The Guitar Gallery Forums - The Guitar Legacy of Matsumoku

Hello all -

I am new here, and don't know much about guitars, but wanted to say hello to the community and see if there is any information to be had on my old guitar.

I own a guitar that I purchased used back in 1969. It is an Aria Diamond, model 1242 (stamped on the sticker inside). I guess it is called a "Semi-Hollow Body" style? There is no serial number on the inside sticker, just the model number. It looks almost exactly like the Model 5102T shown at the left of this set of pictures:

http://www.matsumoku.org/models/aria/ho ... /semi.html

Right down to the tremolo bar, and the shape of the wood piece at the bottom. However, mine is black with cream or white edging, and says Aria Diamond at the top (with the inlayed fake diamond).

I played it a bit for a couple of years, then pretty much put it away and didn't touch it. I've just carted it around through college, six years in the Navy, and 3 different jobs after that. I have decided that I am finally going to learn to play, and so have a repair guy going through the electronics and doing a setup to make sure it is in good shape for playing. Physically, it is in great shape - and I've always thought it was a beautiful work of art.

I plan to keep this guitar, with the thought of passing it to my daughter some day. In searching around the internet, I have not found much about the Aria Diamond series, and wondered if anyone out there could shed some more light on it.

If I can figure out how to shrink photos down and post them I'll do that. But for now I thought I'd at least put this out there and see if anyone has more information. Thanks for any help!

Welcome to the board. It is cool that you have had the guitar for so long and it still is in good shape. Diamond was one of the lines that Aria used in the 60's and early 70's. Most but not all were copies of existing models. All the ones I have seen were bolt neck models. Most were semi-hollow bodies, like yours.

To post pictures you can use a hosting service like photobucket. Be sure that the pictures are not to big. Check the guide lines. You can also put them into an account like Dropbox and post the link. There are some threads that give more details.

Thanks for the info.

Can I post a photo directly into the forum? I understand putting a link to the photo that is hosted somewhere else, but when those photos get moved or removed the link is broken. If that happens, and I don't get them updated then it's gone for anyone else to see. I can see that it would take a lot of space to save the images in the forum servers, so understand if that's not a possibility.

-- Ken