TalismanRich

Not sure about "classic" sunburst, but this is certainly vintage (>30 yrs old) and its sunburst.

Uh Oh! Mrs Brently is in trouble now! You hear about child brides, but I don't think I've ever heard of a child groom.

Jasper, That could be original. A 104 capacitor is 0.1 uF which is what is specified by EMG. You could easily check the resistance on the pots to see if they are 25K. It appears that EMG is now providing a solderless "plug in" kit to aid in installation. That probably was not available when that guitar was made in the early 90s. If you bought that one from Jay Wolfe, I would drop him an email. He should be able to tell you the whole history on it. He's very good about keeping track of that information.

Yeah, Dey, you need to get with the TIMES. Websites are so last week! (wait, that was about 10 years ago... what's the current lingo?) Anyway, they are on all the normal social media sites. https://www.facebook.com/HeritageGuitarInc/ https://www.instagram.com/heritageguitarinc/ https://twitter.com/heritageguitars Ain't THAT the truth. There are even occasions where they actually know what they are talking about! ...but they're rare.

Agreed. 1) I've never seen Heritage use ceramic capacitors. Unless someone specs something different, they get Vishay ERO polyester caps. 2) Don't all EMG active pickups require a 9 volt battery? I would pull the pickups to determine the model number and then check out EMGs site to determine the proper wiring. According to the site Gary Moore's Guitars, "Gary himself mostly used a modified version of the H150 model which had two EMG 81 active pickups. This guitar was eventually introduced as official Gary Moore signature model, but the company built a very limited number of them. " http://www.emgpickups.com/guitar/humbucking/active-humbucking/81.html

If only.... It won't make much difference since they are moving all Memphis production 200 miles east to Nashville.

I first played my 525 at PSP back in 2012 when LK155 owned it. I told him that if he ever sold it, I wanted first crack at it. A year later, he decided to swap that one for one of Brent's H150s, I made arrangements to drive up to Michigan one night (I was working in northern Indiana) to bring it home. Its been in my stable ever since. I was really impressed with the way it sounded unplugged, and it sounds fantastic plugged it. Somewhere on Youtube is this guitar at PSP doing Elizabeth Reed. Probably either 2013 or 2014.

I don't ever recall seeing a thinline with a carved top. All of the thinline series (535, 555, Prospect, Academy and Roy Clark) used laminate tops, as does the Groove Master. The Millennium has a carved top along with most of the archtops. The laminates are formed by with a press, whereas the carved tops are done on a special custom made pin router. The base forms are not interchangeable, so its not a simple matter to change from one to the other. Of course, once the duplicarver form is made, you can make them over and over. Probably the closest you would find would be an Eagle TDC (thin). Its a single cutaway with carved top but a 25.5" scale and 17" body. Its not a very common model.

The standard H150 didn't include a Bigsby, but since so many guitars were custom ordered, its entirely possible that it was a factory install. That might be noted on the label inside the electronics cavity. They would usually note changes from a standard issue guitar, along with the color. As for a valuation, realistically, I would say in the $1500 range +/- depending on condition.

Yeah, the first was a mid 60s Jaguar that I sold in 75 to buy a Kawasaki. Seriously , who needs TWO guitars?

Is that one of the Vintage 54s that they put out for the 60th anniv where they made 1954 of them? I picked up a used one for $1100. Nice fun guitar. Its only the second Fender that I've ever owned. C'mon Git. That's a one-off show guitar. They have to charge more for it. I don't think they have to compete with Gibson anymore. If you search Gibson's website, you won't find a true archtop anywhere except for maybe the ES275 at MSRP of $5800 and street price of $4000. Its really a thinline so I don't know if you could count that as an archtop. They don't list a 175 anymore. Here are all the archtops they currently list: https://www.gibson.com/Guitars/Archtop When you look at Archtop guitars, you have the Ibanez, Eastman, Epiphone, Guild and Gretsch on the lower end (under $2000) before you start getting into the higher end stuff. Dale Unger has a nice American Elite for sale for $12000. Collins, Palen and Buscarino will set you back a pretty penny as well. FWIW, my local Heritage dealer hasn't gotten anything for quite a while. I'm not sure he's considered a dealer anymore. He's now stocking Eastmans which are actually pretty nice guitars. I played a couple of his archtops and playability was excellent and the sound was very good. For $1300 it was hard to beat, but it didn't prompt me to trade in my 525. I'm not a jazzer, so it's not a big temptation.

The folks from G&L get the same story, why buy a Fender "look alike" when you can buy a "real" Fender? Prices of G&L guitars are generally on par with equivalent Fenders. There are a lot of G&Ls out there being sold. The Tributes are very close to the MIM series, and the USA models are similar to the standard On the other hand, there are dozens of Fender style makers out there and many are WAY better than a standard Fender. Suhr, Kirn, Melancon, Nash, Anderson, LSL, Whitfill. They are generally lower in price than a Fender Custom Shop. We often try to compare Heritage to Gibson USA or the Custom Shop. Heritage is still well under the custom shop Gibson. The hand built H150 is priced between the LP Classic and Traditional, both of which are CNC mass produced. On the other hand, they have nothing to compete with the Studio or SG standard series. The 137 is priced several hundred higher than either of those two. I think a lot of us are spoiled from buying new guitars for 1/2 to 2/3 the price of the equivalent Gibson USA guitars. That's not any more realistic than buying a new Anderson or Whitfill for 2/3 the price of a Standard Fender USA. That's not realistic if the company is going to survive. Heritage was one of the better kept bargains in the guitar world. That may be changing now. Hopefully people will judge them on their merit and not just as a cheap Gibson wannabe.

I wonder if Gibson will be using the same strategy of doing big clearance pricing to move unsold inventory. With the new regime, they seem to be "right sizing" their line, which may mean lower number of sales at a higher price point (aka more profit). I'm sure Heritage is looking at the same thing. Plaza/Bandlab are not going to run the business to lose money. The revamping of the work area and building renovations are costing money, money that the old Heritage owners didn't have to recoup. We'll just have to see where the street prices settle out. I did notice that Heritage guitars were included in my recent "15% off" coupon from MF. That would put a new H137 at $1615 and a new H150 at $2125.

This one is currently for sale in San Antonio Tx. AA serial number would be 2010. Looks like it might be the one. $2500 In the past year, the prices of all used Heritage guitars has leaped anywhere from $500 to $1000. I think that's a result of Heritage raising prices on the new ones.

I don't doubt that Pete went with a veneer top on the 137 to keep the weight and thickness close to the standard model. Adding 1/4" maple cap gets you into H150 weight and thickness. That would almost make it an H140 Second Ed.