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don't be flicking any boogers on that fuzzy dufflebag

Love that rendition, Master Rob! Yeh, the outro - Beautiful cacophony.

You're right about the neck size, but I'm not so picky about that much anymore. I've learned to adjust how I'm playing, but I think a lot has to do with touch. I don't need to push down as hard as I used to as my fingers are tougher now. My touch is lighter as I don't have to work as hard. I found myself to be much faster when my hand is relaxed, sort of negates the need of a thicker neck. I'm going to break out some more tools tonight and see what I can do. I have a proper Nashville bridge and tailpiece I'm going to install. I think I can get the truss rod, may take a little clean out of the cavity to get to the nut. With any luck I'll get a turn or two out of it and see if it makes a difference.

Beautiful guitar DBlues. IIRC, you sold it because of the neck. The top also has mineral streaks and, at that time, some here considered the streaks to be a bad sign; it is not a bad sign. With a little research you’ll find mineral streaks are indicative of maple grown in wet areas where the ground has plentiful minerals. The maple that grows best in wet areas is the red maple AKA swamp maple. A fair number of ‘59 Pauls also have mineral streaks. I’m not at all opposed to mineral streaks and even covet them; so much so that I’ve planted red maples in the wettest terrain at the ranch for the next generation. That’s my, long winded, way of saying Happy New/Old/Refurbished Guitar Day. She’s a Looker!

About 2007, I purchased a used H140 from another member. At the time it was my dream to own a Heritage. This particular example was from 1985, loaded with unique features unlike any other H140 of the time. Over the years, I had the top refinished, swapped pickups, and hardware. Eventually I sold it for whatever reason like I did with nearly every guitar over the last 15+ years. A few years ago, I bought it back. It had a few more mods, nothing terrible. I lent the guitar out to Heritage in hopes it would be used in their museum. But that never happened and the guitar remained in a closet up until the last couple of months. Heritage offered to restore the guitar to resemble its original appearance such as Schaller pickups and hardware when they found NOS parts in an old cabinet of Ren's. While it looks more like its original state, sans the color, ultimately, there were some problems. The pickups were dead, so Heritage dropped in a set of Seymour Duncan's. Seth Lover in the bridge and a 59 in the neck with new wiring harnesses. The Schaller bridge and tailpiece were added, but there is some odd issue with it fretting out around the 15th fret (bridge may have slightly collapsed) But there is a lot more going on. The guitar had a headstock repair long before I bought it, but there was so much done during the repair, access to the truss rod nut is nearly impossible. So, it cannot be adjusted; over time that wasn't an issue, but now the guitar sat for so long, the neck can no longer be adjusted, and the guitar is all but unplayable. Looking at the guitar, I know what it needs, but I do not have the means to fix it. This needs a new neck and Heritage can't provide one. Unfortunately, it's only use is a slide guitar at best. It's so beautiful, but it's a 40-year-old guitar that needs some serious TLC.

Thanks, R.... That was the objective. I was trying to offer the occasional discernable note whilst the car crusher was doing its thing.

So, our group had a tee time at a golf course on the other side of the river, which meant that I paid the toll to get to Indiana. While I was over there, I decided to run by a local shop, Maxwell's House of Music. This is a sister store to Mom's Music which happens to have been started by the drummer of the first band I went to see as an 8th grade graduate. (Ok, enough back story...) My thought was to see if they had a Blues Driver in stock. I would rather support a local store than Guitar Center. Two local shops I check didn't have any in stock. Maxwells had the standard pedal, and the guy was more than happy to plug it up to try. "What do you have for an amp?" He pulls out a Princeton Reverb for me. "What do you play?" That's a bit trickier. I explained that I've got several Heritages with humbuckers but recently got my H-530 with P90s. We walked over to the wall and I pulled this one down from the wall. It was a choice between this ES-330 and a 335 next to it. It was a very nice guitar, but was it nicer than my 530? Nah! It does have some nice grain. Other than the block inlays, there's wasn't any real advantage. They played very much alike. I still don't like the plug on the front rather than the rim. At $3500, it was priced between the Custom Core and the standard. A fellow about my age was picking up a white Tele and he and I jammed a bit on some blues. He said he's still got his father's original '64 ES-345. In the end, I left with a Blues Driver. I'll be pulling out the pedal board later today and cranking it up.

That outro fuzz solo is wonderfully trashy tonewise!

That's a real beauty! Welcome to the HOC!

May have posted this in the past, But since we're focusing on fuzz here.... Never a fan of it, but given this is a Lucinda Williams tune, and I'm a big fan of the fearless Stuart Mathis, I thought...why not get way out of my little box. This is from the Be Good To Yourself project, and since we were tracking nearly thirty songs, I figured I'd better come up with a variety of tones and approaches. I'm pretty much down with what Randy (fdx99) observes in his notes, above. As I recall this track was my Tele for electric rhythm, a Nashville tuned Red Label Yamaha FG-110, and the fuzz was my Nash Strat, bridge pickup, into my Low Power Tweed Twin clone. The fuzz was an MXR Hendrix Octavio, which has a pretty great fuzz! Fuzz is there in a couple of early chords, but doesn't really appear until the guitar outro, last 1:30-ish of the tune. I'm a little proud of this one. The vocalist is eighteen-year-old phenom Māya Beth Atkins.

Well I finally figured out how to post the picture - My new H535

I don't see the picture that i posted. I must be doing something wromg, but not sure what.

and I though I had a lot of Heritage guitars. I have a lot more work to do.

Well I went to a dealer today that had 4 Std H535's. I played them all of them through a great sounding Milkman amp. I also played a few of the guitars through a Benson amp. All were well made, high quality, guitars. The one in the picture sounded just a bit better than the others, so it came home with me. Sorry about the picure quality. Original photo was about 3.5MB. Just plugged it into my amp, and it sounds inspiring!

For me, with a fuzz I've a strat on bridge or middle/bridge pickup. I don't use hum buckers w/fuzz for perhaps the same reason you don't - not a sound I really gel with. Prefer the 'fuzz face' type circuit. Single note riffs on the low strings for fatness. Sustain on single note leads up in the cheap seats. Cleans up when volume rolled back. Fuzz has a cool sound/vibe/touch to it. But again, for me, it's 'gotta' be a strat into it. Even better when paired w/marshall type amp.

You ought to get a P90 guitar to round out the goodness…

Lets see..... I had an original Fuzz Face. Got stolen around '72. I didn't think it was great, but it was one of the few pedals that you had back then. You didn't have 247 different fuzz pedals! Replaced it with a Jordan Boss Tone that plugged into the front of the Jaguar. Great for doing Satisfaction and Inna Gadda Da Vita. I eventully traded that for an EEPROM burner many years later. The knobs were broken where the whammy bar would swing around and hit the plastic. I covered it up later with a piece of Erector set with electrical tape on it to protect it. Got a Fender Blender. Very fizzy. It did fuzz and octave. I don't know where that pedal went. I probably left it at the bass players house. All told those 3 would probably fetch you 2 or 3 grand today. At the time, I was out about $100 total. Pedals back then were much cheaper! Most of the time, I simply turned my Guild Thunderbird amp to 10 and if you toggled the 3 way tone switch between two settings, it was almost like doing the jumper on a Marshall. The amp was only about 35 watts, so it would really distort when full up. Today, I don't use fuzz, I prefer the OD. Klon style and Tube Screamer have been my mainstays, although I really like the Blues Driver that Pete Farmer lent me at PSP. It wasn't so midrangy like a TS. Haven't bought one yet but it will happen. I haven't decided if I'll get the standard or WazaCraft model. I have a Soul Food, but I replaced it with a NotaKlon. It sounded smoother to me, and was less noisy. My preference is for a smoother, creamy overdrive, not a harsh biting sound. I like the sustain for soloing.

The fuzz pedal... So many variations, its hard to know where to start. I've had a couple fuzz pedals over the past 20 years or so. Mainly because of the whole Hendrix or Smashing Pumpkins tone. However, being a primary humbucker player, I really do not like the sound of it. What are the tip, tricks, usages, etc people use? When and why do you use a fuzz pedal? What are the differences in the options? I'm rather curious here.

Unfortunately Eljay, unless you're on the inside, there is no way to tell what the plan is really. But I would assume, they are winding down or already wound down the standard line to relaunch the standard II line. Which means a change in production schedules. I'd assume the 535 standard line will come back as a standard II and with finishes we are familiar with.

Thanks Rich. It's not feedback free, but I can control it, mostly by not standing 2' away from it like I do in practice. There are times where I intentionally go up to the amp to get some harmonic feedback to sustain. Sounds so cool when you can keep it under control.

Glad to see you're still out there playing gigs. I agree completely. You can cover most all bases with the 535. I've heard you play that 535 enough at PSP to know that it's a killer. It's good that it's still in your arsenal, even if it is "on loan". Your band must have been playing REALLY LOUD if you coudn't play without feeding back. On the other hand, it's perfect to get the acoustic feedback going when you want to sustain a note infinitely! Turn away and it should go back to normal.

Welcome! Nice guitars!

10 years ago, when I finally felt financially comfortable to purchase a new Heritage, it had to be a 535. At the time, I had an Epiphone Dot Deluxe with Seth Lover pickups in it. It was my number one guitar and with its big neck, was easily my favorite guitar to play. When I custom ordered my 535, I wasn't looking to trick it out or make it a flashy guitar. I basically wanted a Heritage H535 that looked like my Epiphone. Flame maple top, wine red, Seth Lover pickups, gold hardware, and a big neck. I added just a couple subtle touches like a bound, inlaid headstock and gold top reflector knobs; an excellent Heritage dealer hooked me up with a deluxe wood package- highly flamed maple top, back, and sides! For many years, I only played it at home, took it to PSP or to a few friends' homes for jams. It never went to a gig. Until last weekend. 2 years ago, I tried it at a gig briefly and couldn't get the tone I wanted, and the feedback was killing me even when I tried it at a few practices. So, it stayed at home atop its wall hanging perch. At first, I thought my problem was the Seth Lover pickups, so I swapped them for Railhammer pickups. While "vintage" voiced, I found those pickups were too clean, too bright. I realized their design was more or less for heavy guitar players in drop tunings and high gain. Earlier this year, thanks to a recommendation Brent, I purchased a custom made A3 magnet Red Rocks humbucker for the bridge pickup. Did a swap and I loved the tone again. Since my personal life went into an upheaval a few months ago, I had purged many of my guitars, with me only really owning a couple now. My Heritages remain with me, but officially I do not own them; I retain them under the premise they get played. So, they do. I had a double header weekend playing a gig Friday and another on Saturday. This time, I took my 535. With exception to 1 song out of 42, the 535 was used for every song and genre. Country, Rock, Pop, didn't matter. Its versatility was amazing! Paired with a Marshall DSL40C (not the gen2) and a few good pedals to spice up the tone, this guitar was perfect. My H150 came with me just to play an open G tune to start a set. Between my H535 and my H150, I really don't need any other guitars to gig with. I found keeping similar guitars (pickup configurations) for swapping on songs, I don't have to mess with tone controls (going from a Tele to a H150 required a lot of eq changes to cut through). This is a "trick" I discovered when I watched a killer cover band and how their lead guitarist used only one guitar the whole night and his backup was a similar guitar (humbucker loaded).

Welcome, nice collection of Heritage guitars.

Welcome!!!