Reviving a 1970’s Aria 12-string Acoustic Guitar

When you are in the business of fixing things, you come across something that is so broken that you question whether or not it’s even worth fixing. That moment came to me recently.

Aria guitars was founded back in 1956 in Japan by Shiro Arai. He was a passionate musician and businessman that saw the need to build classical guitars in Japan. The name “Aria” means expressive melody, and was first used on the classical guitars fitted with steel strings that he exported in 1958. Strangely enough, he settled on the name of the company by simply rearranging the words in his own last name.

While Aria is probably best known for its electric line of guitars (see Aria Pro II), they did build quality acoustics throughout their history.

I had been aware of Aria for some time. The quality that they brought forth while keeping their guitars affordable is primarily what interested me in owning one.

Enter the broken guitar.

Many of the instruments that I buy, I acquire in auctions. I saw this particular “beauty” and got it for a steal ($22.00!!).

I thought that this would be an easy project – clean it up, install a new saddle, and slap some strings on it. This guitar needed a little more love…

Once it was delivered and I got it out of the box, the first thing I did was remove the “sticker” on the front. This was a newspaper cutout from (probably) the 1970’s. The tape was just as old and was seemingly permanently affixed to the finish. It took careful peeling using a heavy guitar pick as a tool and many, many rounds of Goo Gone to get rid of it.

Then, I noticed something strange. The neck was “shimmed” way, way high. In fact there was a 1/4″ block of wood that someone had glued into the neck fitting. It didn’t make any sense, because that would have made the guitar completely unplayable.

So I chiseled that sucker out of there, only to find that underneath it was several washers (also glued in place with a hefty amount of wood glue). I was able to pry them up and then cleaned out the neck cavity with my Dremel Tool equipped with a small router bit.

During my neck cavity jamboree, I discovered that the guitar top was separated from the neck block. This was an easy fix using a clamp and my trusty Titebond wood glue.

Next up was the rosette. As you can see in the pictures, a large chunk of it broke off near the end of the neck. What could I do? I was not about to replace the whole rosette. That is too much work for this guitar. So, I assembled the pieces and used small pieces of shim wood to recreate the top of the guitar. More Titebond, more clamps.

Once I had all the pieces back together, it was time to reconnect the guitar neck and try it out. Just one problem: the neck screws were replaced with super extra long ones because of that 1/4″ block of wood that I mentioned. This guitar required non-standard sized screws as well. So, I did what any good fabricator would do: I cut down the screws that I had and filed the ends into points. Probably took longer than I wanted, but it was necessary to re-assemble the guitar.

With the neck now back on, I could add the strings and see what the action looked like. (Side note, one of my least favorite things to do is to string a 12-string guitar. It is so time consuming, especially when setting up a guitar because you have to take them off and put them back on again a few times.) The action was too high. I had a few extra Strat neck shims laying around, so I altered one to fit in this neck cavity.

Finally the neck angle was right! One last restring and a slight truss rod adjustment and this puppy was ready to play!

All in, this project took me about 2 months to finish. I would pick it up, put it back down. Pick it up, put it down, etc. But, overall I’m happy with the finished product. Watch me fumble my way through a demo: