1983 Aria Pro II PE-R100. Purchased on March 24, 2010. I happened to come across this guitar while browsing Rakuten Marketplace.

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It was from a certain famous music store, and the price was just over 80,000 yen, including tax. At the time, I wasn't particularly interested in Aria guitars, but it was an impulse buy, and I ended up purchasing it.

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The PE-R series, which I hadn't held in 30 years since trying it out at Shinseido in Utsunomiya, was back in my hands. I had completely forgotten the feel from back then. Holding it again after such a long time, I reminisced about how thin it felt.

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One point of curiosity is why such a high-grade guitar was given a solid color finish. The craftsmen must have known that such a finish would obscure the beautiful wood grain and suppress the natural vibrations of the wood. Was there an unwelcome demand from management?

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When I played it acoustically, it had a tight feel, as one would expect from its three-layer structure of maple-mahogany-maple. The finish might also have an impact. When I connected it to an amplifier, it produced a well-defined sound, but many might desire a deeper low-end resonance.

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The neck has a standard fingerboard shape, making it easy to play high frets. Prices have been soaring lately, making it hard to find one. This is not my fault; it might be attributed to Masaharu Fukuyama, who publicly stated on the radio that he bought this guitar with his part-time dishwashing job when he was 16 years old. (Updated on August 16, 2016)"