Aria Tobacco Sunburst LP Identification

[celebratedgenius]

I came into this Aria Les Paul recently, so far it’s been treating me right and I can barely put it down. I’m getting curious to know more about it, and my research isn’t turning up anything definitive. The seller had it labeled “Lawsuit-Era Aria” and didn’t know much else. I can’t find a serial number, so I’m having trouble figuring out when it’s from or what exactly it is. The other things that stand out to me are the rounded head shape and the set-in neck, which I’ve been having trouble matching to the models on the archive.

I’ll clean and set this guy up soon, so I hope to have more luck finding identifying info in the interior cavity or pickups. Please let me know if you know anything!

Sorry about the picture layout btw, can’t figure out attaching multiple images. Had to get creative for now, but I can make an imgur album or something if it helps.

[Crusty]

The exact model may be difficult but likely a late 70s LS. Aria and Aria Pro II overlapped. The earlier Aria A55XX were IIRC all bolt neck.

To be precise the seller was just blowing smoke as there is no such thing as a lawsuit era. It was one lawsuit occurring only once and was strictly between Norlin (Gibson) and Hoshino/Elger (Ibanez) over the use of the Gibson trademarked open book headstock which this guitar does not have.

About 77 or so many Japanese guitar makers began shifting away from using the open book headstock and moving towards proprietary designs such as the "camel hump" headstock on this one. At least for models intended for markets where Norlin/Gibson could enforce trademark laws. Here's a little info on the "lawsuit" and seller hype:

http://www.matsumoku.org/cm_models/the- ... -faq/#hype

The fact it is set neck and has the camel hump headstock I'd guess your LP dates to around this period and with the crown inlays likely a mid range LS, probably close to the LS-700 if the tuners are stock. Pickups probably won't indicate much as during this period there was no standard such as you'd find on a post 1978 Aira Pro II. That and they could have been replaced in the 40+ years it has existed.

http://www.matsumoku.org/cm_models/2021 ... rd-copies/

You can attach one image at a time but imgur might be a great idea as we're limited on disk space so image resolution/size is also limited.

[celebratedgenius]

Thanks for the info! It sounds like they were making pretty frequent changes in their production process, so I guess a lot of the surviving instruments are in a weird middle ground between the more well documented models. This has been pretty fascinating to read up on, there’s a lot of interesting history to these guitars and a surprising amount of unknowns. Glad to have stumbled on this site.

As you had mentioned the pickups, I remember the previous owner saying the guitar was all stock hardware but I can’t attest to that either way. I might end up making some modifications or at least swapping out the pickups, but it feels like a bit of a shame after all this time. They have a unique sound to them, so I’m torn on that.

Also, Imgur album: https://imgur.com/a/BDZCFwG
Hopefully I’ll remember to update the album once I get a chance to clean it up nice.