Serial dating sets this guitar as a 1978 Matsumoku, lawsuit era, Gibson Dove copy. Up for sale is a cool and clean 1970s made in Japan Aria AF255 Mach 1 J200 Copy. Aria & Co's acoustic guitar W-200 only! Martin logotype of Aria & Co notation! MADE IN JAPAN made in Japan! It is a very super beautiful item that can not be thought of as a thing very close to ~ 50 years ago!

DATING JAPANESE-MADE FENDER INSTRUMENTS Records on early Japanese-made Fender instruments are not complete and are therefore not completely definitive for dating purposes. As always, serial numbers should only be used as a guide for dating and should be used in combination with known age-related specifications to help identify the production year of an instrument.

Six digit serial numbers date from the 70s, covering '71 through '80. Seven digit serial numbers date from the 80s, covering the period '81 through '90. The first digit gives the year. Yours is a seven digit, starting 7, making it a 1987.

There weren't many models in the XRB series, but what ones were manufactured appeared between '87 and '89. To the best of my knowledge these were manufactured in Japan, although Aria did move a large portion of its production to Korean at this time, '87 onwards.

Edited February 15, 2010 by noelk27. I think I'm right in thinking if the neck plate doesn't read Made In Japan, then it's Korean. Matsumoku stopped building Aria Pro (or anything else) in 1987, and I would expect that economic conditions would have meant that only the higher-end Arias would have continued being Japanese-made. Apropos of nothing, early Matsumoku serials, eg on the 'Steel Adjustable Neck' plates, appear to be random & not dateable. Early (pre 75-ish) set & through-neck instruments appear not to have serial numbers at all.

[url='Aria Archive pages[/url] [i]imply[/i] that these are Korean. There's also a poor quality [url='Catalogue Scan[/url] here. As Jon rightly states, 1987 marks the end of the Matsumoku plant - although precisely [i]when[/i] it actually closed seems to be rather elusive (it was ownedby Singer & they were having financial difficulties.) Exactly what got made where in this transitional year is open to debate. I used to own a Korean-built Magna Series 5 string & it shared several design features with your XRB - notably the 'conventional' pickups, 'bent tin' bridge & the small dot markers. I don't see any string trees, does your headstock have a backwards slant as well?

Also, is the neck painted or clear coated? The nearest thing to the XRB in the [url='Catalogue[/url] are the RSB/Straycat models which have a very different flavour - pointy horns, soapbar pickups, die cast bridges, larger dot markers etc. - all of which shout Matsumoku. My money's on yours being a 1987 Korean-built example. [quote name='Bloodaxe' post='746452' date='Feb 15 2010, 08:20 PM'][url='Aria Archive pages[/url] [i]imply[/i] that these are Korean. There's also a poor quality [url='Catalogue Scan[/url] here. As Jon rightly states, 1987 marks the end of the Matsumoku plant - although precisely [i]when[/i] it actually closed seems to be rather elusive (it was ownedby Singer & they were having financial difficulties.) Exactly what got made where in this transitional year is open to debate. Aga bai halla machaye re hd video song download.