Guys,
I bought one of the first PE1000 (masterpiece prototype) models available in the UK. The first ads looked so cool against the US Gibsons of the day and the price was affordable. However, this fine guitar was conceived and born in an era when sustain and pickup output volume were believed to be the main desirable qualities - accordingly it came fitted with a monsterously heavy single-piece (Noble) bridge and Aria’s 15 k ohm ceramic magnet pickups. These may have enabled it to provide good volume and sustain in physics lab type experiments but to my ears it sounded just loud and unsubtle. Having gigged for a while I concluded it was a great player - absolutely dependable with tuning and a really powerful guitar but just totally lacking in harmonic character. In my opinion, this is why these guitars have never achieved the true status they deserve – Andy Summers (The Police), who first endorsed it, returned to his Fender Tele immediately after an initial promo video and as far as I am aware no other celeb. guitarist has used one as their main instrument since (?).
The truth is that these historical Aria guitars represent a great original design and were beautifully made from solid maple - but if you ask any guitar designer/builder today they will tell you that the last thing you would put on a heavy solid maple (body and neck) guitar are high output ceramic pickups and a heavy metal bridge.
So here’s a solution that helps bring out the guitars true character - I was pleased with the result on mine.
1) Replace the pickups with more subtle PAF style humbuckers (i.e. Alnico magnets, ~7.5 kohm coils). There are loads to choose from and I wouldn’t want to get into a debate here on which is best etc. – any are probably better for this guitar than the Protomatic 1 (PE1000) or deMarzio Super Distortion pickups (PE 1500) fitted.
2) Replace the bridge with a lighter Gibson-type, compensated, wrapover-style unit – the posts must be metric but the locating slots in the bridge will line up with them when located in the original threads of the guitar (as mine did). I was also lucky to get a bridge from an old Gibson Melody Maker (for next to nothing) and had some metric posts to hand that worked perfectly. The intonation is still adjustable and was spot on. However, there are many very good Gibson bridge clones available from guitar part websites. The bridge replacement not only sounds great but looks a hell of a lot better and also increases the string spacing of the original that is a bit compressed in the higher neck register
3) While you are at it why not also replace the tone/volume knobs with something more appropriate? Those fitted are made of one of the heaviest metals known to man and the last thing these guitars (and the player) need is extra weight! (The combined weight of the fiited bridge and knobs is about ¾ lb).
Finally after all that, its worth ensuring that you keep the original parts. The beauty of the above is that everything is fairly quickly and easily reversible - if you ever sell, the original format could be invaluable to a collector but, sadly, probably not a player.
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