HANGAR18

LOL!!!

Wow! I don't think I ever noticed Derek St. Holmes on that list of Heritage artists before.

Yes, I'm certain that they are not building guitars in the old building. I was just pointing out the the company ProCo (who made my Rat pedal) was also located at the address of 225 Parson street. But they were located at the corner farthest away from the railroad tracks, so it seemed to me that the whole block had that address. If they own the whole block, I'm sure there's no harm in making an entrance on the other street behind the old building.

That is the impression that I am under. I think the whole block is 225 Parson Street.

Nevermind that i just threw up in my mouth but from a business standpoint, that may be their lifeline the same way Epiphone is for Gibson and the SE models are for PRS.

That is a real beauty!

Maybe I can stamp out my own HANGAR18 coins and then trade them for Heritage guitars.

Heritage guitar never made a profit their first 30 years. I suspect that was because the founders had a retirement income from Gibson to live off of, thus, that qualifies Heritage as having been just a hobby for them. They only worked 4 days a week and spent a lot of time hunting and made only 4 guitars a day on their best days. People who live in Michigan have to get paid what people in Michigan USA expect to be paid in order to buy food, clothing, shelter and so on, just like everyone else. Therefore, when a guitar takes as long to build as it was taking the people at Heritage to build a guitar, it drives up the cost of the guitar. That is simple business 101. You mentioned PRS's affordable guitars under $1000.00. They are made overseas where both the cost of living and the wages are a lot less than here in the USA. It has been said that PRS could not survive without their imported SE line of guitars. I agree that they are exceptionally well made. But there is the problem. Heritage won't make an overseas version, which is good because the market is already saturated with imported guitars. (Besides, it would be embarrassing for a USA brand of guitars to have their import line have better quality than their American made line and that is exactly what would happen if they went that route right now.) So the challenge for Heritage is to figure out a way to make high quality guitars as inexpensively as possible. That means as fast and efficiently as possible. Translation, they have to compete against other manufacturers who are using CnC machines to lower production costs. If you figure out a way for them to do what you are challenging them to do, let them know. I'm sure they'd like to hear it.

Have you got anyone near by who can do a proper setup on it? Just do that and play it.

Some of the names have been changed to protect the guilty. hahahaha

Part 2: Three comparable PRS bridges

I thought I would show the difference between three of my Heritage guitars with three of my PRS guitars with comparable bridge designs. What I'm trying to demonstrate is consistency between setups, different guitars built different years. Heritage hand carves their necks and neck pockets while PRS uses CnC machines for these tasks. Part 1: Three Heritage bridges.

I went and looked at my own three Heritage guitars and the stop bar heights are all over the place. No two alike. One is even WAY high on one side and low on the other. Screw it. Keep it play it. Who cares how f'd up it is. Perhaps we all expect too much from a company which was started by a bunch of retired guys who just wanted to build guitars as a hobby whenever they weren't out hunting.

But, to add to what I said earlier, seeing the guitar in person and having it checked out on a bench IS the preferred way of looking at it, rather than just seeing a bunch of pictures on the Internet. If the string height at the 3rd fret can be made to get down to the 4/64th string height by filing down the nut slots, then the whole setup may be brought around to acceptable specs. I think both Gibson and Heritage may not be trying to send out guitars with really low actions. Some people like high actions. Isn't that a jazz guitar thing or a slide guitar thing? This post is a good illustration of one of the important roles a dealer can provide. Even when I once bought a Les Paul directly from Gibson, they had a technician right there in the gift shop to set the action to exactly how I wanted it.

Headstock As large as possible.