Facelifts…Aria Pro II Knight Warrior

3bolt79

3bolt79

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I’m going to start off this thread by explaining to you what I mean by the term “Face Lift.” I have a few guitars in need of one. I am going to be leaving this thread as not open for reply for now, at least until I get the first guitar done. I have an 1985 Aria Pro II Knight Warrior and a 1985 Ibanez RG 110 that are in need of a little cosmetic restoration. They have plenty of scratches and other minor blemishes that need a little care. They are all original. They will get disassembled , cleaned, scratches filled and polished out, and then reassembled and set back up.

My Brian May Replica is kind of in the same boat. I will provide detailed pics of that one under the hood of that one as well. This may wind up turning into a few threads as I can only add 10 pics to each thread entry.

And now for some pics of the first victim…
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The Knight Warrior has a lot of fine scratches that don’t show up well in the pics. This is where I will Start and I will update as things progress. It’s coming apart.

I should also add…don;t be too shocked at all the stuff scattered around the guitar on the floor in the pics. I’m disabled and can’t stand in one spot for too long. It precludes me from being able to have a work bench, and I would just wind up on the floor anyway. So I just sit on the floor and do my work there in my guitar room.
 
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Well it’s now going on 3:30 and I’ve taken it apart and started working on the neck. I also polished the frets with my Dremel and some mildly abrasive metal paste polish on a felt wheel. Here’s some pics before rubbing the paint out by hand and then hitting it with a buffing pad on my drill.

Before:
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And After…

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On the face of the headstock you can see the seam through the paint where the halves of the neck are joined.
Here’s a look at the back of the neck before:
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And after…
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The white line to the right is just a reflection. The neck is smoother feeling now.

Here’s the body after cleaning the paint. It’s poly finish, so I just used a paper towel with winder to clean the surface. There are a few noticeable dings by the arm contour on the top. I’m not going to try to fix them, after all the guitar is almost 40 years old.

I removed the Kahler Flyer and am going to clean it. Avoid taking those apart boys and girls, if you can. They suck to put back together. I need to add a little bit of wood and glue to one of the mounting holes as a fair amount of sawdust came out with the screw, on the threads. Not sure what wood the body is made of. It isn’t plywood, but as far as species, I can’t tell.

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The metal rails on the pickups have some slight rust. I will polish those with a little Flitz metal polish. I am also going to try to smooth out the damage in the pickguard at the truss rod access. The previous owner, or owners, really chewed it up.
 
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Well, here it is all done. Polished, set up, and intonated. The rails on the pickups cleaned up nicely. I wasn’t able to smooth out the truss rod access hole in the pickguard because I couldn’t find the right tip.

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Do any of you all have one of these guitars? I paid 400 dollars plus 27 dollars shipping for this a couple of years ago. The MSRP when these came out was $399.00.

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Well, here it is all done. Polished, set up, and intonated. The rails on the pickups cleaned up nicely. I wasn’t able to smooth out the truss rod access hole in the pickguard because I couldn’t find the right tip.

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Do any of you all have one of these guitars? I paid 400 dollars plus 27 dollars shipping for this a couple of years ago. The MSRP when these came out was $399.00.
 
The thread is now open if anybody wants to reply. I just had it closed so I could get my pictures all done in order together. Any of you all ever had one of these guitars? The neck is super slim. A small C shape. And the frets are just regular mediums.

The rustiness cleaned off the rails pretty good. It has a push/pull pot to split the humbucker. Late 84 through u5 these guitars had the Kahler Flyer tremolo. The 1986 models started coming with a Floyd Rose knock off that was really pretty crappy IMO. The problem with the Floyd types was that they weren’t high quality like the Schiller made Floyd’s of the period, and if you needed parts, well good luck. Or you had the nightmare of fitting a real Floyd to the guitar, and at the time the job cost half of what the guitar originally did.

The pickups are Maxon. The singles are the same pickups that were in the Ibanez RS 430 that I just sold and the bridge pickup is the same as the RS 440’s of the day.

The RS Knight Warrior guitars aren’t really that valuable as a collectible unless they are in perfect condition. The ones with the Kahler tend to be more sought after. Realistically, mine would be considered in Very Good Condition. It has a few minor small dings. The frets are original, with minimal wear at the cowboy chord area. Everything else is original on the guitar, except the D’Addario Elliptical strap buttons. I still have the original, tarnished strap buttons in my tool box. They were really small, and pretty useless to be honest.

This is one of the guitars that I fantasized about when I was first starting out on guitar. The local guitar chain, called Music West at the time, had these, Ibanez, Westone, and Gibson at the time. They also had a couple of house brands called Mateo and Polaris.

I got my first electric guitar in 1983, from Music West. It was an Ibanez RS 100. It had a good neck, but had a POS plywood body with a fake, vinyl wood grain photo finish that eventually peeled off and the electronics were sub par. It was $99.00 IIRC. When this Aria came out about a year later, there was no way I could afford it, or the Ibanez RS 430 or 440, or any of the nicer Westones. They were all $400 or more. Just for comparison, they had a new Gibson Les Paul Custom Deluxe at the time for $900 new.

Anyways, I managed to get some of the guitars that I slobbered over as a young teen, as an adult, during the Pandemic. I finally got a near mint, green Ibanez RS 440 that was all original, with an intact original Pro Rocker Tremolo during the crud for $550.00. I enjoyed it for a few years and then came to the realization that I had best sell it before the infamous Pro Rocker bridge plate break occurred, which would have rendered the guitar worthless. It needed frets as well, and had I replaced the teeny factory frets with larger ones and re did the nut, I wouldn’t have been able to get as much for it. So, I sold it earlier this year. Here’s a pic of that one….

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The Aria Pro II Knight Warrior was about 50 bucks cheaper new than the Ibanez RS 430, but it was still a butt load of money for a 15 uear old. Minimum wage back then was $3.35. And that’s what you got at your afterschool job at Arby’s or Burger King.

George Lynch of Dokken played and endorsed Aria Pro II guitars and appears with one on the back of their Tooth and Nail album. Yngwie Malmsteen also played and endorsed them during his Alcatraz days. And let’s be real, these were much better quality for the money than anything fender was putting out between 1983 to1985. Although some of the MIJ 85 contemporary Strats were pretty nice, they had some quirks as well.

Here’s Yngwie rocking an RS Esprit….
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They always had ads that wouldn’t fly today. Their targeted demographic was definitely male.

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What do you all think of these guitars? Ever own any of the Aria Pro II guitars back in the day?
 
I don’t have one, but I’d like one. They look sharp. Nice job on the polish!
 
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