Leaderboard

Hello everyone from Rome! This picture says more than one which shows the details of the wood

Would have to be my 2019 DLB with ReWind Electric '58 PAFs and a pair of NOS black beauties. Gives that Tele on steroids vibe!

Multiple favorites for different reasons, but here’s one (if i have to pick just one):

A while ago, I started a band devoted to paying homage to the British Blues phenomenon, a movement that, quite simply, gave the world Rock(!) as we know it. It started with Eric Clapton essentially inventing "the Rock" sound in APril 1966 by plugging a Les Paul into a cranked Marshall and proceeding to let loose playing long, articulate, screaming and and soulful lead guitar, something that had never been done before, not to that extent and which spawned a myriad of bands that we all know and love in the process. For the record, this band's not a "tribute" as it's generally intended, I have absolutely zero desire to mimic someone else and/or reproduce someone else's solos note-for-note, no matter how famous, great, cool and historically important the player is; in truth ("Truth", great album!!!) I have been offered the position in 3 or 4 of such outfit and even though the players in question were among my main influences, I love 'em dearly, I graciously declined, it just goes against what I believe, which is to pay respetful homage to such cats by capturing the spirit, not the notes. By doing that you take your chances, of course, but that's excatly what those guys did in the first place, right?. Anyway, the band has played a handful of gigs in the Lndon area and next month we'll have the official launch in a specialised, highly respected top London club and this, my Heritage H150 will be the guitar I'll be using. A wonderful Custom Shop Les Paul Custom, which I love, will be there too but only as a spare in case I break a string or something, which very rarely happens! Yesterday we had a reharsal, just to finalise the set while next week a dress rehearsal is in the cards, but let me tell you that this guitar plugged straight into a valve 1/2 stack with just a Tube Screamer in between (an Ibanez TS808 DX, to be precise) didn't even sound close to perfection...it was actually perfect!!! The sound, the feel, oh my God, I hadn't played this guitar for few months and I was actually contemplating getting a XXX McCarty 594, an amazing guitar for sure, but once you have an Heritage H150 set up to perfection, and on this one I also replaced the original pups with a set of OX4 "Beano" pups (yeah, Beano, I know....!) frankly if you want a righteous Les Paul tone you don't need anything else. And my wife agrees.... For the record, according to the serial number this guitar was made on Nov. 13th 2000. I was also born in November, good month indeed...

Finally was able to get signed up, keep running into problems but now all is good. Really love my 2 Heritages (pics below) also had a CC H150, H-530 and a H-150 but like a dope I traded them in.

I don't know that this is my favorite, but it is up there. I posted this years ago. It's a 1999. If you flip the last three digits upside down, it's the mark of the beast. Pete Moreno did the circuitry. There are push-pulls for coil splitting and for blending the middle pickup.

Try to rotate them all but, this one the most. H-575 Custom with Seth's

Gotta say, Heritage has made some darn pretty gee-tars.

It's hard to choose favorites. Here are two. The first is a Johnny Smith 18". The second is a H-530 custom made with humbuckers.

What do they say? Love the one your with! Lately I've been playing this beauty, the one Kuz sold me! Marv put his special sauce into this paint job! And I had Dan at Mojo Axe make me cool looking vintage style pickguard so I can plant my pinky while I fingerpick on it! A few weeks ago. I pulled this one of the case and it was buzzing on the 3rd fret G note of the low E string. Well I noticed the strings hadn't been changed since I bought it from Kuz. How do I know that? They were D'Addarios, and I never use them. So I polished the frets, put my favorite Pyramid nickel roundcore strings on it, gave the truss rod a turn, and voila, it snapped right into shape! As I was testing the new setup I was making up licks with that G note and came up with a new song for the band, here's the demo...

This is from when it was new 10 years ago. Not just my favorite Heritage but my favorite guitar since then. Just got it back from the luthier where it had a new nut put on, fret dressed and new bridge slots. Ready for another ten years.

It was my 2017 H150, but the 1998 H535 just came home yesterday and changed everything.

This post immediately brought back that intense internal pleasure feeling my White 555 brings me every time I fire her up!

I really love my H-535, the Seymour Duncan 59s sound great and the build quality is just fantastic.

I'll add two more pics. This is one of their Gretsch Synchromatics.

My favorite Heritage and me waiting to go play at a jam. 2001 H535 in blonde, with HRW's. I put the Faber bridge and tail on it, and a set of lightweight Gotoh tuners. The heavy Rotomatics were really stiff from disuse. I got this one used a few years ago. It was absolutely pristine with virtually no sign of play. I picked it up browsing at a guitar shop, wasn't even looking. But it instantly had "the sound" that I look for in a great semi-hollow 535 or 335 style guitar. It had a problem that explained the utter lack of play. The fretboard was like a roller coaster. Some heroic efforts to level the frets on the wavy fretboard had been done to it along its history. Some of the frets were tall as brand new wire, others were under .030 tall, what most of us would call worn out. The fret tops were level, but the board wasn't. The neck itself, straight as an arrow. The surface of the board was nuts. I tried everything I could think of, but just one day said, "this is it." and grabbed my fret puller pliers and took them all out. I put some fine grit paper on my leveling beam and lightly sanded, which revealed all the high and low areas. Pretty much like a lunar landscape it turned out. Also, I measured the radius at around 9.25 inches which kind of meandered up and down the neck. Clearly, this one escaped the factory with a wonky fretboard. The fret nibs were all intact, so no question it was built this way. I leveled the fingerboard and flattened the radius down to about 10". I was already sanding into the pearl dots by then. Didn't want to get into replacing inlays, so I stopped about there. Put in a set of Dunlop medium jumbo wire. With the board leveled out, the frets went in nicely and only needed minimal leveling after installation. I put in a CNC-cut nylon 6/6 nut. Nylon was used on the Gibson's of the late 50's and early 60's. It is a fabulous material for guitar nuts. Hard, durable, and extremely slippery. The Faber hardware went on after. The Schaller stuff was shiny and clean without a single speck of corrosion, but I'm so used to tune-o-matic bridges, I changed it. The most amazing bit of that were the deep bushings Faber offers for their ABR and the tailpiece. They sink much deeper and tighter into the wood and really get in that maple center block a lot better than the short and skinny Schaller bushings. The tone change from the bushings alone was remarkable. And here she is. This is a 100% keeper for life guitar. It's everything a semi-hollow guitar should be. Plays like butter, sings like a bird.

Mostly because Marv’s DNA is all over this one.

Here is a pic of my new axe. Purchased from Sweetwater. Just love the color. I have played both the H530 Custom and the H530 Standard and there is quite a bit of difference in the tone (at least to my ears). The Std sounds a bit more compressed while the Custom has a very articulate sound. The guitar came ready for action right out of the box. No adjustments needed. I had to post a pic from Sweetwater because my pics have too large a file size

My favorites: Of course, there’s your Fine 157 in chestnut sunburst, the 3 holer @Gitfiddler, I understand it’s a sin to covet another’s beauty but that guitar has haunted me since I first saw her. Since I’m on a trip down memory lane… @Millennium Maestro’s half century H-150. Possibly the best custom guitar built. It comes with a boatload of stories going back to his first purchasing the wood. There’s @kbp810’s 157 with possibly the world’s prettiest wood. Not forgetting @Spectrum13’s H-575 custom in mahogany and spruce. His nestles in between G’s L4 and L5CES made throughout of solid, natural tonewood. There’s @DetroitBlues’ 137. Someday I may just own that beast… @TalismanRich’s and @High Flying Bird’s chestnut sunburst guitars. I’ve seen an H-155 Eagle in CNSB that I’d really like to own. One of our seldom seen members (Brian?) brought a hollowbody to the hotel back in the barn days that I recall being floored upon first seeing. I don’t know what I’d do with it but, hey, look at it! Back in the @skinslammer days there was another member from this area who stopped by the ranch with his custom 150 he had. @snowplow (Pete) built it to mimic a ‘59 LP. That piece had a life-force I've experienced only once or twice since. There are SO MANY other beautiful Heritage guitars I’ve seen and played over the years. I’m sure I’ve forgotten many guitars that touched me but, you know, Father Time has a habit of erasing pure, exhilarating moments.

I have never owned a Klon but have heard and played many. I have always liked them, just never owned one. I was watching the Anderton guys do a clone shootout. What hit me was that the Behringer Zentara was pretty much indistinguishable from a "real" Klon and every bit as good or better that all of the other clones out there. So I figured I would try one. The Zentara is by Behringer and is currently $62.97 US at Sweetwater so I could not pass it up. It is well built and sounds really great. I had read that the build quality was good and it certainly is. What a great pedal! Most of the other Klon clones start at $200 and go up from there. Granted, I am not a pedal collecter and use either the Line 6 or Quad Cortex versions that are on board their units. This is just a nice pedal to have around for going into a tube amp. I have no affiliation with Sweetwater or Behringer.

The set list mainly mid/late 60s-early 70s stuff, with few tracks from the Jeff Beck Group's Truth & Beck Ola albums and John Mayall's feat. Eric Clapton's "Beano" album, plus B sides and tracks from obscure but killer bands of the same period. I already play guitar in a Jeff Beck tribute/homage show so for me it's just an extension of the same thing! Once you start playing that stuff you realise where a lot of bands that later became world famous, not mentioning names but 4 or 5 came to mind straight away, got the idea and inspiration from! Even bands that later branched into different slightly styles and sounds, but the musical DNA...."remains the same"! I remember Lemmy of Motorhead saying that a lot of Heavy Metal bands actually left him cold as he somehow needed to "feel some Blues in there", which according to him those bands totally lacked, and I can see what he meant... Goin back to the gear I use, apart from all out Rock/Hard Rock I've used my Heritage in a lot of different situations like Funk, C&W, Soul, Jazz, Pop session and even Irish Folk(!) but I think that this guitar, and probably Heritage guitars in general, really comes to life and kinda makes sense especially when playing a certain kind of stuff; set the amp up for a kind of "AC/DC plus a bit" kind of tone, step on a quality OD pedal so it'll push the sound a bit more over the edge, crank up and let your soul hang out!!!! I LUV it!

Tonight‘s rearrangement of the pedals in the next few days, I may swap out my tremolo and echo for slightly smaller versions of the same thing.

@Steiner.....If I decide to sell this Chestnut triple-set lady, you'll be first to know, my friend. 👍 My favorites: Of course, there’s your Fine 157 in chestnut sunburst, the 3 holer @Gitfiddler, I understand it’s a sin to covet another’s beauty but that guitar has haunted me since I first saw her.

Did you forget the Katie's Psycho Popsicle H-150?

OK I could not commit or admit any one of my 6 are superior to the other 5. These guitars are cardiac and I do not wish to hurt their feelings, otherwise their necks could warp

Yes. I will post when I receive them. Excited to get them on mine.

My band pedalboard has 3 drives and a fuzz! Origin Effects Revival Druve Custom - my basic tone always on!!! Origin Effects MidEQ Driver - adds thicker mids and gain for solos! Sex Drive - Clean Boost when I need it to punch through! Analog Man BC108 Sunface - for Fuzz - for getting fuzzy!

Lot's of beautiful guitars in this thread! I have 4 Heritage guitars and it is really tough to choose which one I like the best - My 2018 H137 is a real blues rock monster!

So, I'm one of those nerdy engineer types in real life. I've read the Peavey Transtube patents and they're pretty interesting. Sondemeyer was Peavey's chief engineer for decades. Hartley Peavey hired him directly from RCA's solid state division, back in the days when RCA was a giant manufacturer of tubes, transistors, integrated circuits and even microprocessors, as well as a huge maker of TV and other consumer electronics. Sondemeyer was a brilliant engineer. He created many things, including the CS-400 sound reinforcement amplifier. That was the world's first truly bullet proof professional audio amplifier. I still sometimes see these in venues that have probably been in use since the 1970's. Sondemeyer passed away about 10 years ago. I've actually bread-boarded out the original transtube preamp circuits from the patents and the first-generation amps. It is extremely clever, (getting nerdy here) a modified Darlington pair of transistors, and a couple of other tricks, to mimic the characteristics of vacuum tube triodes, like the 12AX7 tube used widely in guitar amps. That generation of guitar amps are actually quite good. Reliable too.

That is a beauty!

I know, this is a silly, maybe even sophomoric topic. But, that said, this is the Heritage Owners Club, right?! 🙂 And haven't we all thought about all of the many Heritage gitfiddles we've owned, played or lusted after? You know, that uber-flame-top H-(whatever) model that you never should have let go. Or maybe that sweet axe that you've worn down the frets on, and rubbed the finish off, due to its irresistible tone and feel? It doesn't matter if your favorite is an Ascent, Standard, Custom Shop, Core, Artisan-aged, Custom one-off, or an old school from the early days of Heritage. Bring it! And share a photo if you have one. No model is off limits as long as it is a Heritage Guitar. I'll kick things off with my all time favorite model...it's the no longer in production H525. I've been blessed to own two of these great instruments, but my all time favorite is the one-off custom that Marv built to my specs back when they built almost anything customers or dealers asked for. Here's a photo of Marv just after spraying it, taken by our dear friend, Ron (High Flying Bird) Warren. OK, YOUR TURN!! LET'S SEE YOUR FAVORITE HERITAGE!!

I'm going to try a Demeter Tremulator for a simpler and smaller 2 button tremolo. I only use tremolo on two songs, and neither song requires anything more than a good amp like trem. And that's where the Tremulator shines. My brother had one in his studio, I used it on a few songs, and it sounded great. https://demeteramps.com/product/trm-1-tremulator/ Next I'm going to audition the NuX NDD-7 Tape Echo, which is kind of similiar to my Space Echo but smaller, lighter, and easier to adjust on the fly. It gets great reviews. One thing I like, is that you can make deeper adjustments (saturation, wow, flutter, etc) using a computer and it's PC/Mac editor, the kind of adjustments I wouldn't want want to do on stage. https://www.nux.us/products/tape-echo?srsltid=AU7gw4XKnxvRRFVV_Hr6FDB6psS7mBdNJ7RSCa3zRtv9BGufVSiQkJhm

Excellent choice, Mugsy. The red semi hollow is like the very definition of Rock and Roll.

If I used analog effects, I would need a 3' x 4' pedal board. So I had to go digital. I bought a Boss GX-10 and it worked well. But it was confusing. On a whim, I bought a Soran Tiny Stomp from Amazon for $50. It has 125 effects and more amp modeling than I need. It also has a built-in looper and drum machine. It sounds really good. It's much easier to use. I can use an external expression pedal for wah or volume. I program in the set list, and just go down the list of songs. And the Bluetooth actually works with my cell phone so I can make changes on the fly. It's about the size of 2 packs of cigarettes and has a built-in rechargeable battery. It's worth buying one just to screw around with. The same unit is marketed under a few different brand names. I'm never going back to analog. And I sold the GX-10.

@MartyGrass...Your H157 'triple pickup' has the most mesmerizing top!!! I'd love to hear what the middle Duncan Phat Cat pickup brings to its tonal pallet. Also, is it engaged via 'push-pull' pot? That's how Ren wired mine.

Yessir!!!! The mighty KB!

Gitfiddler, you’re killing me! There is none more fair across the land. Now that I think about it, I haven’t a 157…

So many Fab guitars. How about the "Centurion" while we're at it?

The three pedals on my board that are the most important are the Revival Drive, which is my core tone, the MEQdriver, which is my lead tone, and the Space Echo which is always on and beat timed to the song I'm playing. The rest of the stuff (other than the tuner of course) is just icing on the cake. I only use trem and reverb on one or two songs a night. And the Sunface, an excellent fuzz, doesn't really get the use since I got the MEQdriver. And I don't really need the sex drive if I have time to dial in the two other gain pedals for the venue I'm playing in. And actually I could get away without the MEQ driver if I have time to dial in both sides of the Revival Drive, because it has variable mid boost, but the MEQ driver is easier to dial in my lead tone with on stage. Frankly I was always a plug straight in to the amp kind of player but this band of mine covers a lot of different tones in the songs I write, so having the pedals makes it bit easier because I'm not having to tweak the amp from song to song. When I record the song demos though, I almost never use pedals. It's just an amp, and an attenuator if I'm recording at night. I almost always prefer that tone to pedals.

Received this when the sight was down. Honestly underwhelmed. I would have thought Heritage would have done some more special items on it. I have already talked to Custom Inlays about doing a few additions to it. I'll make it Special.

The original post reads like AI that hasn't paid very close attention in an eighth grade English composition class....

It's funny, I don't see that when I look at a guitar. I see a slim waist and a round bottom.

I had that same issue on my 575 and that was on an aftermarket saddle and bridge. It was resolved with a second curly washer bottoming out on each of the studs. What is happening in that photo is "rocking torque" That is not a good thing. It needs to be corrected.

Looks like a setup problem.

Does exactly what it claims to do. Super transparent overdrive. Simple - three dials, no fuss. Works best at 18v. I’ve got it in front of my Lovepedal Blackpanel Deluxe pedal. They sound great together. Or i can use either as an always on. Trying to decide which one. Great combination. I think i like the Lovepedal always on, then use the Lightspeed to push it sometimes, but i’ll keep tweaking and see how it plays out. Excellent pedal.

You know what, I never considered flats on a Fender style guitar, but more and more I heard how great they sound with Jaguars. I just happened to have a set of flatwound .010 light Thomastik JAZZ strings, so I put them on one of my two Jags. That way I could compare the flats directly with a set of roundwounds. I was pleasantly surprised at how good they sounded. I thought they would be too dull sounding for a solidbody, but instead they had a great round sounding high end. It was like I just slightly rolled off the high end to where I liked it. And they felt great too! Here's a demo from the day I put them on. Both guitar parts are the Jag with the flatwounds...