This sixth guitar that I'm working on is also an Aria brand instrument. It's another Strat copy.

This one has "Budweiser Aria" inscribed in black on the headstock and "TRUE B MUSIC" printed in big gold letters on the body.

The body is painted a bright fiesta red and will be in fair shape after I peel off the stickers and clean it. The fretboard is rosewood; the neck is maple. Radius is about 15 inches all the way. Fret width seems skinny to me at 0.087-inch. Neck width at the nut is 1.6955 inches. [Wow: That seems fairly wide compared to some of my other guitars.] Tuners are not sealed, but work tolerably. Pickguard, electronics, and pickups are standard for a Strat copy. The strings are really light, probably down to 0.08-inch on the high E. There are two gull-wing type metal string retainers.

The big problem with this guitar is that someone has drilled a very visible hole in the headstock at the point where the truss rod emerges. Someone also removed the original bridge and succeeded in replacing it with an obviously homemade version of a roller bridge. This bridge, though, is not adjustable for either string height or intonation and is not a tremolo bridge. In fact, it has no claw, springs, or tremolo block. For some unknown reason, a previous owner also felt the need to dig out the wood around the bridge area.

When I asked the pawn shop owner who was trying to sell the guitar to me why anyone would want to drill a hole in the neck, he turned his head aside and mumbled something about the guy wanting to hang the guitar up on a wall. [Honestly, I'd swear his face turned red when he said it. Some time passed before I found out why he might have been embarrassed about it. More on that later.]