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just off the Fedex truck!

But how does it sound, now, Steiner? Quickish ancedote: Headed to a party in my S-10 about thirty-five years ago. Rutting season, and I was being careful! Middle of nowhere, small herd pops out of the scrub pines to my right. I t-boned a large doe. Stove in the front end, radiator Swiss Cheesed. Truck, with the headlights still on, sits there steaming like the Union Pacific's Big Boy. This is pre-cell phone days. I have about ten miles to hike back to town. About that time a car, big Buick Estate Wagon, rolls up from the other direction. I wave, and the car stops about twenty-five yards past me, about where I hit the deer. Great! A ride home. Two Good Ol' Boys pile out of the Buick, pitch the deer into the back...and take off. I got home at about 3:00 a.m.

All this talk of H530s started me thinking that one would be quite nice, then I got a message from Cliff Brown of 633 amps. One of his customers had an H530 to sell and, knowing I was a fan of Heritage guitars, would I be interested? Er, yes... Cliff gave me his contact details, I got in touch and arranged to have a look at the guitar, which was located about 1.5 hours drive away. Suffice to say it's a 2018 model in Antique Natural, and playing it through a 633 Firefly (like the one I recently bought) was enough to convince me to buy it. It's light, 2.69kg or 5lb 15oz, and those Lollar P90s sound great! Some pics...

Thanks for the suggestion to buy from Green Oak, unfortunately they didn’t have the color I wanted but I was able to talk to Heritage and order this!

An image has been leaked to the press.

I thought I was done chasing the full-hollow-with-humbuckers will o' the wisp. Then, the esteemed Talisman Rich posted in another thread that Wolftone makes HBs in P-90 size . . . Little wheels in little head turned . . . Found a 2023 530 in ebony at Dave's Guitar for $1750 and bought Wolftone Legends for it . . . Ebony is good color so I can tell my axes apart: 535 in OSB, 530 in red, and now RichCaster in ebony . . . Looking for good bankruptcy lawyer . . .

To put this politely, reasonable people have different opinions. I have no quarrel with someone whose preferences differ from mine. I would appreciate a certain humility that precludes stating an opinion as a universal fact though. I do understand that love of guitars is a certain manifestation of mental illness that I suffered with most of my life. I am confident of this much on the topic: weight relieved H-150s weigh less.

In my life I have witnessed in myself and others the same feeling of an instrument not fitting well. I have also seen looks of disbelief. A friend of mine was asigned the upright bass in high school. I had a cello. It didn't matter how we liked it. I had a Howard Roberts as a kid. It was big. My teacher said after a while I'd get used to it. He was right. But we are grown men. We don't have to put up with that anymore. One of my guitar teachers was Joe Fava. We were in his small teaching room, and he would smoke. He focused on technique and stopped me everytime my fingers didn't move correctly. It was constant criticism with occasional "good". I practiced this uncomfortable technique two hours a day. Eventually it became natural. Violin players told me the same thing. I wouldn't dare to complain. He'd say play your instrument properly or quit. Eventually it because okay. I went through the same with a bass clarinet. I have a H-575, two actually since I'm borrowing one, but like the feel of the H-530 a bit better. To get sentimental, I enjoyed the days being a kid and having a strong teacher who told me exactly what I'm supposed to do. It cut out a lot of noise from the other voices. Then Hendrix came along.

Ive never worried about dinging or scratching a guitar, Im going to at some stage if Im going to put serious play time on it. My most gigged guitars are the most dinged, scratched and worn. What relics are good for, for me, are taking in trades, because they are easy to sell on, there is a demand. I took on a lot of them because of that. Oh man, I spent so much time trying to be less direct. I cut paragraphs out and redid them, then deleted them, reworded what I kept, re edited again.....all I want to say is, I cant stand relic'd guitars

NIce job, Brent. It totally baffles me as to why someone would want to mark up a beautiful, new, expensive guitar like that. I just don't get it.

I've never licked a guitar, so I couldn't imaging re-licking a guitar.

I thought they were closing up shop and moving everything to Guangdong China. Next year's PSP was going to be held at the Country Inn in Guangzhou with a tour of the tin shack where all the guitars are made! Man, the rumors that get started on the internet! You just don't know who to believe anymore. As for the Standard II collection, I kinda like the idea. In-house pickups is a good thing. Keep those winders going. I would have to feel the neck... I don't need a Louisville Slugger but a little bit of beef seems to give a bit more stablility. Weight relief is a good thing. Witness the recent purchase of my H-530. Much more weight relief and I would be playing air guitar!

IIRC, the last truly great Heritage announcement was the introduction of the beautiful H-717 archtop. I have no idea what's coming, but the speculation gave me another excuse to post this amazing (expensive) archtop. 🙂 https://heritageguitars.com/pages/core-collection-h-717?srsltid=AfmBOoqdWZn8YIQImFh9CiCxkXtGveUNpvw0waqpsgALxuwmldPvLK_c

Rob, this may have more than one meaning.....

MORE AFTERS…

Some relics look like real playwear. The finish cracking on every square inch and a few dings don't. This one is decent. Still I won't pay to have it done.

I met a girl like that in Ipanema...aaahh. I think there was a saxophone playing in the background but I might be mistaken after all it was the 70s.

Really? $150 for a Squire Strat, $2.59 for a can of Zippo lighter fluid, $.99 for a box of matches. PRESTO! It's like printing money! 🔥🔥

Oh fuck!!! That sucks. He was a great guy.

Says the guy who owns the most Fab of Millies.

This is so odd. As mentioned, there was an uproar when Gibson did this. There was this argument that heavy guitars sound better and have more sustain. I have owned two weight relieved H-150s, one I got by accident since I ordered it. The Heritage dealer didn't even know it was weight relieved. He would have charged more. I very much approve of this design. If it adversely affects sustain or tone, I don't notice.

"I'm underwhelmed" he said in true curmudgeonly fashion . . .

I think that the change over started with the design of the custom core series. It seems that now they are spreading it though the whole line. There were still guitars with the narrow headstock. I don't know if it qualifies as a big announcement. There have always been wider headstocks on 575s, Eagles, 525s, etc. The narrow ones were on the 140, 150, 535, 137 lines.

-->At one of the PSP's, a large stash of old Banjo parts was spotted, and it's been a long-running joke that Heritage would build Banjos again They did build a few at one point Myself, I was hoping for some Accordions too

I guess we'll find out on the 25th. Otherwise its just wild speculation & banter

Isn't this just like guitar people. If you have humbuckers you're putting in P-90s. If you have P-90s, you gotta replace them with humbuckers!

OK, here's the deal. Next PSP, you bring your 530, I'll bring mine. You pick a song and let me know and we'll jam on it! When mine showed up, it had been sitting in the Fed Ex truck and temps were in the mid 90s. It took a few days for things to settle in. The low E string was buzzing, but a truss rod tweak and bridge adjustment to get it back to 5/64" pretty much cleared that up. It rings nicely now. Interestingly, it sounds quite different from my H-525, even though both are maple laminate tops with Lollar P90s. I don't know that the pickups are the same version, as the guitars were built many years apart. I took the 530 to jam with some friends, and it pretty much sat on the neck pickup the whole day, just some knob twisting and hitting a couple of pedals over 3 hours.

Yeah, that's part of the new "sustainable sourcing" initiative.

Maybe they are going back to using wood pickguards?

Well, in any event, I did say I was being careful....

I don't know if simply buffing would have fixed it, but the advantage of nitro is that it could have been resprayed with clear and then buffed out. I don't know that Heritage would do it but Arnie Hileski or Dave Teske might have been able to do it.

Who’s impressed with these? I am. Actually considered shelling out for one in bourbon burst but right now financially it’s not the right time.

I don't think that any of us have been privy to the current practice. Some years back they had the LW series which we saw, and of course we are familiar with the Millennium. I don't remember seeing any H150 body blanks with chambers when we visited back in August. Tim Pierce just did a video about his special guitar and their new Standard II guitars.

No worries.. As you know, it's always so easy to work on the electrics of a semi hollow guitar. 😕 When I was working on my 535, somehow the lead from a tone cap broke off. Turn the knob and ... nothing changes. So it's pull the harness out and do it all again.

Thank you Lyle!! I cannot imagine why someone would take a $4900 guitar and take sandpaper to it??? All I can say is….DONT DO DRUGS. LOL. 😆

Snagged a new Strymon Flint for a good deal this past week. It offers a nice simple Reverb circuit as well as a Tremolo circuit with three flavors each and just enough knobs to tweak your sound without it turning into a science project.

Nothing too serious, this time. Just a cracked fascia. I was focused on the road and when she jumped out, I slowed expecting her to continue on. It looked like she was trying her best to back-pedal so I ventured into the other side of the road. I wasn’t quite quick enough.

I was looking at Wolfetone's website yesterday and it looks like they will make any of their humbuckers in P90 dogear setup. https://www.wolfetone.com/product/dachswolff/

Golly. When I intersected with a local deer while on a 55mph road last Thursday it never occurred to me that I was increasing the value. I feel better.

If they make a 717 Ascent I’m going for it!!

Congrats! I love mine CC model. The cherry is my 2nd color choice.

I'm guessing at least a pound. Did you get to hear Pete Farmer when he was pointing out the different select pieces of mahogany. They had the ones for Standards, then for Custom Cores, and then over on the other rack, were the "hold these for special things". Once Sweetwater gets in the Standard II guitars, you'll see exactly how much difference there is since they post the weights of the guitars.

While at PSP, I was checking out a few guitars, but since I had to get over to the VFW, and had little room in the car there was no time to sit down with Mike and discuss things. So yesterday, I gave him a call and now there will be a new addition to the family.....

All joking aside, that is a masterpiece!

I heard from now on all hollowbodies will come with routed Kahler tremolo systems with those locking nut things on the headstock

Will (skin slammer) would jump on a Heritage accordion! Perhaps ABC will show old Lawrence Welk reruns in their 11:30 slot. At the 2012 PSP when I ordered my 147 black beauty Marv took me in a back room to choose a board of Korina for the body, I spied several "V" bodies left over from the Gibson days. Some time ago I posted a photo of them.

That's the wider headstock. This is the older headstock.

The TKL cases that came with my previous Heritage guitars were made in Canada.

Good decision. It's much easier to convert a humbucker equipped guitar to P90 than the other way around. There are many quality humbucker-sized P90 on the market. Sometimes the best solution is to buy another guitar. At least, that's what I've been telling my wife over the years. 🙂

Wait a week. I NEED a Heritage bespoke banjo! Do Dah…