I recently got this off of ebay and I put in parts from a very heavy bolt neck Westminster LP clone (that sounded amazing). While I was putting it together, I noticed just how odd this guitar is. I put the photos from the original ebay listing here, as they are pretty good:
https://imgur.com/a/jZywVJSSome interesting things about this guitar that may or may not be the norm for Aria LP clones:
- Set neck, but the neck tenon seems to extend all the way into the neck pickup area. I think Gibson stopped using long tenons in '69?
- Speaking of pickups, this seems to have been fitted with some much larger than humbuckers. I had to position my humbuckers very carefully to not leave any extra gap routed in the top (maybe dogear p90s were originally there?). The "tan lines" in the finish and the original screw holes also show much larger pickups were original to the guitar
- It has a void of air under the top (like the Westminster that donated the parts)
- It's very light. Only 8lbs full of parts. 7 as just a husk.
- The neck pickup route is very shallow. I had to trim down my pole piece screws a bit to get it to fit at all
- The open book headstock has the pineapple inlay, which I haven't seen on any Aria LP
- The electronics cavity is routed for smaller than average pots (vs full size pots)
- The bridge posts were drilled at 25" vs 24.75". Intonation was kinda a pain, but I just barely got it by flipping my donor bridge around
- The tailpiece posts were more narrowly spaced than any one I've seen before. I ended up having to grind away some of my donor tailpiece with a Dremel
- It has superrrrr tiny fretwire. True fretless wonder
- It seemed to originally have gold hardware
- It has a super thin d neck profile, similar to my Univox Effie or Hagstrom II
- Lastly, it has a 7.25" fretboard radius, which is just wild