Intro

Around 2013, I picked up my first professional guitar, an Aria Pro II Knight Warrior off of Craigslist. I saw professional due the specs of this guitar: Kahler Flyer Tremolo Bridge, Locking Nut, Nice tuners, 22 frets, and blade pickups. An Aria acoustic was the guitar I learned how to play on, so I knew the name Aria. Aria Pro II was their 80’s attempt at modern rebranding. This guitar started the long line of acquisitions of vintage Japanese and other obscure instruments, and lifelong appreciation of quality and how to find it.

With an ad this racey, how could the guitar not be good?

Knight Warrior ad 1

I paid something like $60. The Tremolo was missing nearly half of the parts. Stickers littered half of the guitar. The guitar was in playable, yet rough shape.

my Knight Warrior, first known picture

After replacing many of the Kahler Flyer parts that were missing or worn - fine tuning screws, locking nut screws and nuts, and the cantilever spring assembly, from Frets On The Net, I played it for about a year.

At some point and time, probably around 2014, the pickguard around the jack broke, due to a poor design of having one mounting screw near the jack. It seems Aria knew about this issue, and changed the pickguard design the next year, to have two screws near the jack.

Due to the broken pickguard, the guitar then went into cold storage in my closet.

You can see it in this photo Knight warrior highlighted in guitar collection

Pickguard Fabrication Attempt 1

Soon after, I had attempted to make a new pickguard out of a sheet of polycarbonate, by tracing the old one and following the line with a Dremel. But, after a few slips with the dremel tool, the quality of the output just wasn’t what I wanted. So, back into storage the guitar went. hand made pickguard attempt

Pickguard Fabrication Attempt 2

About 8 years later, I decided to try to find a new pickguard. I found PickguardPlanet, who were very helpful (at first). I accidentally ordered the wrong pickguard, but was ghosted by them, trying to get the right one. Apparently there were 2 shapes, one to fix the breaking by the jack, that all of these models had.

wrong pickguard from pickguard planet

Back in storage the guitar went.

Pickguard Fabrication Attempt 3

Until my friend had purchased a 4’x4’ CNC router table. And she offered to let me use it? Score. I have some experience with GIMP, so I scoured the internet for pictures of Knight Warriors, and scaled them with pictures of my pickguards, and made a vector file to cut a new one.

I used a hand full of pictures, and scaled/skewed them all. This is probably the most layers I’ve worked with.

Knight Warrior images overlayed to show how many image layers I was working with

I then used a Cricut to check the fit, by cutting a sheet of paper and dry fitting it to the guitar. And, once that was adjusted, I knew it was time to submit it to the router.

I had earlier purchased 2 sheets of Fleor brand Pickguard Plastic from Amazon. I chose the ‘Tiger Stripe’ pattern to emulate the original decal that covered the guitar, placed there by its previous owner. I also purchased material to match the OEM guard.

It only took 2 sheets of plastics worth of trial and error to get right, with the Tiger Stripe material creating a finished product.

router with plastic 1 router with plastic 2

After a successful cut, I threw on the drill press to chamfer the mounting screw holes. Then it was time to finally mount it.

Assembly

New pickguard in place

Clean Up

Noticing the guitar could use a good cleanup and setup, I disassembled everything. I filled some of the dents, cracks, and scratches with CA glue, and buffed the paint to a shine. I resoldered all of the broken and bad connections. What I originally thought was a coil tap is instead a tone bypass. I added a few layers of homemade shielding paint. I added copper shielding tape to the back of the pickguard. I leveled, crowned, and buffed the frets. I oiled the fretboard. Then reassembled it all.

This guitar plays like a dream. It stays in tune, has a unique tone, a comfortable neck, and is pretty light. The sound of it reminds me of my college years, where it was one of my main escapes from the stresses of college. This guitar is equivalent in build quality and materials to made in America Fenders. It is a true professional player’s guitar. Guitar looks good