NGD: Commodore/Aria 1532t

Discussion of vintage Jazzmasters, Jaguars, Bass VIs, Electric XIIs and any other offset-waist instruments.
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ShoeHaze
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NGD: Commodore/Aria 1532t

Post by ShoeHaze » Wed Jan 18, 2017 5:59 am

This is the my 3rd vintage guitar, 2nd offset and 1st guitar I have bought that I am not planning to extensively modify. Upon getting it out of the box I was struck by three things,
1. Its heavier than anything i'm used to (but a squier strat and a random plywood audition guitar arent exactly the best weight benchmark)
2. Its a really weird shape, but its not uncomfortable.
3. It feels really high quality and is wonderfully worn in.

And after tuning I was struck by how badly set up the intonation was, here is a picture from the ebay listing.

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It was either intonated by someone who had no idea how to, or was used in some sort of weird alternate tuning (there is also a patch of wear under the b and e string, so maybe they werent even fitted?). So after a brief set up and restringing it plays beautifully, with one small exception i'll come back to later. But for now here are a few more pictures.

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Now for the ugly parts. At some point it has had some sort of collision which looks like it nearly amputated the headstock, however the crack only spans one side of the neck.

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This appears to have taken out the nut and left a gap between the neck and fretboard. The gap has been filled with glue and the nut has been reglued. The gap filled with glue I can tolerate, however the nut is giving me intonation issues so although on some strings I can get the 12th fret in tune, the first fret will not be.

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As you can see the nut has been mounted at an angle. Does anyone have any experiance with removing the nut on guitars like this? I just need to take it off and then reglue it.

One thing thats surprised me about this guitar is just how little treble there is compared to most other guitars I have played, its very very punchy. Someone clearly loved it judhing by the amount of wear it has (through the finish on the arm contour in places).

A few more questions for you, will glueing back together the heavily cracked pickup covers with cyano acrylate have any negative effects on them? Is there any chances the guts from a convetion JM/Jag trem would fit so I have a usable trem? And does anyone have any idea when this was made or how to date it?

Also a few little curiosities. It has boths its original B taper 500k pots but one of them is set lower than the other for some reason.

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And the body is made of at least 5 pieces of wood on top of eachother, The bottom and top veneers, and two pieces of wood with a veneer between them for some reason. Also it appears the edges are painted black and then the full thing is bursted in red.

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So to end. Sorry about the awful quality of the photos, they dont really do justice to the lovely red, all I have is my phones camera right now. Also I love the feelings of the finish on this and the 4 ply pickgaurd, it just exudes character and quality. Overall I am happy with my purchase. Sorry if this is a little rambly, I am not verry good at expressing everything coherantly.

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FMD
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Re: NGD: Commodore/Aria 1532t

Post by FMD » Mon Jan 23, 2017 1:48 pm

Nice!

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dylanafghjkl
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Re: NGD: Commodore/Aria 1532t

Post by dylanafghjkl » Mon Jan 23, 2017 3:13 pm

Damn this is a super cool guitar

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