davepepper's Reviews
42 reviews Back to davepepper's Equipboard
640
Still the best guitar I own
I bought this in 1985 and tried it against JV Squier strat, a Gibson SG, a Yamaha SG500 and a few other guitars. Despite not being enamoured by the body shape and headstock it was so clearly the best guitar for the money that day that I took it home. Was all set to retire it because of noisy electrics, cracked scratchplate, stripped trem bar threading and fret wear, but after talking to Hansen guitars near where I live they said it was probably worth spending a bit on... So about a month later - with the work done - I came home with a guitar that was better than it had ever been and that was nicer to play than the Yamaha SG1000 I'd bought to replace it. So now I have two great Japanese guitars instead of one. Though marketed as a metal shredder guitar with some dreadful advertising material, this is great for more twangy surf sounds - and always was. I've never been a shredder and the tone on this is just perfect for me. People complain about the low output pickups - this has never been a problem for me either.
27237
Great write up! I had no idea these old Arias were great until Equipboard happened. Glad this beauty is still serving you well. :)
640
@pkennethk - As the weakest link is probably the pickups and the Kahler trem is a question of taste (I could certainly live without it) you could also consider one of the RS Series "Cat" models with a normal trem. They seem to come up for sale more frequently than Knight Warriors and are basically the same chassis.
640
Surprisingly good for the money
Bought this with a view to putting better electronics in it and doing some work on the frets/fretboard etc. One of the cheap pots didn't work. Fender would have been happy to fix it but was going to replace with better ones anyway so told them not to bother. A little rubbing down of the fret edges and crowns was enough to fix the "scraping" when string bending - which would have gone away over time anyway. Set up out of the box was pretty good. Everyone seems to complain about the tuners but for the money it's a detail. And frankly, after tweaking the trem and changing the strings the standard tuners on mine stay in tune pretty well. Potential buyers should be aware (if planning to mod the guitar) that there can be compatibility issues like thinner body (requiring non-standard trem block) and the pickups not having the same pole spacing as Fenders. Neither is the tremelo cover bolt pattern the staggered Fender standard - so you can't just buy one of the Fender sets if you want to change the pickup covers, knobs and trem cover. Wiring is very basic. Selector switch is awful. Pickups sounded a lot better than I was expecting TBH and I got some good tones out of it out of the box - but of course the ones I put in afterwards (Lace Gold) were a lot better - but also cost more new than I paid for the actual guitar. Much nicer with the completely smooth neck than the stickier gloss neck on the Classic Vibes.