My Made in Japan Les Paul
My first (and only) eBay guitar purchase was a made in Japan Gibson Les Paul Knockoff. Sometime in 2005 I became “re-obsessed” with the music that I obsessed over in my youth – bands like Mott the Hoople, Thin Lizzy, David Bowie and UFO. I was playing in a country/roots rock band and writing country/roots rock songs but found myself yearning to make big riffs and LOUD racket. I started daydreaming about the crunchy sound of a Les Paul.
I began looking around at 70s Les Pauls. These were on so much of the music I was listening to. The first thing I noticed was that there was no way I was going to be able to swing the sort of dough I’d need to get a 70s Gibson Les Paul at that time. I decided to look into vintage Japanese Les Paul copies.
The golden era for Japanese electric guitar manufacturing – for me anyhow – was the late 70s through the mid 80s. This is when they hit their stride and were churning out killer “bang on” knockoffs of Fender and Gibson guitars for many non-USA markets. Japanese guitar manufacturing is pretty fascinating. It’s also pretty confusing. Just a handful of factories were cranking out guitars for a staggering number of brands. Some brands were made in different factories during different years. There is often a “tiered” system where each model has multiple levels and the specs are different at each level.
After much perusing of eBay and various guitar nerd forums I decided to go with an Aria Pro II. For some reason they never reached the level of collectibility that some of the other similarly specced Tokais, Grecos and Burnys had so they were a pretty good deal.
My Aria Pro II LS600D was made in the Matsumoku factory in 1980. Matsumoku made guitars for a shit ton of brands like Epiphone, Electra, Westbury, Univox and many others. The LS in the model name stands for Les Paul Standard and the 600 puts it at the mid to upper end of the model’s range. The “D” stands for Dimarzio which came stock on these.
This guitar is a weird mix of 70s and pre-70s Gibson styling – it has the small open book headstock and long neck tenon but also a 3-piece maple neck and pancake body. It also has binding over the fret ends like a real Gibson. I replaced the bridge pickup with a Duncan Antiquity because I found the Dimarzio to be a little spiky. I also shaved the finish off the back of the neck and sealed it with a few coats of shellac. The neck is a 60s Gibson profile and not super thin like a lot of Japanese necks from the 80s. It plays and sounds great.
Like my Telecaster this guitar ends up on a lot of recordings. It does that 70s Les Paul thing really well. I think it’s on 95% of the last Riffbrokers record. It’s my heaviest guitar. Just over 11 pounds but I’ve used it countless times for 2+ hour rehearsals and it’s never bothered me. I dig it.