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I'm going to stop talking about the Unholy Revelations for a second. Sure, we're at the part where we moved the band into my folks basement. Yes this did induce their wrath. But there is another moment just prior to that which is more important than anything we would write and record in my parents basement.

The irony is that my dad was directly responsible: For my sixteenth birthday he took me to Songbird Music, a local second hand music shop, and let me pick out a guitar.

This was HUGE. I honestly never thought the day would come where my old man would fork over some of his hard earned cash to get me an electric guitar. I guess in the end he saw that nearly a year had passed since Doug gave me the shitty Sears guitar and I was still at it. He probably figured that I'd be at it for a while to come and decided to up the bucks to help me move along with my new passion.

After a couple of hours of trying out guitars, I settled on an Aria Pro II. Besides the fact it sounded killer, the biggest reason was that it also looked killer: Explorer shape, black to dark blue "sunburst" (edges were black which faded into a dark blue center), 2 stock Aria humbucker pickup, and gold hardware.

Pretty much this minus the weird paint job.

The head was almost identical to this (other than the colour and the name - mine was not a ZZ Deluxe - the only other difference was that mine did not have string locks):

That guitar stayed with me for at least five or six years. It made it though my first ever live performance and hundreds of jams. I never had a case for it. I'd just sling it over my shoulder and head to wherever it was I was heading; rain, sleet, or snow. It even helped me pick up my second, serious girlfriend. The Aria was such a beast that it continued working even after I had a mild, drug induced freak out while playing, threw it on the ground and stomped the poor motherfucker hard enough that it split in three. Half a role of book tape later, it was still singing - and continued to do so for another full year.

Out of all the instruments I've owned, the Aria was, by far, my favorite. I can't really tell you what happened to in the end. All I remember was that it was put aside after I'd bought a Yamaha electric with a tax return... I think I may have stripped it for parts that never got used.

Whatever happened to it, I gotta say it was awesome. Simply awesome.