The Guitar Gallery Forums - The Guitar Legacy of Matsumoku

Look at what appeared on the Aria Japan website yesterday... a new PE-Supra

http://www.ariaguitars.com/jp/02prod/0101eg/pesupra.htm

The 80s are back in full swing... and I'm in love already.


Scheduled to appear in the shops late this month or early next month... I will test on of those soon.

Wow! I wonder what is pushing them to re-issue? Looks like it comes out to $2,550 US.

Looking forward to your review! Wonder if it will compare to a high end Gibson LP? (Same price range or should I say Custom Shop).

Beautiful guitar, perfect specs for me...

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A good song takes you far...

The Supra was developed as an Artist model... so maybe this guy is getting popular again.

The list price puts it into competition with the standard Gibson line-up. However, Aria sells for 20% to 25% off the list price in the shops... the discounts for Gibson are higher. So the guitar is priced somewhere between a standard and a custom shop Les Paul.
The finish on the Aria is better as the one of a custom shop Les Paul... and the build quality is at least as good. Sound wise the target audience is different, so you can not compare (it's not a Les Paul clone, the sound is quite modern).

There are only two Korean made PE models available in Japan... and those are the top of the Korean made line-up.
But if you note the number of high price PE models available in Japan... there must be quite a bit of demand for them. They are adding new models every 6 month and are not discontinuing the older ones.

I just looked at the new Aria catalog, linked in the Realted Topics thread on New CS models, and I see that the Supra has the 14 " pitched neck, which I've recently come to prefer. The Inspire has it, too, but not the Anniv. If only they'd put dual controls for vol and tone on the Inspire, I might not be able to hold resist buying her, as the hollow construction along with all the other specs makes this model very desirable to me... 8)

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A good song takes you far...

I would be interested in looking at some of the new Japanese models. If for no other reason than to compare the quality to that of those made by Matsumoku. Unfortunately there are no Aria Pro II dealers anywhere near me. There used to be two but they only carried the bottom rung stuff. Pretty much garbage.

If the quality were close I'd probably be curious as to who was manufacturing them now.

Is it the Matsumoku PE-450 hollow model that is the "inspir"ation for the new PE-Inspire?

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A good song takes you far...

No inspiration from any old PE model... the neck shape is different and even the scale is different.

As mentioned in another post, Aria still has it's own manufacturing site somewhere in Yamanashi (or just over the border to Nagano). The factory is the same as used by Ibanez... not FujiGen, the other one (forgot the name just now).

THe scale is different on the new PE-Inspire from the older Matsumoku PE models? I thought they were both 24 3/4 inch scale...I'll have to look into that more carefully, as 24 3/4 inch is my preferred scale these days.

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A good song takes you far...

The inspire has a 635mm (25 inch) scale... just 7mm longer, but you will feel it.