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just off the Fedex truck!

These are not quite identical twins and are old-school H-555s. One of them was made for Vince Lewis. That one I once owned and can tell you it plays perfectly. I'm told the other one is about the same. I'm trading one of my Heritage ghost built Gretsch Synchromatics plus some dough for these two with a long-standing friend and trading partner. Heritage wasn't run as tightly back in the days these were made, but the Vince one is perfect. I believe the other one is as well based on my friend's experience. The Vince build has Schallers, which I wouldn't change. The other one is stated to have HRWs, but I'm not sure. I recently got a newer build H-535 that has PRS pickups. It is extremely nice. I like the general formal of the semi-hollow.

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.

Paul @ Green Oak has been serving HOC members for over 20 yrs as a very straight guy. I also have some incredible pieces of unsold, full warranty one of a kind Heritages. https://www.gbase.com/stores/american-classic-guitars I REALLY stepped back from selling during my divorce and I should get on getting about 50 guitars out in the real world!

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.

A flying V banjo would be pretty cool!

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

and I popped for a brand new 530 in red!

Ah! so you're the guy who snagged that guitar. When I talked to Mike on that Wednesday, he said it was gone. I got the Antique Sunburst that was hanging next to it. I thought about the possibility that they might suspend the standard series and concentrate on the Custom Cores. In that case, I'm glad I grabbed my 530 when I did. I'm enjoying the lighter weight when I standing for 2+ hours, and it's very comfortable to play, just like the 535. I've play a few times through my Princeton, and it really sounded good going through my Strymon Iridium when I was jamming with some friends.

They are coming out with a full acoustic flying V and line of banjos, or the bespoke program will be back. My guess.

Having just been through the factory 2 weeks ago, things are a bit more modern, but it's still a relatively small operation compared to a Fender, Gibson, Cort or World Music. There aren't any conveyor belts carrying a hundred guitars around the building. What you see is people at benches with a guitar, maybe 2 people in the spray booth with a rack of 15 or 20 guitars hand spraying the guitars as they did for decades before. On one side, there's a guy hand wrapping binding with a half dozen guitars hanging next to him as the binding. My oldest Heritage is an 87 H140, and my newest is a 2025 H-530 that I got yesterday. I play all my old ones, I'm sure I'll play this one just the same. I love 'em.

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

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.

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?

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

I've owned a few over the years. They are big guitars. It's obvious looking at the specs. It'd more obvious playing one. They are striking with beauty because of the great woods used, their finishes, and their size. Most people can get comfortable with them if they put the hours in. I'll state this anecdote once again. I was at Heritage talking to Marv Lamb with Ren Wall and Bill Paige. I asked what it cost to order a SKB in a certain finish. Marv asked me why I would want to pay all that extra for a SKB when I could order a Super Eagle with a Florentine cutaway and get the same thing for hundreds less. The point he was making is that the artist models cost more because money goes to the artist for each guitar built. In the end I got a SKB used for less than either model new. I have found that used ones came up occasionally and were generally minty. It seemed back then that those who bought them either kept them in excellent shape while playing them or just didn't play them. Now they are collectible. I have a few big ass guitars, Super Eagle size. I found that you will eventually get comfortable with the size. Beware the feedback. You'll learn to sort that out too.

I'm a sucker for stingers. If I ever had a custom guitar built it would have a stinger. And that flame on that multipiece neck, it's fine! The guitars that I have that stay in tune the best and are some of the best sounding, are the ones with multipiece necks! My dragon Zemaitis guitar is multipiece and that neck rings like a tuning fork!

We did a deal in which he got one of the Heritage built Gretsch Synchromatics, which are Super Eagle bodies with Gretsch appointments. The two 555s should land at my home shortly. He is a jazz player and has already setup the Gretsch. He has had Super Eagles before but in a way forgot that they are big ass guitars. He's happy with the playability, the sound, and the wow factor!

I mentioned in my NGD post that I had ordered a wireless adapter. The post office sort of lost track of it for 8 days. It suddenly appeared on the tracker on Sunday. The Joyo JW-06 showed up today and I had time to test it out. It worked without issue, as I expected. The question I had was how did it sound. I made 3 comparisons. First I compared it to my Steiner cable direct into the Princeton. There might have been a difference, there might not have been. It was so close that I couldn't decide if I heard any difference at all. Next I plugged into my Tascam interface instrument input. In the past I've had issue with everything sounding really midrangy with no top end. I think the loading really plays havoc with guitar pickups. I even noticed it with my bass. I would use my PodXT on the Bassman setting to record. The Joyo seems to be perfect. It sounded crisp on the top and full on the bottom. Finally used my pedal board which has the Strymon Iridium for direct in use. Vox Wah > TurboTuner > TS9 > H20 Chorus > NotaKlon > Iridium. It sounded very clear, good top end and full. No issue with noise or signal loss when walking around the room. It's supposed to have 20M range We'll see how long the battery lasts. Tomorrow we should jam for about 3 hours. They are supposed to last 6-8 hours. That would just about cover an entire PSP jam. I'll have my cable in the box just in case, but it will be nice not to have to worry about stepping on my cable. $70 on Ebay or Amazon.

I'm getting together with 3 other guys to play some tunes on Tuesday. I've been using the 535, but this week, the new H-530 will make it's debut. I did a couple minor tweaks a week ago, and it's playing nicely and seems to have settled in. I think the wood just needed to stabilize to it's environment. I ordered a Joyo wireless set a week and a half ago. I figured that this Tuesday would be a good test. The post office seems to have lost it. It made it to our distribution center in 1 day from Cincinnati and then nothing for a week. I filed a lost package report and they can't find it. Then the tracking says it will deliver Monday, only 9 days late! I should have just had my daughter order it on her Amazon Prime and it would have been here 10 days ago!

Sorry to hear this. RIP LedZef.

It really doesn't matter what reality is... you can find opinions going both ways. More weight = more sustain. Light resonant wood = more sustain. As to what qualifies as "tone", that's entirely whatever the person wants it to mean. I remember playing a Guild Bluesbird that was chambered. It rang very nicely. Millenniums do as well. I can't say my Mille is missing anything in the tone department.

We would appreciate a tone and playability report!

I think these look really nice and I’m excited about the 60’s neck. I think I’m developing arthritis because my hand will start cramping after about 30 minutes on my H-150. Definitely wanting one in chestnut or dirty lemon.

Yes . . . I changed my thinking and got a 530 for more variety. It came today and I'm glad to have it!

All joking aside, that is a masterpiece!

As I remember, some of us saw something at the factory that was WAY cool, but we were sworn to secrecy lest we be curse with all our guitars being out of tune for eternity!

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.

Posted Thursday at 04:43 PM (edited) Like in my statement that you quoted, they are coming tomorrow. I do not have a week. And what does "Do Dah…" mean? Edited Thursday at 04:45 PM by MelodiusThunk` Was Gregg (Steiner) not I that started the "Do Dah" - so all I could relate to was cartoons from the 1950's - sorry just having fun with the flow.

TKL makes them in Richmond Va. Gator makes cases in Columbia City, Indiana, just down the road from Sweetwater in Ft Wayne. G&G cases are made in Los Angeles. I think that's probably why Fender used them.

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. 🙂

This is probably not it... but... I also got a very sweet 530 not too long ago that had been hanging on the wall at that same Pickin Parlor mentioned above. It was discounted a bit more than other recent discounts because there was no pickguard (being a slightly older iteration... maybe previous year's model, I think), and I was told that one reason for the extra discount was because they no longer wanted to send that model of guitar out without a pickguard. I suspect that's a pre-existing change or policy that has nothing to do with whatever may happen on the 25th, but who knows. I'm very much hoping that the announcement is not a discontinuation of the Standard series.... (I've read some speculation on Facebook and/or here that they might be considering doing that, but I think it was just speculation by fans like us). The 530 that I got is absolutely delightful, and probably my new favorite guitar.

They couldn't have discontinued the H300 and H335 because there are no 330 or 335! Are you thinking H-530 and H-535? I just picked up an H-530 from the factory a month ago. They had both types of guitars hanging on the wall of Ren's pickin' parlor.

I really like this guitar.

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.

Here's a shot of the back

Give Paul at Green Oak a shot first. One stand up guy!

les paulverizer that's a beautiful H150! nice top figuring too I agree every time I grab one of my Heritage's I get wowed by the quality, feel & sound of the instrument. Last night I had a similar epiphany with my H157: pulled it out & thought "damn, I need to play this more often!" It's a mahogany top that has aged enough that the woodgrain is now textured into the nitro lacquer. Or the reverse. Whatever, it looks great. This thread has me inspired me to pull out the H150