I bought an Aria 714 DLX on Thursday ($459 at Weathers Music in Salem), brought it home and played for about an hour and a half. For those interested, it looks like this except that it’s see-through blue rather than red:

Here’s the sales info:

Unbelievably versatile H/S/H pickup set has more possibility when it on the 714–DLX Electric Guitar.

The Duncan Designed humbuckers at the neck and bridge provide chunky rhythm and dense lead tone while the Duncan Designed single coil in the middle provides brighter, edgier highlights, plus the bridge humbucker, directly mounted on the body one side, on the pickguard the other makes its tone more identical.

The Wilkinson VS-50K tremolo, a solid alder body, a rosewood fingerboard on comfortable maple neck serve for your ultimate usage.

Out jack is recessed in exquisite angle for your easier plug in and your active, stress-free performance.

3 pickup (H-S-H)

Aria 714–DLX Specifications:

• Body : Alder Quilted maple film top
• Neck : Maple, Bolt-on Joint
• Fingerboard : Rosewood
• Frets : 22F
• Scale : 648mm(25-1/2″)
• Pickups : Duncan Designed SC-102 Single coil x 1, HB-103 Humbucking x 2
• Controls : Volume, Tone, 5-position PU Selector SW x 1, Coiltap SW x 1
• Tailpiece : Wilkinson VS-50K Tremolo
• Hardware: Chrome

Non-guitar players will be forgiven if, like me, the above effectively comes at you like a bunch of nonsense words. The essential take-away, from my perspective, is that the Aria 714-DLX is a versatile, well-made instrument, capable of producing a variety of sounds. I’ve been playing it through my old Roland KC-500 amp; I can’t wait to hear what sounds I can generate with it once I plug it into the MOTU Traveler and feed the signal through Apple’s GarageBand or Logic, both of which have a variety of amp effects.

It’s unlikely that the Aria will appear on Garden of Memories except to provide background color. I’m not enough of a player (yet) to do much more than chunk out some chords. Nonetheless, I spent 90 minutes playing on Thursday—until my fingers were too sore to continue. Having never even touched, let alone played, an electric guitar before then, I have two observations: First, playing electric guitar feels amazingly powerful. Second, it’s amazingly fun. If some of that joie de vivre found its way onto Garden of Memories, I’d hardly be one to complain.