Aria AC35 -1980’s Made in Spain 🇪🇸 - Rare Spanish Model! - Traditional OG Spanish Built Guitar! -

Wow!! What a cool guitar! Aria was a well known and awesome Japanese maker of guitars from the famous Matsumoku factory in Japan, but this one was commissioned to be made for them in Spain and has some true to form traditional Spanish build techniques and feel! Beautiful 40 year old guitar through and through with all the cool details and vibe you would hope for from an old school Spanish classical.

I love a nice Spanish guitar that was made to traditional specs, they don’t mess around. There’s a few details they can have that are always nice to find. This has the traditional “Spanish Foot” neck block where the neck block extends forward to prevent the neck angle from changing (it looks like a foot). It does a great job and I’ve always found that guitars that have this can have a longer and happier life without needing a neck reset. It also has traditional steam bent spruce kerfing on the inside connecting the top and bottom to the back and sides. It’s way more standard to see guitars with the kerfing that looks like a snake’s vertebrae lining the inside, you can just press that into shape and glue it in place. The steam bent kerfing is way more challenging to do right and takes a huge amount of skill.

As an instrument, this thing is awesome. I love the tone and the feel, really loud and percussive string response. I put in a new bone saddle, and it’s shredding all up and down the neck. The neck feels really nice and comfortable, it stays in tune for days, it’s a songwriting machine. The action on a traditional Spanish guitar can be more set up for tone rather than lightning fast shredding, but this one has a bit from each world. It delivers nice rich chords with razor sharp articulation and huge volume to each individual note.

There’s some condition stuff throughout the guitar, but overall not bad considering it’s close to 40 years old. There’s chips and dings kind of as an even spread throughout the guitar. There was one on the back of the neck that I filled so you won’t feel it as you run your hand over it (I’m a pro), and it feels almost invisible. Looking at the guitar head on and from the back it actually looks really good, there’s some chips along the sides but it’s all part of the character of this thing being a playing machine. Super lovely guitar!