Aria Pro II ST-02-3X

This guitar has a strat-shaped body (tobacco burst) made of plywood. The thin neck is made of maple with a rosewood-like fretboard and 22 frets. The headstock is kinda Ibanez goes Tele. It has 2 pots, 1 volume and 1 tone and 3 pickups in S/S/H configuration cotrolled by a 5 way switch. The humbucker can be split with a push/pul switch in the tone pot. The bridge is a licensed Floyd Rose trem with a locking nut. The output jack is not where you would expect on a strat style guitar. It's at the bottom of the guitar (LP style).

The sound is very much strat like, very chimy and bright. The previous owner had very thin strings on it and it sounded very thin and weak. I replaced them with 0.11's and now it sounds more fat and has more volume. I run it through a Laney LC15 tube amp and I can get lots of different sounds with this guitar. Especially the p/p switch can make a difference when you split the humbucker (great feature!).

I mostly use it for clean sounds (maybe slightly overdriven), but when run through a distortion it sounds good too. I prefer a Les Paul for that kind of sounds though.

I think it sounds the best when you add a little gain. When played ultra clean you can hear that the pickups are a little cheap. This guitar is therefore probably a good blues/rockguitar (my style!) and maybe good for metal with the proper distortion.

I don't know how it left the factory, but the previous owner played with the wrong strings. The bridge was set up wrong (saddles in wring order), the neck needed adjustment.

When I changed the strings to 0.11's I adjusted the trem springs, adjusted the neck with the truss rod, switched the the saddles on the bridge, adjusted the studs.... Took me over 3 hours to get it right, but it was worth it. I give this a 9 because now it is a very playable guitar with a very nice sound. If I hadn't changed anything it would be a 5...

For me it's a good guitar and I think it will last at least 2 decades. For a professional player it can do well as a backup but never as a main axe. It is a budget guitar, a lot better then an Affinity Strat, but still a budget guitar...

The pots and the 5 way switch will replaced very soon because they are really poor quality.

never dealt with em...

I bought this guitar because I wanted stratocaster sound. I checked out other guitars in this pricerange but this one seems to have the best value for money. Lots of features and acceptable strat sound. It feels way better than the Affinity Strat. It does not have the quality of my other guitar (Epi Les Paul) which is my main axe, but it does well enough. I love the p/p switch to split the humbucker. This feature I actually discovered when I removed the pickguard to clean the 5 way switch and I saw a switch mounted under the tone pot. This was a nice surprise because I think the previous owner didn't know this either.