Ha, ha. Me too. I bought one in Japan in the 80s after selling my Lyn Elder lute in Switzerland. Bit of a step down, but I had been lute less for 5 years. My friends ran a music school and it was Yamaha affiliated. They supposedly got me a deal. I had a choice between two Aria lutes for the same price. I stupidly chose the 8 course standard model instead of the 7 course one that was the luthiers model. I ended up having it rebuilt by Hiro Watanabe at one point.
On Sep 23, 2016, at 7:23 AM, Ron Banks <ron.ba...@rwbanks.com> wrote: > Bruno, > > If I remember correctly, the Aria/Kadono lutes may have been marketed > through Yamaha at one point. I bought one new in 1980 (either an L-75 or an > L-85) through George Dauphinais for $600. For entry level instruments, they > were reasonably light, with a decent sound. They also made a Baroque lute > at one point. > > Mine (a later model) had a very simple rosette that was router-cut, and an > almost parallel fingerboard/neck (which helped me learn how to tighten frets > soon after I bought it) . The open pegbox on the later models was pretty > flexible, but it surprisingly held tune well, and proved to be very durable > over almost 20 years of ownership. I still have a loft of fond memories of > that instrument. > > Ron Banks Ed Durbrow Saitama, Japan http://www.youtube.com/user/edurbrow?feature=watch https://soundcloud.com/ed-durbrow http://www9.plala.or.jp/edurbrow/ View my music video Trumped at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xrLe6TWO16A&ab_channel=EdDurbrow -- To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
