ARIA PRO II ZZ & XX SERIES

     


 In 1982 Aria Pro II jumped on the flash guitar bandwagon in a big way. There had been many incarnations of the flying V and the Explorer type models but Aria pushed the envelope and made a large amount of these guitars in various paint schemes. These were sold starting in 1983 and were all high quality guitars. Some models had more options than others but all were well built pro level guitars.




        Most bodies were made of alder with some being Canadian rock maple especially the later ones. Most all had coil split capabilities as well. Most all had some type of tremolo bridge. The lower models had a fender type. The next models up had the ACT 1 tremolo but by the end of the run Aria had developed the ACT 3 tremolo which locked both at the bridge and had the lock at the nut. These tremolos were excellent and almost never went out of tune. Pickups were either the excellent sounding MMK 45 which was Arias version of the DiMarzio Super Distortion, or the Pro Blade which was a MMK 45 with a strip of metal over the pole pieces for even more shredability!

 

   Aria also made artist models like Yngwies awesome XX flying V. He would eventually customize it and remove the bridge double coil and add a single on a slant as he favoured the single coil sound. They also made a Micheal Schenker model as shown below. Some of the harder to find paint schemes were the zerbra in white as well as the orange, the blood splatter, and the XX or ZZ logo on the body. They made many burst colors like blue burst, green and red as well. The purple is still my favorite and very rare. Sadly these stopped being made when production switched to Korea in 1987 but did surface in different incarnations.




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