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Well I finally figured out how to post the picture - My new H535

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.

So I wasn’t really happy with the poorly modded Schaller bridge. It wouldn’t intonate very good. So I decided to put a set of locking Tonepros on it. And I took the covers off the pickups (which did help with the squealing, a little). The bridge Lollar still squeals when I step on the RAT…but with the OCD it is fine. The neck Seth is great now. The intonation is perfect now.

I got PTSD doing harness work on Heritage semis. You'd think there would be no significant difference between a Gibson and a 535. There is more swearing involved!

May have posted this in the past, But since we're focusing on fuzz here.... Never a fan of it, but given this is a Lucinda Williams tune, and I'm a big fan of the fearless Stuart Mathis, I thought...why not get way out of my little box. This is from the Be Good To Yourself project, and since we were tracking nearly thirty songs, I figured I'd better come up with a variety of tones and approaches. I'm pretty much down with what Randy (fdx99) observes in his notes, above. As I recall this track was my Tele for electric rhythm, a Nashville tuned Red Label Yamaha FG-110, and the fuzz was my Nash Strat, bridge pickup, into my Low Power Tweed Twin clone. The fuzz was an MXR Hendrix Octavio, which has a pretty great fuzz! Fuzz is there in a couple of early chords, but doesn't really appear until the guitar outro, last 1:30-ish of the tune. I'm a little proud of this one. The vocalist is eighteen-year-old phenom Māya Beth Atkins.

1987 HERITAGE H170… 1st generation H170 double cut. Honduran mahogany body and neck Bound and Carved flame maple top Bound Indian rosewood fretboard Bound and inlaid headstock This one has seen some action in its life. It suffered a headstock break/repair some years ago. It currently has a Lollar Imperial pickup in the bridge and a SD Seth Lover in the neck. Volume/Volume/Tone with a 3 way toggle. It’s a great playing and great sounding Heritage from their Golden Age!!!

I have one of these but mine does not have the bound headstock. Other than that it is pretty much a clone of yours. Mine is a D serial number also. It was my first Heritage. I bought an H-140 of the same vintage along with the H-170 and fell in love. The music store didn't know anything about Heritage and I traded a japanese LP and maybe $400 for both. The H-170 is my favorite guitar. Period. I have a few Heritage's as well as the usual suspects (Gibsons, Fenders, etc) but the 170 just feels and sounds right to me in every way possible. The Schallers were not awful but I put a set of Dimarzio Anniversary PAFs and it just opened it up. Same with the H-140. Everyone who has played it instantly falls in love with it and wants to buy it. Enjoy it Brent!

I'm pretty sure Brent sold it to him. I almost bought it from Brent. DOH! Just started the video, it was Brent's.

I love old amps, I own some really nice vintage amps, and I have access to many great old ones. But I don't think they sound any better than a well built modern amp. I have a TopHat Club Deluxe that pretty much can hang with any amp that I've ever played. I'm in the middle of an extended recording project with my band, and we've recorded about 20 songs and not once did I turn on a vintage amp. It's mostly my TopHat, because to me, the TopHat sounds as a good as an amp can sound. The combination of my Telecaster (a partscaster that I built) and that TopHat is the sound that I've always chased, but could never get... till now that is. And my handbuilt (handwired) Marshall style amp that my buddy Ryan built beats the pants of off of any vintage Marshall I've played. It's the only other amp I've used besides my TopHat on the project. I've owned a few vintage Marshalls, but I got rid of them all. I will never sell the one I have now. Most everytime I plug into it I come up with something musical. Also my buddy owns two perfectly maintained tweed 5E3 Deluxes and another pre 5E3 Deluxe and they all sound great and a bit different, yet my Clark Beauford amp to me sounds as good as any of these tweeds, I think we are in a amp renaissance with many builders building some of the best amps ever made. I think there are amp builders out there now that have cracked the code of the originals, but you'll pay through the nose for some of the best ones:) Now I'm not saying there aren't any great vintage amps out there, because I've heard and played through a bunch of great ones. Recently I heard an early 60'd VOX AC10 that was just magic and had a sound I've never heard in a modern amp, but I don't know many of the modern Vox style builders.

I no longer have any vintage guitars but I do have 4 vintage amps (Brown Face Deluxe, Brown Face Vibrolux, Black Face Vibrolux Reverb, and a Black Face Deluxe Reverb). I can't acknowledge that a vintage guitar sounds better through a vintage amp. But I can confirm, that ANY guitar I own sounds better through my vintage amps verse new amps. There is a more 3D quality to the vintage amps. They sound like the sound is coming from 180 degree and don't sound boxy like a lot of newer amps I have played/owned over the years.

I have very good aim, that was from 105 yards or was it decibels, I can’t remember. Here is the latest, I’ve been working on it diligently day in and out. This morning I got the hammer and chisel out and made a lot of noise!

Well congrats!! I always liked that gtr. If I remember correct some guy at a PSP shredded the hell outta that thing, back in the barn days? did it justice for sure. A good repair shop should be able to repair the neck & truss rod.

Beautiful guitar DBlues. IIRC, you sold it because of the neck. The top also has mineral streaks and, at that time, some here considered the streaks to be a bad sign; it is not a bad sign. With a little research you’ll find mineral streaks are indicative of maple grown in wet areas where the ground has plentiful minerals. The maple that grows best in wet areas is the red maple AKA swamp maple. A fair number of ‘59 Pauls also have mineral streaks. I’m not at all opposed to mineral streaks and even covet them; so much so that I’ve planted red maples in the wettest terrain at the ranch for the next generation. That’s my, long winded, way of saying Happy New/Old/Refurbished Guitar Day. She’s a Looker!

Authentic relicing from my grubby hands and sweaty forearm. This picture is a couple of years old, the bare spot is now a bit bigger and as beautiful as ever. Pre-relicing. But all my guitars that I gig with eventually end up with the same worn area.

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

Beautiful!!

quite famously I think: Ampeg even used this photo in an ad?

Growing up in Jersey all we had were Ampeg and Silvertons only our cars had fenders.Can't beat the OG bass amp.

Nice one Brent! Gotta love the bound headstock and stinger! Enjoy!

Heritage's answer to the SG History Nice one Sir B

Happy fish!

Yeah Brent was the one who originally discovered this one again, after it left Mark Slaughter's hands. He's mentioned a lot in the video, and there's a great clip of him and Mark talking about the guitar too. Great story!

I tried get in touch with Scott some years back. He had been a DJ in West Virginia. Turns out he passed away in 2020. https://www.leavittfuneralhome.com/obituaries/Dowe-Scott-Fauley-II?obId=14987495

ah, I see all's well that ends well. I like the small block inlays too.

That was the best sounding Heritage guitar that Josh owned up to that time (and he went through quite a few). It had a headstock repair and he had it refinished. He jammed through it at a PSP and it sounded HUGE and AMAZING. But back then, Josh was on a BUY and THEN PURGE phase. I thought for sure he would keep that one because it exceptional. I am not bashing him, we have all done this. I am just here to witness what a great guitar it is. It has (or least had at the time) higher output pickups but they sounded huge and open. My questions are; Why did Heritage have it for so many years? Did you own it while Heritage had it? How did you get it back and why didn't Heritage fix/set it up for you? Does it still have those great sounding higher output pickups in it? But mostly I was here to say congrats on getting her back!

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.....

I guess that deserves a cake too!

Sweet! Mine is a somewhat later 140, with a lighter shade of natural maple top. Absolutely wonderful guitar!

When I'm recording demos/songs, I have a few fuzz pedals that I love the sound of, and almost all of them are germanium based. But I've always been against using fuzz pedals on my pedal board because of the instability of the germanium transistors used in most of the pedals that I like. When they work, they sound killer, but if the temperature changes in the room, so can the sound of the pedal. But recently, my buddy Ryan, my guitar partner in crime, and who's a fuzz afficianado of the highest order, gave me a silcone based fuzz made by Analogman, the BC183 Sunface which has earned a permanent position on my pedalboard. It just makes the solos cut so much better. And it's ridiculously consistent sounding. I love combining it with my Origin Effects M-EQ Driver for serious vowel like singing sounds! Not the prettiest board, but it gets thew job done... the solo i play at the end of this song is the BC183...

Another 2.45 inches and it will be just like Willie's Trigger!

So, our group had a tee time at a golf course on the other side of the river, which meant that I paid the toll to get to Indiana. While I was over there, I decided to run by a local shop, Maxwell's House of Music. This is a sister store to Mom's Music which happens to have been started by the drummer of the first band I went to see as an 8th grade graduate. (Ok, enough back story...) My thought was to see if they had a Blues Driver in stock. I would rather support a local store than Guitar Center. Two local shops I check didn't have any in stock. Maxwells had the standard pedal, and the guy was more than happy to plug it up to try. "What do you have for an amp?" He pulls out a Princeton Reverb for me. "What do you play?" That's a bit trickier. I explained that I've got several Heritages with humbuckers but recently got my H-530 with P90s. We walked over to the wall and I pulled this one down from the wall. It was a choice between this ES-330 and a 335 next to it. It was a very nice guitar, but was it nicer than my 530? Nah! It does have some nice grain. Other than the block inlays, there's wasn't any real advantage. They played very much alike. I still don't like the plug on the front rather than the rim. At $3500, it was priced between the Custom Core and the standard. A fellow about my age was picking up a white Tele and he and I jammed a bit on some blues. He said he's still got his father's original '64 ES-345. In the end, I left with a Blues Driver. I'll be pulling out the pedal board later today and cranking it up.

Glad to see you're still out there playing gigs. I agree completely. You can cover most all bases with the 535. I've heard you play that 535 enough at PSP to know that it's a killer. It's good that it's still in your arsenal, even if it is "on loan". Your band must have been playing REALLY LOUD if you coudn't play without feeding back. On the other hand, it's perfect to get the acoustic feedback going when you want to sustain a note infinitely! Turn away and it should go back to normal.

I said it on the gearpage to you, and I'll say it again. Buy some clear and respray it with a clear topcoat, I know you are afraid you can't do it, and you think it's a valuable guitar, but there are plenty of how to videos out there, and you will increase the value with a decent job. And the buffing out of the new coat would be less work that what you've done already. Nitro is pretty forgiving. Educate yourself, take your time and I bet you can do it.

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

thanks, it was great guitar!

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.

Well, Brent, you could’ve saved yourself a lot of trouble by just taking it to Heritage after disassembling it. They would’ve buffed it out for you.

Because it increases the value!

Oh yeah Rich!!! It’s a real joy!!!

Thanks Scott!!!

@brentrocks...Brother, you are the original 'fix-it dude' when it comes to battered Heritage guitars. Like your former broke-neck 535 of a few years back, this restored CC 535 came out great!

MORE AFTERS…

I've never personally relic'd a guitar (or re-licked one). But some of the best Telecaster tones I've ever heard came from a Nachocaster which is a heavy duty relic'd guitar. This one... I think the one I played cost $6000. And up to that point, I would've never ever considered spending that much on any guitar, modern or vintage. The most I've ever spent is $4500. But that guitar had me rethinking about what a guitar is worth. It was that good. As a matter of fact one of my best friends bought a used one just like it for a $1000 more, and he thought it was the deal of the century, HE LOVES IT!!! And the fact that you could nick it, dent it, whatever, and wouldn't lose a cent of value is kind of appealing. These guitars now sell for over $8000 new, and there's a waiting list. He sells them that fast. So people pay even more than that for used ones if they want one immediately. Frankly, I don't think I'd like if the man himself, Nacho, made me one that would look new. It just felt so good, and better than any vintage Tele that I've ever played (I've played a few). A few weeks before I played this one I had a 50's whiteguard Tele at my house and this Nacho smoked it! Here's the only song that I recorded with it, a song which came out of me with less than 20 minutes of play time on it. The pickups just sang and the vibration in the wood rattled my ribs...

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 . . .

Feels like an Old Friend (50 yrs) _____________________ New Friend ( 5 wks) Neither one has the finish worn off.

At this age, being "on drugs" means BP meds, cholestrol meds, heart meds, NSAID meds, and a little blue pill to help you "rise to the occasion". 👴