[JakeH]

Hey everyone

At my school someone has left us a rather nice semi-acoustic bass. However it was dropped and one of the machine heads snapped. I agreed to take it home, repair it, clean it etc.

The guitar itself is made by 'Aria Diamond' a.k.a Aria, a company formed in Japan. Its a semi-acoutsic with two 'f' holes on either side of the bridge. It has two pickups, with a volume and tone for each, a pickup selector near a cutaway on the bottom half of the guitar and a floating pickguard over that with a finger rest. The bridge has a muter on it (a metal device with a pad on it to effectively palm mute it).

I've been trying to find out what model it is to get some specs on it, but it's proving quite difficult. It seems that 'Aria Diamonds' were around from late 60's to the 70's, but i might be wrong. Also when i removed the floating pickguard to polish it i found that there was a chip right in the middle of it under the pickguard (how could that have got there? On inspection its quite hard to deliberately chip the finish in the way in that place!), and the guard over the pickup selector had an extra screw hole, however there was nowhere on the body for the screw to go. The strap button which is attached to the bridge in a slight bigsby style also shows signs of being changed, and larger one being there before.

Some of the white, pearloid parts of the guitar have also turned quite creamy. Now i'm no expert but i think it might be quite an old prize here, at least a rather odd thing to just give away!

On top of this i found this - Mid 1960's Aria Diamond Electric Guitar Hollow Bodied EXCELLENT!!! - An electric guitar which is extremely similiar to the bass (scroll down for the pictures). But what got me was that the bass has the same plaque on the back of the neck saying 'Steel re-inforced neck' and then a seven digit serial number and 'Made in Japan'.

So does anyone have any idea what model this could be?
I'll try and get some pics up soon
Thanks!!
Jake

[thesteve]

I would guess that your bass is from the same period as that craigslist posting you found. However this is a situation where vintage =/= valuable. Until a recent retro-revival occurred in mainstream music, 1960s MIJ instruments were not worth very much.

I'd be really interested in seeing some pictures of this guitar if you would be able to take some and post them up on the site.

[Micahb]

Originally Posted by JakeH

Hey everyone

Hey!

Originally Posted by JakeH

a pickup selector near a cutaway on the bottom half of the guitar and ...The bridge has a muter on it (a metal device with a pad on it to effectively palm mute it).

Nice! Honestly, two of my favourite features on old basses that you rarely see now are les paul style pickup selectors and mutes.


I can't help you with dating or figuring out the model, but gratz on the bass! I'd love to see pics.

EDIT:
Wikipedia says your new bass is between 60 and 75. It says in 60 they started making acoustic guitars in 60 and electric guitars in 64, so I'd say the earliest is probably '64, and '75 is when they switched their name. Now, Wikipedia isn't always 100% correct, but as far as when the name change went down this seems to serve my memory right.