Aims Tele Style

What do you want me to say, it is a tele guitar from AIMS. It has two pickups, a volume, a tone, a three what swithc and a place to plug it in. What more do you need?

It is your basic Tele style body, hardware, bridge pickup, lip stick tube neck pickup. The hardware was really old school stuff. The guitar is a blonde with a black pick guard. It came with a maple neck and maple fret board.

The guitar was given to me by a drummer who's brother died in a car accident (high school drinking). That was in 1981. The guitar was made in the early 1970's.

Over the years this guitar has had several lives. The only parts still on the guitar that are original are the excellent Aims body, the chrome control plate, the guitar jack plate and the strap buttons.

I replaced the neck with another maple tele neck/fret board (better quality neck and frets), new tuning pegs, a new tailpiece, new pots and a new three way switch.

I took out the bridge pickup in 1981, routed out the guitar and cut out the tele tailpiece to take a DiMarzio Super Distortion humbucker pickup with the lip stick tube unhooked. The next life was a Seymour Duncan Alnico II Humbucker, with the lip stick tub wired up. Next I replace the lip stick tube with a Seymour Duncan antiquity lip stick tube. After that I tried a Seymour stacked lip stick tube.

I finally got the idea to put P90 soapbar pickups in the guitar. I moved the bridge pickup up to and routed for the middle pickup position and routed the neck slot for the p90, filled the old holes with clay and covered the space with a custom made pick guard (ala strat). Moving the bridge pickup to a middle position helped a lot. The guitar is a bright sounding instrument, so the pickup close the bridge was brighter than I could handle.

The p90 where really nice, but a little weak. I finally replaced the p90's with DiMarzio DLX p-90 soapbar (neck) and DiMarzio Virtual P-90 soapbar (bridge/middle).

All I can say now, OMG. I am amazed.

With all of the changes I outlined in the features, the sound is a 10. The tonal quality is somewhere between single coil fender and gibson humbucker. The resinence of the body is a perfect match with the DiMarzio DLX and Virtual P90 pickups. The mids are rich and edgy, the lows are solid, not overbearing and not mushy, and the highs dig in just right without the bite.

Most of the time I plug this guitar straight into a Fender Blues Junior with a few tricks on it (no fancy mods to the amp, just better tubes and a celestion speaker). If the venue is big enough, I will plug into my Fender Blues Deluxe Reiisue. But that amp is so loud usually don't drag it out.

The finish... hmmm. This guitar is my old bar blonde. The body is beat to hell with little nicks and dings. God I love this guitar. I did the setup and it is perfect (imho)

I will rate the AIMS guitar as a 10 because of the amazing tonal quality of the wood in the body and how it has aged and lasted through freezing winters (sub zero), dry baking summers, humid sultry summers, plenty of sweat and beer from playing bars. I put high quality hardware and parts on this baby. She is solid and will last a million lifetimes.

N/A

After 30 years and seven different lives, the bar blonde is perfection. As I said earlier, the only parts still on the guitar that are original are the excellent Aims body, the chrome control plate, the guitar jack plate and the strap buttons.

The body is an amazing piece of wood. You can't buy anything better.

With the latest life and configuration of my bar blonde, she is never to going to change again.

Great sounding guitar. I replaced the bridge pickup witha Dimarzio distortion pickup. It made the guitar come alive.

Nice playing guitar. A dream to play.

The guitar has no problems and plays great and holds tuning very good.

Never needed it. These guitars are very rare. Its hard to find any information on Aims.

I would rate this guitat a 9 out of 10.

This guitar was made about 1974 in Japan (?) It is a solid body 2-pickup guitar patterned after a late 50's Fender Telecaster. The body finish is off-white (tending to yellow) and the neck and fingerboard appear to be rock maple. The head has a flame maple veneer, with a gold accented scroll-script "Aims" that looks a little (very little) like "Fender" if you read it too fast. The pickguard is black. It came with two Maxon pickups (a Santa Barbara company that originally made replcement parts in the 1960's to fit Fender guitars, and who now makes electronic guitar effects). The bridge pickup is a hot little number, punchy with high end and squeal...sounds like Jerry Reed's Tele here. The neck pickup was oversized (a Strat-sized chrome covered job) instead of the "real" lipstick-style Fender pickup. It died, and was replaced with a Seymour Duncan performer Strat pickup, which works well. The bridge is in the Tele "ashtray"-style with three adjustable "T"-struts. The strings are mounted through the back of the ashtray base, instead of through the body. (I may modify this eventually, although I haven't yet and bought the guitar new in 1975). Tuners are decent chrome plated jobs, nothing special. The volume and tone knobs shedded their chrome after 10 years and were replaced. The three-way switch is a little flimsy (although it still works after 26 years). Case is a rectagular plywood coffin with a red felt liner that always smells "funny", probably from the glue.

I play what used to be called "outlaw country" and blues. (I guess that makes me a redneck with soul!) The Aims works fine for both. Friends who play Hendrix make it sound like Jimi at Monterey. It is a versatile axe, with lots of clear bright punch, especially at the high end. It is also fantastic way down low a-la Duane Eddy and Junior Brown. The guitar can wail and scream, or whisper. For years I played it through a 40-watt Gibson. Now I run it through a Crate DXJ-112.

I have to watch the treble on this one...it can be almost nasal and whiney in its twangy-ness.

I got this at a little guitar shop whose bread and butter was the Aims-Randall amplifier line. They did a pretty good job of setting it up for "everyman". I took the action down and adjusted the bridge to make the harmonics more true. The pickups were fine out of the box. The flaws were few: one of the position marker dots on the side of the fingerboard was a little smudged. The base of the "ashtray" bridge assembly was a little rough. Since almost all Tele players leave the cover off the bridge/pickup, this was noticeable. I've live with it. The cord-connector port is rarely intermittent ($5 to change it, but so far I'm too lazy.)

This guitar would make a great second guitar for the stage. It is very solid, and has withstood many trips coast to coast. The hardware (except for one pickup) is original and working just fine. The finish is decent...the dings and scratches all have their stories. There is no checkering, no crazing, no peeling at all. Always have a backup guitar, no matter what your primary axe may be!

I have had no contact.

I have been playing for 35 years. Other instruments I play include: three Giannini Brazilian acoustics (12-str craviola, 6-str dreadnaught, classical), Gibson J-200 (almost a virgin), Gretsch G2404. My amps are a Gibson 40w ss piece-o-crap, and a sweet Crate DXJ-112. If lost or stolen, I'd probably replace it (the Aims) with a Mexican Fender Telecaster (adjusted for inflation, a less expensive guitar of similar quality, and with the real brand name!) I love the action, I like the sound, I hate that I did not buy a used pre-CBS Fender at the time for a little more money...but who doesn't?

I bought this when I was a teenager, and traded in a now-collectible Univox Mosrite copy that was a really nifty little guitar. The Aims-Randall dealer really pitched this Aims Tele-copy. They explained that "Aims" was actually engineers and craftsmen from Fender who were disgruntled with CBS and so went off to make instruments and amps according to Leo's old philosophy. The amps were really solid; the guitars were rank knock-offs for the most part, except for (of course) this Tele-copy. Maxon pickups were popular replacements in the late 60's; this had Maxons. The highly desireable maple neck-maple fingerboard, off white body and black pickguard ("just like Keith Richard's Tele") made this a standout on the rack. The punchy hot Tele sound through their 100-watt Randall demo amp made the sale.