The Toledo Guitar Page

The Toledo Guitar Page

If you have a Toledo guitar, you most likely don't know anything about it, other than the stamp in the neck plate "Made in Japan". Unless you were the kid who was the first owner, you have no idea how old it is.

Well... Good luck. All I can tell you is that these "Toledo" guitars were made by Aria Guitars of Japan under contract for the Canadian Conservatory of Music, a music school chain based in Toronto with braches all across Canada. The School went to Aria to supply them with playable and good value instrument that would be marketed to their own students. Everyone who has contacted this site has always commented on how well these guitars played, a testament to the roll of these guitars. The Conservatory imported Toledo branded Aria guitars through most of the 60's and early 70's. Any Toledo brand guitars found outside of Canada have been brought there buy their owners.

Aria Guitars is one of the older Japanese guitar manufactures, and they built a nice guitar with decent workmanship but unfortunately, just as a lot of guitars of the time, crummy electronics. Aria seems to have marketed guitars under many brand names, Toledo being one of them. If you compare an old Aria and Toledo guitar brand instrument, many of them have the same design elements including, overall shape, paint tones, pickups, bridges, switches, knobs, etc, and even the font used for the name plate is the same. Aria still builds an extensive line of guitars to this day.

Unfortunately, Aria web sites do not have any information on these old guitars, and there is little information about Toledo guitars out there on the web. This site is looking for owners of Toledo guitars to showcase their instruments here, and tell us whatever you can about them.

Please forward any info and pictures to Harold Dickert at hd@dickert.ca

Some of these photos have links back to the owners websites, so click the photos, do some surfing, and also check out the links below.

Home (to the Dickert Guitar site)