TalismanRich

Great post, Yoslate. You just don't hear about Little Feat anymore. I didn't realize they were still out and playing! After Lowell George died, I pretty much quit following them.

I can't fault your choice on the H140. I've got an '87 H-140. It's a fine guitar.

I never heard the story, but I know, from doing health and safety stuff in a plant that handled class 1 flammables and lots of powders that made explosive dust that it can be incredibly dangerous. That's one of the reasons I was so impressed with they way they set up the new work area.

Nope.... guitars and amps don't get jealous, and can't hurt you!

I rotate through amps like I do my guitars. For the past couple of years, the Princeton clone has probably gotten the most play time. About a month ago, I pulled the Classic 30 out and put it upstairs with some of my guitars. Then I fired up the Patriot, although I'm wondering if there is something happening with it. It was making a strange background noise, especially if I moved the Mood control to max. Then I was playing with the Marshall 401, no pedals, but with a good amount of crunch. That's the nice thing about having amps with differences. Its just like having different guitars.

Blog is a four letter word!

I wonder if this is the same Jim Fielder who was the bassist for Blood Sweat and Tears. He also played with Buffalo Springfield and Mothers of Invention.

I'm with you Chico. The Millie is just about the perfect weight, while living in the H150/LP sonic territory. I find that if I stand with my 157 for 30-40 minutes, my fingers start to go numb and my shoulder and back cramp. That makes for problems when you're trying to play guitar. That's even with a wide strap. I can hold my 535 and Millie lots longer. Obviously part of the problem is that we aren't quite as young as we used to be.

I'm sure they are planning to stay more "boutique", along the lines of the Gibson custom shop. To achieve mass market penetration, they would have to abandon the hand work, and move to full CNC manufacturing, like Gibson Nashville, Fender, PRS and others. The Harmony line is more mass market, but I don't know if it has the name recognition and reputation to attract the same sales peaks as the big boys, especially among the younger crowd. We boomers can only buy so many guitars... Over the years, there has been talk about whether Heritage would introduce a overseas line, like Gibson does with Epiphone, or PRS does with their SE line. I think that would dilute the brand, just at a time when they are gaining traction as a premium line. The owners can use the Harmony line as their "budget" brand, and keep Heritage at the top. This is totally speculation on my part. The owners haven't bothered to call me to ask my opinion on anything.

I'm of the opinion that wood is the only thing that affects the tone. The amp, pickup, scale length, strings and pick used have very little to do with the overall tone. My Melancon is made with really light Louisiana swamp ash and a maple neck. It resonates really well.

Short history: Heritage was formed by former Gibson employees after the company left Kalamazoo. The owners were Jim Duerloo, Marv Lamb, Bill Paige, JP Moats, and Mike Korpak, who left shortly after the company started. All were in some type of management roll at the time. All had been longtime employees of Gibson that simply didn't want to move to Nashville. They bought a bunch of the equipment that Gibson did not take with them, and moved into the same building at 225 Parsons Street. This happened in 1985. Some of the owners had started with Gibson in the mid and late 50s. Ren Wall joined them, after being in various positions at Gibson. Their designs were obviously Gibson inspired, although they dipped their toes into other styles. They kept the old style of manufacturing, staying with hand building rather than having machines do most of the work. About the only real "automation" was the duplicarver that carves tops for the various guitars, although it's basically a pin router that rough carves tops one at a time. Things stayed pretty much the same until 2016. At that point, changes began to take place. JP had retired, and sadly passed in 2015. All of the owners were getting up in years. A local real estate company bought the building and purchased Heritage. Half of the company was sold to Bandlab, a company from Singapore who also owns a lot of other musically related entities. They are a larger musical instrument retailer in SE Asia. They bought Sonar after Gibson tossed it in the trashbin and built it into Bandlab recording software. They own Guitar Magazine. In the process of refurbishing the building, they moved the guitar making operation from the basement of the original building to a part of the building that Gibson had built in the 60s or 70s. (At one time Gibson basically owned the entire block). There was an incident with some longtime employees, some were let go, and others left in protest. I won't go into the issues, as I wasn't party to any of it. Suffice to say, new employees were hired. They brought in some good people to manage the operation, while keeping the original owners. Marv and Bill have since retired. The last I heard, Jim was still coming in, but it's important to realize that these guys are getting into their 70s and 80s. Pete Farmer, who had worked for Heritage previously was brought in to oversee manufacturing. Edwin Wilson was brought on board from Gibson's custom shop. In relocating to the newer part of the building, the company kept the process and old equipment, but updated the area in a lot of ways, especially in safety. An extensive dust collection system was built, a new sealed spray booth was built to minimize dust contamination of the finish and keep the employees from breathing toxic fumes. A premium was put on consistently high quality, which had varied some over the years. They are still hand made, but all reports are that the quality is much improved. They contracted the product line to concentrate on the better sellers, H150, 530, 535, 575 and Eagle. The 137 was in the line until this past year. Bandlab also owns Harmony Guitars which are built in the same building, but have CNC cut bodies and necks and then assembled. I think the company is stronger than it has been in years, but at the expense of the almost family atmosphere of the original company. That's not a bad thing. Had the company not been sold, I'm sure the next step would have been to close the doors.

I'll echo what was said before. The company is stronger now than it was 10 years ago. The guitars are more consistent and the quality is excellent. What they don't do now is have 25 different models that can be customized with every whim you can think of. The product line was brought into a more manageable half dozen models that are popular and selling well. The most obvious deletions are the wide variety of archtop guitars, which are labor intensive to build, and much lower in demand that solid body and semi-hollow styles. They still have the Eagle Classic and 575, so at least they do have archtops. (try to find a new archtop in the Gibson catalog these days...) IF you REALLY want something different, they have the Bespoke program, which would be a true custom shop deal, but you'll pay for that option.

Welcome aboard, UnkyHarv. Glad to hear you're enjoying your H-530. What type of stuff do you and your mates play? I'm guessing if you're into the Johnny Smith sound, some jazz must be involved.

So where does the H-120, 125 and 127 come into play? The 127 was the Telecaster looking thing. The H125 was swoopy, the 120 was like a single pickup H-140 but with bolt neck.

Paul, it's best to have a handy recorder, that way we don't HAVE to depend on our memory.