rockabilly69

Four for me too, and as I said, never a broken headstock, although, one of them was a nightmare quality-wise. I was doing a showcase at a Sundance film festival party, and the cover of the front pickup fell off. Yep, the solder joints on the cover broke! And one of the tuners barely worked, it hardly kept tune. Gibson sent me replacement parts, which I promptly replaced, and then sold the guitar! I only own one now, but I did keep the best one for myself. It's got Klein pickups, Faber hardware, vintage braid harness and PIO caps (I tried a bunch of caps by clipping them in with alligator clips, 'till I found the perfect match for my pickups). It's a killer. When I was doing guitar repairs, I played two mid sixties killer Firebirds, and the one that I have is the only one of the four that I had that had that sound.

I know it happens, just like Les Paul headstocks break. But I think a lot of Firebirds are dropped due to their shape so that's why I think you see it more in Firebirds. Everytime I hand a Firebird to someone who's never played one, I see how clumsy they handle it. I also see a lot of people leaving them to rest on amplifiers which with their odd balance leaves them more apt to fall. And there's the walking them into ceiling fans that I've also seen. Do they break? Sure, but I've seen Es335s and Les pauls with headstock breaks from just their cases falling on their sides. Most all of them are weak in that area, especially the ones with thinner necks.

I've dropped mine more than once, still in one piece

this is EXACTLY how I feel about it! Yep we're all different!

I feel for her, that has got to be tough!

I don't have a favorite amp, I go for too many tones in my studio for that baloney:) This is what I use... Studio volume Levels: Clark "Beaufort", Dirty Girl "Reverb", Winnie Thomas Princeton Reverb Clone, 1961 Ampeg Mercury, Mesa "DC2", Vox "AC-15", 1950 Webster Chicago 166-1, Built by friend Marshall 18 watt variant called the "English Rose" Stage Levels: Victoria "Regal II", 1964 Fender "Deluxe Reverb", TopHat "Club Deluxe"

Yes I'm sure it was nice knowing those old dudes and hearing the stories, but I like clean work environments. Yes some stunning instruments came were built back then, but many guitars with quality problems also came out of there. When they were cheap on the used market, I could look past that, because I have the skills to fix many of the things that were overlooked on the guitars that I bought. But the prices started creeping up and the problems didn't go away. I think the work area didn't help. My philosophy is, at the end of the day, clean up your work area to start fresh the next day. I find working in any dirty/messy area leaves me uninspired. And that's not when I do my best work!!! Many times it will be weeks, or even a month or two, before I head over to my studio to record. So after I finish a project, I cover all microphones that I leave on stands, roll up any loose cords, etc. And when I back get there, before anything get's turned on, I dust/clean/vacuum, even though it was clean when I left it! So as you can imagine, seeing the sawdust in a lot of those old pictures did not inspire my confidence. I love when the new guard cleaned up the shop! And I also love seeing new Heritage guitars with great fret work and properly cut nuts!!! That's the kind of quality I want when I buy a guitar. And the new guard is doing some cool things. The Harmony guitars are killer reasonably priced instruments, and the new Custom Cores are getting some serious praise!

More a problem of bad case design with Firebird which have crappy support at the headstock. I own one Firebird, and have owned three others, no problems with headstocks on any of them, as I modified the cases to support the headstock.

I have to do that to almost all of my guitars, except my Gibson L5s guitars, because those 5 piece necks are just plain solid!

On this forum, I always felt uncomfortable saying what I did about the quality flaws of the older guitars, but there is NO doubt to me, that Heritage is building the best guitars they have since I've known of the company. Yes, some of the older ones are killer, especially some of the custom jobs I've seen, like Pressure, MartyGrass, Yoslate, and Kuz have commissioned, but I've seen many of the older ones sold in stores with some terrible nut slotting, fret filing and monkey soldering, etc. My friend Eric was a Heritage dealer and he carried all the standard models, so I played many of them from the so called golden years (preBandLab), and many people that bought them had problems with them. I had to do extensive work on all 3 of my older Heritage H150s to get them where I wanted them, but they all turned out killer. I had to replace the nut and do fret dressing on all of them. I sold one because it was ridiculously heavy, but the other two I've kept for good reason. When I first started getting into Heritages you could find a good H150 for around $1000 and then go to work on it, so the old ones were a bargain, especially if you could find one with a weight and finish that you liked. And then for a few hundred dollars more, you could get, new wiring, pickups, and hardware, etc, and you had a seriously good sounding guitar. My older 2006 H150 smokes!!! I bought it for $1200 and then put about $500 more into it so was a SERIOUS bargain! But many of the new guard H150's and H530's that I've played, were turn key, and were both good sounding and playable with no modding at all. I think the company is building some great guitars, and although more expensive, are still reasonably priced. Yes I know many of you guys are pissed about the way bandlab took over, but I don't care what they did, as long as they build good guitars and provide good customer service now. I have been looking at custom cores but waiting till I find exactly what I want. It's a new company better to start fresh.

Great Story!

I find there are sweet spots for Les Paul weight that generally give consistently good repeatable results. I like them to be in the high eights to the low nines. I find the ones with the real low weights don't have the midrange I like, and the ones in the high nines and higher don't have the resonance I like. But I think a lot of the discernable sonic differences in the wood are masked when using potted pickups, which to me, dulls the upper high end resonance that I listen specifically for. So before I unload a guitar, I try it with a known set of good unpotted pickups! I've owned more Les Pauls than most people, and for two years I did a lot of guitar repairs with many being Les Pauls, and I took notes with each guitar I owned and/or played. One thing I don't believe is that that in modern times there were good wood years. 2007 was supposed to one of those years, and I owned three Les Pauls from 2007 that were some of the worst sounding Historic LPs that I've heard. A lot of people thought it was heresy when Gibson (and now Heritage, with the Custom Cores) went to using Fiji sourced Mahogany. They thought an LP that didn't use Honduran Mahogany couldn't sound as good. Well I stopped buying LPs because the three I have now a perfect for me, and two of them a Fiji Mahogany. If I was to buy an LP now, I would balance the tone with weight I can shoulder, and call it good.

Very slim chance, It looks like the same rosewood in both of my early USA Les Pauls (1999 and 2000) that I sold off years ago, and very much like the Rosewood that my Gibson J45 has. I like that color, I will try and find pics for you. And yes I know that Heritage sometime used stock left over from the Gibson days, but Gibson stopped using Brazillian in the late sixties. I see no reason why they would have used Brazilian for a one off H150 unless it was ordered that way. The claim above about pre 1990 using Brazilian is just another internet myth.

Who says they're Brazilian? I was not aware of that.

congrats on saving the speaker, those are great!