gold Grovers. Nice touch! Unfortunately they had zero idea about how to install them properly and they left out the washers so I was forced to use whatever I had on hand that fit and did the job.

Faux-pearl inlay and a bound board. Unlike some of this guitar's period competitors the board is solid rosewood all the way through rather than an annoying laminate material with 1/16" or 1/32" rosewood on top.

Amazingly, the bridge is actually in tune at this curious intonation set.

The bolt-on neck means it doesn't have a set-neck feel but it does mean changing the neck angle is really easy.