MartyGrass

That brings up a good point. Pickups sound different in different guitars, within certain bounds. And opinions differ among those who hear the same sounds. When I got my first Heritage, quite a while ago, the internet was loaded with criticism about them. I hadn't noticed any deficiency really but wondered why Heritage used them. So I asked the original factory owners, several times actually over a year or so as we chatted. They thought they were fine but offered to install any set of pickups on a custom order. Jay Wolfe pushed the "classic" models with conventional TOMs and stop tailpieces plus SD pickups, his favorites being the 59s and Seths, one of each on the same guitar sometimes. Otherwise they continued with Schallers. Not all Millies had HRWs. I had several with SDs from the factory. If GC says the label says HRWs, they had HRWs at one time, maybe today. I don't know why someone would replace the white dot tip, but that happens.

You can't go wrong either way.

I think they're pretty good. Some will believe there are better, of course. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9mURVofPTnY

Heritage love- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gUFmwGT6R7k

I like Schaller and find them very decent. Sometimes I've tilted the pickup to get more slug effect.

22 vs 20 frets, better fret access. 525s sound better when practicing unplugged. Both are excellent.

Thornton cousins. No Gibson here. I've told the story of the triple pickup H-157. I'll probably put in a TOM bridge (one is on the way). The translucent black is stock from Heritage and require nothing but a truss rod and bridge adjustment. The Throbaks sound very good. The H-157 staple/P90 I got new from Green Oak Guitars (Paul from HOC) and needed nothing changed. I recently got the H-150 Ultra from a forum member. Although it is older it arrived in nearly new condition. I replaced the bridge and tailpiece. It needed some fret work done and the nut slots filed. Aaron Cowles's son took care of that. It plays beautifully. The H-150 with the mini-toggles was made for a friend of Ren Wall a couple of decades ago. It has an ebony fretboard and now has P-Rails. The VSB H-157 is set up the same way. It came with abalone inlays. The final H-157 is as it arrived from Heritage. It is probably an Ed Roman special. It has SD Black Back pickups. http://www.edroman.com/parts/blackback.htm It required no additional setup or changes. Thorntons are always perfect. You can take that to the bank. Guitars are tools and art.

Sisters.

With its brothers.

Here it is after the mods.

This 1999 creation popped up for sale about a decade ago. Some on the HOC may remember it. I wish I knew more about whoever had it custom built. It's a quilt top translucent black three pickup guitar. The knobs, TRC, tuner buttons, and both back plates are made of ebony. The fretboard inlays are abalone. The pickups originally were Bill Lawrences. I had Pete Moreno do a lot of work on this. He put two humbuckers and a Phat Cat in. For the wiring, he consulted Mike Koontz in the Detroit area in building the harness. The goal was to have two knobs for volume on the humbuckers that were push-pull for coil splitting, a third volume knob for the Phat Cat that's also push-pull that is an off-on function for that pickup, and a single tone knob. They succeeded magnificently. After some time I sold it to get something to a guy on the Les Paul Forum. A decade or so later we reconnected and I got it back. This is not everyone's cup of tea. But if you want to burn up a few hours dialing in different tone, this works. It's a very good looker, too. Here is the original pics.

Ok, I'll be the one to ask. Why the interest in the headstock thickness?

I know what you mean by bling. But after a while you start to appreciate the extreme detail that adds nothing to its sound. I've had a chance over the years to talk with Marv Lamb, Aaron Cowles, Maudie Moore, and JP Moats about the design. They wanted to put everything into this instrument. The American spirit had been low with the Tehran hostages, the economy doing very poorly, and the Challenger exploding. Of course Gibson moved to Nashville hurting the Kalamazoo economy badly. But it was all starting to turn around. Heritage was now making and selling guitars with growth projections, inflation dropped to 4% and unemployment plummeted to 6%. Kalamazoo was recovering nicely. To change things up, here's someone wearing bling while playing a very simple instrument. That works, too.

This plays really well and sounds magnificent. But as import, it reflects the feelings of the original Heritage owners.

The difficulty i have with generalizations about production years is that most of the instruments every year were very good.