Most guitars first speak to me as visual works of art.  The color, the shape, or some sort of unique design.  Or it might be an interesting, obscure brand.  Rarely has the sound of the guitar been the calling card, but that was the case with this 1984 Aria Pro II RS Series Rev-Sound RS-Esprit.  (Don’tcha love those long names!)

Actually, when you look at the RS-Esprit, it has remarkable elegant lines.  It’s got a down-sized body that’s obviously Strat-style, but svelt, balanced, modern.  No doubt the color caused this flower to shrink somewhat.  When you look closely, the metallic greenish turquoise color (officially “Phantom Blue”) is pretty nifty, but across a room, it looks kind of “blah.”  The black pickups disappear into the shadows.  Still, there was something about this guitar that drew me to it.

Now, when the attraction of a guitar is primarily visual, I usually don’t care what the sound is going to be like.  After all, when you factor in an amp and effects, you can make any guitar sound like whatever you want as long as the electronics work.  But for some reason this guitar wanted me to plug it in.  I’m not sure what the “Rev” in Rev Sound is supposed to mean, but if it’s “reverse,” that sure makes sense!  This guitar lives in that out-of-phase world of between the pickups on a Fender Stratocaster.  This guitar is all about shades of twang!  I don’t know about you, but for me those in-between positions are why I’d play a Stratocaster.  I know I’m not alone on that one.  This guitar sounds out-of-phase in single-coil mode, and is still slightly funky in humbucker mode.

1984 Aria Pro II RS Series Rev Sound RS-E CU-tile

The existence of the Aria Pro II Rev-Sounds derives from the conclusion of the “Copy Era” of the 1970s.  By around 1968-69 Japanese guitar-makers had hit on a strategy of making less-expensive copies of popular American guitar models as a way of increasing market share in the U.S.  It worked like a charm.  By the mid-1970s American manufacturers—especially Gibson—were annoyed, to understate the issue.  In 1977, Norlin (the parent of Gibson) filed suit against Elger Guitars (the American subsidiary of Hoshino/Ibanez) in Philadelphia Federal Court claiming “trademark infringement” over headstock shape copying.  Nevermind that Ibanez had changed its heads in 1976.  Japanese makers agreed to cease and desist and in 1978 a new breed of Japanese electric guitars began to appear.  In many ways the cure was worse than the disease, because the new Japanese guitars were original designs built even better, and they continued to grab even more market share than before.  Think Ibanez Studio and Musician guitars.

Aria, which had originally initiated the “Copy Era,” lagged slightly behind, but in 1979 introduced a slew of new electric guitar series, including the unique Rev-Sounds, the 850 and 750.  The idea behind the Rev-Sounds was to use 3 single coil pickups, but with only the front and back hot, the center being a “dummy” coil that could be switched into active status to go from “single-coil” to “humbucker.”  The initial Rev-Sounds were sort of frumpy takes on Ibanez’s Musicians, a little more pointy.  The RS-850 was active while the RS-750 was a passive version.

The RS-Esprit was a much trimmed down version of the active RS-850 that debuted in 1984.  This has an alder body with a bolt-on neck featuring a “smooth joint” heel, a sort of clumsy compromise between a regular heel and the “heelless” designs of guitars like B.C. Rich.  The controls are a 3-say switch with two mini-toggles that activate the center dummy pickup in humbucker mode for front and back.  The knobs are master volume and two tones.  There’s also a little red light to indicate that your battery is still working.  The Act 3 locking vibrato system was similar to some Kahler systems that didn’t make you clip off the ball-end to load the strings.

I’ve always thought these were made by Matsumoku—in which Aria had a financial interest and which made numerous Aria guitars—however, I’m not so sure any more.  It certainly has a Matsumoku feel.  However, as a Trading Company, Aria had other factories from which to source its guitars.  This very well could have been made by another factory.

In any case, this is a really fun guitar to play, with a fully professional feel.  It’s not the most versatile guitar, but then with an amp and effects…  I don’t know if the RS-Esprit is particularly rare, but these were made for little over a year at a time when Japanese guitars were still imported in relatively small lots.  You rarely see these come up for sale, and I’m inclined to think they are.  These were made just before Japanese guitars came out from the shadow of post-World-War-II disdain.

Between new guitars and vintage guitars, guitar players have a gazillion choices these days.  But there are unique, fascinating guitars out there like the Aria Pro II RS-Esprit worth seeking out.  I’ve always been glad I heard this guitar’s siren call.

By Michael Wright

The Different Strummer

1984 Aria Pro II RS Series Rev Sound RS-Esprit from MyRareGuitars.com

1970’s UNIVOX Coily Bass Guitar (Sunburst)

UNIVOX guitars were imported to North America from Japan in the late 1960’s to the late 1970’s. They had many different models – most popular of which is the Hi-Flyer – but also included an array of Les Paul copies, Hagstrom, Fender and others. UNIVOX guitars were built by the Matsumoko guitar factory in Japan, who also built guitars for Aria, Westbury, Westone, and several other brands at the time. This model, the Coily Bass is based on the Epiphone Casino. They also made a 5 string version with a Bigsby style tremolo. Here are two samples, sunburst and redburst. These models featured dual pickups with a 3-way switch, two volume and two tone controls. Bolt-on maple neck with hollowbody flamed maple top and a floating bridge and string mute bar. At $125 in the early 1970’s, pretty good value and construction for the money!

Back Catalog Memories: 1970’s UNIVOX Coily Bass Guitar from MyRareGuitars.com

Vintage 1984 Quest Atak-6 MK II Electric Guitar

I first encountered a Matsumoku guitar (I didn’t know what it was at the time) back in the early 1990s. I was hanging out with Mac and Joe at the Axe Factory in Southwest Philadelphia (long gone) after work one evening. They were just about to close down when a car pulled up to the curb and out came two guitar cases. One was a ‘70s Gibson Les Paul and the boys started to drool over it. The other was the most spectacular flametop guitar I’d ever seen, an Electra Endorser (recently profiled in Vintage Guitar Magazine). Without taking their eyes off the Paul, they sold me the near-mint Endorser for three bills. I walked out like the Chesshire Cat. Later I found out that beauty was made by Matsumoku.

Matsumoku Motto (or the Matsumoku Industrial Co., Ltd.) was founded in 1951 to manufacture sewing machine cabinets. They were located in an area with a long tradition of musical instrument making, so when the demand for guitars heated up in the early 1960s, it wasn’t so big a stretch to apply their woodworking talents to guitars. They began building guitars in around 1963.

Vintage 1984 Quest Atak-6 MK II Electric Guitar

Early Matsumoku guitars display that tentative awkwardness shared by most Japanese guitars of the time, but the workmanship is almost always a notch up compared to, say, Teisco, Kawai, or Zen-On. One of the early brands produced by Matsumoku was Cortez for Westheimer Music, the name that eventually gave us Cort guitars. By the middle ‘60s the factory was producing Arai and later Aria Diamond and Aria guitars. In around 1975 the luthier Nobuaki Hayashi managed guitar production and Arias became Aria Pro II. Meanwhile Matsumoku was producing guitars for St. Louis Music (SLM), including some, if not all, their late ‘60s Apollo line. When SLM changed its brand to Electra in 1970, the better models, at least, came from Matsumoku. Matsmoku also made the first Japanese Epiphones for Gibson beginning about this same time.

Another brand associated with Matsumoku was Univox, promoted heavily from 1968 on by the company known as Merson Musical Products, A Division of Unicord Incorporated, A Gulf+Western Systems Company. In 1975 the Merson part departed and the company became Unicord, Inc. In 1976 Unicord introduced the Westbury line, made by Matsumoku, which replaced Univox in ‘78. In 1979 and 1980 Matsumoku made the Washburn Wing and Stage Series guitars. In 1982 Matsumoku took over production of the D’Agostino Bench Mark series.

Vintage 1984 Quest Atak-6 MK II Electric Guitar

The Merson folks moved to Garden City Park on Long Island, New York, and became Musical Technologies, Inc. (MTI). This company would eventually bring Korg to the U.S. and still exists. In 1981 the Westone brand appeared in the U.S. This may have been a proprietary brand name owned by Matsumoku because, while it was appropriated by SLM as its brand name in 1984, other Westones continued to be sold outside the U.S. until the end. Anyhow, it appears that MTI began to sell Matsumoku-made Vantage guitars in 1982, at least.

Which finally brings us to Quest. With heavy metal riding high, a taste for weird-shaped guitars developed. In 1984 MTI introduced a new line of Matsumoku-made guitars called Quest by Vantage. These were a little more outré than the Westone/Vantage aesthetic, but why they felt they needed a new brand name remains a mystery. But included in the new line was the Quest Atak 6, kind of a take on the Ibanez Destroyer. In the brochure were the A-6 of laminated mahogany and the A-6TX with a bound ash body. This example has “Mark II” on the truss cover and is like the A-6TX but with a bound spruce top over a solid mahogany body. With an SN of C400578 this dates to March of 1894. Controls are volume and two tones, with the volume a push-pull coil tap.

The only brochure seen for Quests is from 1984. I own two and both are from mid-1984. If they lasted beyond that, it’s unknown at this time. In 1987 Matsumoku was purchased by the Singer Sewing Machine Co. and guitars were not in their future. It’s not clear if production ended immediately, or if they limped on until 1989 or even into 1990. At some point in the early 1990s the Vantage brand was transferred to the Samick company in Korea, mainly Gibson and Fender inspirations, sold by Music Industries Corporation of Floral Park, New York. These were certainly produced from 1995-97, and probably before and after.

Active sales of the Vantage brand have since ceased. Music Industries now rents instruments. I love the Quests, and many other Matsumoku guitars, but nothing is as sweet as that first kiss…er, Electra.

Matsumoku’s Atak Gains The Ad-Vantage (Vintage 1984 Quest Atak-6 MK II Electric Guitar) from MyRareGuitars.com

1982 Daion Savage Power Mark XX Electric Guitar

The event in question was the practice of copying American guitar designs by Japanese manufacturers. The Japanese hit on the copy strategy pretty early on. The American guitar industry was pretty robust when the guitar boom hit in the early 1960s. But it couldn’t meet the total demand of maturing Baby Boomers and the gap was filled by European guitar makers such as EKO and Framus. By 1966 or ’67 the Japanese had begun to copy European guitars that were popular in the US market, most notably the EKO violin guitar (itself just one of many Euro takes on the Gibson EB-0 bass).

1982 Daion Savage Power Mark XX Electric Guitar

The turning point, in a delicious irony, was precipitated by Gibson. Gibson had dominated the high end of electric solidbody guitars with its ‘50s Les Paul models. Glued-in necks on a mahogany body with a carved maple top. Yum, yum! But Gibson got bored with the design in 1961 and changed the Les Paul over to what would become the SG. Contract problems with Les ended the model name soon thereafter. The SG did ok, but not as well as the Les Paul. The times had something to do with it. Gibson made nice with Les and reintroduced the Gibson Les Paul in 1968. The version it chose to resuscitate was the black-finished Les Paul Custom.

What follows is somewhat apocryphal. Meaning there’s no incontrovertible proof. Shiro Arai, the man behind Aria guitars, was at the 1968 NAMM show where the reissue LP Custom was featured. He took one look at it. Hmm. It’s a copy of the old Les Paul. Copy!!!

1982 Daion Savage Power Mark XX Electric Guitar

The first Japanese “copies” of the Les Paul Black Beauty appeared the following year—bolt-on necks and not precise by any means. But it didn’t take long for the notion to blossom. By 1974 at least the Japanese were building copy guitars that were nearly as good as the originals. Certainly as good looking, and a heckuva lot cheaper. Gibson was—understandably—not happy.

In the summer of 1977 Norlin, Gibson’s parent company, sued Elger Guitars, the American arm of Hoshino, owner of the Ibanez brand name, in Philadelphia Federal Court. The charge was trademark infringement, based on the copying of Gibson’s headstock design. The plan was to seriously damage the Japanese makers. You know, sweep into the Summer NAMM show and scoop up the entire Ibanez display. Take that! Of course, here’s where the unintended consequences come in.

1982 Daion Savage Power Mark XX Electric Guitar

First of all, Gibson hadn’t noticed that Ibanez had already changed its headstocks. In an amusing twist, they actually looked more like Guild heads grafted on Gibson guitars! No confiscations. Furthermore, Elger reached an out-of-court settlement agreeing not to copy Gibson headstocks. More importantly, the lawsuit gave Hoshino a kick in the pants toward coming up with new designs that American guitarists wanted anyway. The copy era had run its course. Americans wanted natural-finished guitars made out of exotic woods. The result was Ibanez Musicians, Aria Pro II Rev Sounds, and various very cool Westones. Not to mention Travis Beans and Kramers.

Which brings us back to this guitar, which appeared right in the middle of that natural craze. Daion was a brand that debuted in 1978, part of a collaboration between MusiConics International, Inc. (MCI) of Waco, Texas, best known as the makers of the legendary Guitorgan, and the luthier Hirotsuga Teradaira, a maker who specialized in cedar-topped guitars outfitted with brass nuts and saddles for increased sustain. The most famous product of this liaison was the asymmetrical acoustic-electric Daion Headhunter.

Daion introduced its first solidbody electrics—the Power series—in 1981 or thereabouts. There were two basses (Power Mark X-B, Mark X-B2) and either two or four guitars (Power Mark X, Mark XX, Mark XXV, Mark XXX). The Mark XX shown here (#820397) was the top of the line. This is just spectacular. First of all, it’s a neck-through-body guitar, the neck core consisting of two thick strips of rosewood with a thin piece of maple in the middle sandwiched between four plies of maple, two per side, themselves separated with a thin slice of rosewood. The wings of the body are another sandwich, this time two pieces of nicely figured ash on either side of another layer of rosewood. The beauty of the sandwich notion is that when you carve out a contour, like on the back of the beauty, you reveal the gorgeous rosewood. It would be unthinkable in these days of dwindling rainforest to use this much rosewood on a solidbody! Another law I always obey is when an electric guitar is made out of a good chuck of rosewood: buy it!

Of course there’s also the de-rigueur brass fittings and a pair of coil taps on the ballsy humbuckers. Did I mention the original green alligator hardshell case? This is sweet.

Daion actually produced several other models, including the cool Savage line, but the Power Marks are superfine examples of Japanese lathery flexing its considerable muscles following Gibson’s ill-timed attempt to put the kibosh on Japanese guitar making. They never could have imagined that their efforts to end copying would be so successful yet lead to guitars like this Daion Power Mark XX. Good name. Good law.

Sandwich Time (1982 Daion Savage Power Mark XX Electric Guitar) from MyRareGuitars.com

Back in the day, before the Internet brought cool guitars to your desktop, we used to have the pleasure of snooping out guitars in little out-of-the-way shops. Mac and Joe used to run one such parlor out on Woodland Avenue in Southwest Philly, a low-rent district for sure. After work I’d descend to the Green Line and catch either the 11 or 36 trolley, which dumped me full of anticipation in front of their store. What would I find today – a Hagstrom? A Framus?

1983 Electra Endorser X934CS Electric Guitar

One night we were hanging out near closing, when a fellow pulled his car up, ducked in and asked if we wanted to buy a Les Paul. To a guitar dealer, there are no finer words. To me (yawn), it was time to leave. Then he added, “Plus I’ve got this here Japanese Electra.” My ears perked up.

1983 Electra Endorser X934CS Electric Guitar

While Mac and Joe ogled the frankly boring mid-’70s LP, I was ogling one of the most gorgeous guitars I’d ever seen. Later I found out it was a 1983 Electra Endorser X934CS. A set-in neck with no heel. Mahogany with a carved maple cap that had flame so deep you got high staring at it. Finished in cherry sunburst, my favorite. Plus lots of that early ’80s brass for sustain. Sustain? These humbuckers, which turned out to be original and American, scream forever, enough to blister the paint off the other guitar. Besides having push-pull pots with coil taps and phase reversal. I’m a sucker for those every time. The fit and finish were impeccable.

This was my first encounter with an Electra, and I was hooked. Looking back in the pages of old Guitar Player magazines led me to St. Louis Music. A phone call led me to Tom Presley, the man who directed most of the Electra line through the 1970s and actually designed the Endorser. The Endorser actually was a straight, fancy version of part of the earlier Electra MPC line, which had the cool plug-in sound modules.

1983 Electra Endorser X934CS Electric Guitar

This guitar, indeed all of the Electras and later Westones were designed in the U.S. and built by the legendary Matsumoku factory in Matsumoku City, Japan, one of the great guitar makers. Matsumoku produced some of the higher-end Aria guitars (and some Epiphones) of the ’70s, and sold its own very fine Westones before St. Louis Music took over the brand name in ’84. Matsumoku also made sewing machines – go figure – and in 1987 or ’88 was bought by Singer, who shut down the guitar operation. The Yen was so expensive by then that it was pretty hard to export to the U.S. anyway.

1983 Electra Endorser X934CS Electric Guitar

Mac and Joe bought both guitars and continued to “ooh and aah” over the Gibson. I timidly asked how much for the Electra, and they waved their hands as if brushing a fly and said “Three bucks.” I left them to their ecstasy (mental) and, a big grin on my face, quietly slipped out with my treasure to catch the trolley back toward town. This Electra Endorser is still one of my favorite guitars to this day.

Hey, man. Wanna Buy a Les Paul? (1983 Electra Endorser X934CS Electric Guitar) from MyRareGuitars.com