1988 Aria Pro II STG

This guitar has a interesting story. I was given this guitar as payment for catsitting about 3 years ago. The people who gave it to me were told by the previous owners it was a 1988 Aria Pro II, but had its neck replaced to one from a standard STG model. And, that the guitar was originally owned by someone in Radiohead, but I honestly doubt that.

It had a HH configuration, with split coil switches, one volume and one tone. However, all of that wasnt working right. The neck pickup had a super low output, and the bridge wasnt much better. The coil switching did something, but not as intended. Both pickups were heavily corroded too. i do still have the original scratchplate.

I was living in a hostel in 2024 and decided I wanted to make my first replica inspired by Tom, which, at the time, my favourite guitar he played was the black Strat from First Date, The Rock Show, and Box Car Racer. So I bought all the parts, and made this.

However, I took the Invader out of this to make the 335 you may have seen before. I was only intending to leave it a month or so until I got a new one to fit. However, over a year passed, other projects and commitments came up, Finally got around to it a month ago, and discovered in that time the cheaply made 90s neck had become warped beyond repair with the truss rod. Which was also stuck.

I jumped on Reverb, and found the neck you see below, its a much higher quality part. My original plan was to repair the other neck, but this is way better and sounds so cool. The pickup in it is some generic pickup I had spare. I plan to put a Seymour Duncan SH5 Custom in it with CTS pots, but for now it has this. 10-52 strings. Heres the photos:

Demo Video:
Coming Soon