Aria 714-MK2

Is this double-cut a boutique bargain?

Aside from paying homage to a certain ’caster, the 714-MK2 is also a reissue of Aria’s long-running 90s range, once known as the Fullerton. Here, however, Aria has updated the format for today’s budget-conscious players.

The 714-MK2 certainly has ideas way above its price tag. That flamed maple top has a whiff of Suhr about it, while the roasted maple neck apes many of today’s Cites-conscious high-end guitar builds. The Fullerton’s original quirks remain, however, with the unusually swept scratchplate, single master tone knob and reversed input jack. The latter may look odd, but it means your cable is logically positioned to loop right round your guitar strap. And what’s that, a spoke-wheel truss

rod adjuster at the base of the neck? You betcha: a nice touch. The HSS pickup configuration is bolstered by another hot-rodded S-type staple in the form of a coil-split, activated by a push/pull on the – admittedly rather difficult to grab – tone knob.

The maple neck has a svelte, inoffensive C-shaped feel with a light finish halfway between gloss and satin. Add in the contoured heel and you get a playing experience above what you’d expect at this price. Up close, there are giveaways of the budget build: the top woods aren’t that well matched, and the neck pocket isn’t the tightest. Bar a slightly sticky G string, the tuners handle well, but the tremolo is the star of the show, with a performance better than some guitars twice the price, with buttery-smooth flutters, scoops and dives – we appreciate the tight-fitting whammy bar slot, too. After a short amount of playing time, the 714 holds its tune remarkably well.

Although the pickups recall Fender’s iconic design, they’re pretty distant echoes. Single coils are difficult to get right at this price: by their very nature, there’s a certain thinness to the sound, but Aria’s offerings don’t deliver the low-end required to balance out the top-end response, even if the in-between sounds aren’t half-bad. It’s less of an issue with the humbucker, which does a reasonable rock crunch, and the whole lot sounds more promising with a dose of gain and a twist of your amp’s bass knob.

it’s the tremolo that’s the star of the show

In the 714-MK2, Aria has produced a smooth-playing guitar with some features that punch well above its price point, and a few that remind us of the specs on budget guitars in the Fullerton’s original tenure – and that won’t cut it when Squier, Yamaha and Ibanez are producing bettersounding models at this price. However, if you’re not adverse to busting out the soldering iron, this will secure you a tasty boutique flavour at a fraction of the cost. Michael Astley-brown