10pizza

just FYI: the pic of the Aria shown at the start of the topic is not mine. This one looks in very good shape, mine wasn't.

I don't think it's absolutely necessary to have roller saddles. Not using roller sadles will give a higher risk of string breaking when the saddles are rough, but this should be ok I think. I'll do a check on that anyway to be sure. Thanks for that remark.

A thought that just occured to me: would it be very difficult to change this body to a non-pickguard version? I'd have to fill up the routed cavity for the electronics and then route new ones from the back of course. It would also give me the opportunity to put the input jack in the side in stead of on top. I'll do a search to check if somebody has done this before this would be the end-result goal:

Me too! I just started working on my mosrite project, also with a Bigsby style trem, so I'm eager to see some succes stories!

Thanks for the feedback guys Here's some more info and pics. First some answers to the questions: Mickguard: isn't the guitar routed for the original trem? Yes it is, as you can see on the pic. I'm going to fill that up with a piece of Mahogany or something. The finish will be solid, so this should not be visible ( I hope ) I could put in a jazzmaster style trem, but I always loved the looks of the bigsby style and always wanted to try that on a guitar. To whitetrashrocknroll: what do you mean with changing the selector switch to the lower 'bout'? Do you have pics/stories about your work on your johnny ramone style mosrite? here's a pic of the sanded body front: and the back: Body back the fretboard: Fretboard and the peg: Peghead Newbie terror I was a bit scared yesterday when I read some posts about putting a TOM-bridge on a bolted-on guitar but since the original also had a TOM rollerbridge I think I should be ok. I'm going to try to do a dry-test when I receive the bridge so I can check if i need to put in an angle on the neck. Also I was scared that I ordered the wrong hardware because I didn't check the neck radius yet. Using the paper tool provided somewhere in this forum I determined that it's a 12" radius, the same as the Tunomatic, so I guess I'm lucky there. One question I have regarding to that anyway: It seems that all the tunomatic bridges you can order have a 12" saddle radius. Does that mean if you have a neck with a different radius you can not use a Tune-o-matic bridge? Coming up Friday I'll try to take the day off so I can try to make my own 12" radius sanding block using my router. I'll try to use the setup described in this forum. Also I need to remove the last frets from the neck. I'll try to use an iron to quickly heat it. The frets aren't glued in, but heating should help anyway. I'll buy some nippers and try to make my own fret-nipper. Keep those questions and remarks coming!

Hi all, I'm a 33-year old guitar-addict from the Netherlands I'm not new to this forum but this is the first time I'm actually going to do some handcraft on a guitar, so I'd just want to try to keep you informed around the progress. This is the guitar I'll be working on, a 1973 Aria Mosrite copy from Japan: Planned Work When I bought the guitar a year ago, It had a damaged tremelo system and also some of the frets were loose. Also the tuners were crap. I also don't like the guitars sunburst finish that much so here's what I'm going to do: - refretting the neck ( dunlop 6130 fretwire ) - refinishing the body in a Gold-finish - install new hardware: bridge/Tremelo/tuners - refinish the pickguard - put on a new headstock logo So the goal will be something like this, but with a black pickguard: Gold mosrite New hardware This is the hardware I'm going to use to install on the guitar. I'd prefer an original Moseley Trem, but these are very hard to find so I'll use this: Duesenberg D-5 super Tremola and Tunamatic Bridge: Duesenberg D-5 Duesenberg Tunamatic Gotoh SD-90M tuning machines ( vintage Kluson style ) Gotoh SD-90M Duesenberg style volume/tone knobs: The Knobs I hope to receive the parts this week. Current State Last week (one has to do something around christmas :-) ) I sanded of the original sunburst finish and I have now a clean body. I'll post pictures tomorrow. I also started to remove the frets. The loose ones are out but some were put in tight so I'll use the information I found on this forum to try to remove these without damaging the board. I already had to glue one chip back in, I'd rather avoid that. Also using the information I found here I hope to do the following this week: - determine the neck radius - routing my own radius sanding-block A few questions that I've got at this time: 1. Wouldn't it be possible to use the radius sanding-block also to radius the fretwire? 2. Is glueing the frets neccesary or optional? ok guys, thanks for your attention and I'll try to keep this updated.