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Well I finally had time to dive into this guitar today. I have mixed feelings about it. The construction/fit and finish are quite good. Fretwork is pretty good too. The electronics are very decent. I’m not exactly in love with the bridge pickup. I love the neck pickup. The push/pull coil taps are useless to me. I’ll never use them. But the pots have good taper (mini pots). The toggle switch is very tight. I’m able to get a pretty low action. There were 2 main problems. One, the tremolo springs rubbed the bottom of the cavity when you did a divebomb….thats not good!! So I had to take a wood file and file away some wood inside the trem cavity. Two, the Floyd would not stay in tune. Cheap springs!!!! I set it up for 9s. Came from the factory with 10a. !!! I bought a set of Floyd Rose noiseless springs….problem solved. The neck carve is a medium C. It’s close to a 60s neck. The satin finish is smooth as a baby’s bottom. Fast n smooth. The sculpted heel joint is great for upper register access. It’s light and quite resonant. Playability is quite good. Neck has almost no relief and sets up quite nicely. If I wasn’t a DIY person, I probably would’ve instantly boxed it back up for a refund. The springs rubbing on the back cavity, in my opinion, is a huge drop of the ball by QC! That is inexcusable, especially for a Guitar of that design and style! And is obviously a playability and Tone problem because when the springs rub against the wood like that, it obviously makes a really bad noise that disrupt the vibration of the strings! As far as the Tremolo not staying in tune, I think it was a combination of junk strings and bad springs. I put a nice little dab of BIG BENDS nut sauce on each pivot point of the Tremelo before I installed the new strings on it and between that and the new springs, I am not having any tuning issues at all. And I do some pretty heavy dive bombs with it. After a lot of TLC, this is actually a really nice guitar. Out of the box, it was not. And I blame Heritage for not checking for quality control issues, this Guitar was in Kalamazoo before it shipped off to me so they had every opportunity to double check the quality control of the Chinese factory, and obviously they chose not to! If you’re going to charge $1200 for a Chinese made guitar with the Heritage name on it, the QC needs to be A LOT BETTER!!!!

After a few weeks with this pedal, pairing it with different tube and solid state amps: I’m finding it most useful in front of a tube amp. Very warm overdrive. Thickens tone and gives it more weight, with just a bit of softness around the edges. Really nice. Not “transparent”, definitely colors your tone in the way intended. I’m sure I have not explored or mastered all it can do, and I haven’t used it as a “pedal in a box” straight to interface or PA, but I like it a lot used simply. Maybe because I’m an effects simpleton.

We saw Albert Lee a few years ago at the Acorn in Three Oaks. He was playing his signature guitars through an old Silverface Twin. It’s a small venue so the amp wasn’t jacked up much. It still sounded stellar, both clean and with pedals.

Never sell. My youngest daughter has dibs on it.

How can you tell an assembly line version vs a Marv version?

If you could score one for $2500… WOW. That would be amazing. lol.

So, your saying this is a gateway amp for pedals?

51.50 and a pack of smokes is the traditional joke.

last I heard was about $3.50 and a pack of smokes

I like the SF better: they are excellent amps for pedals SF twin is all over "dark side of the moon" for example Beatles "let it be" too I let an amp tech convince me to blackface my SF and I was disappointed in the results

Oh baby! That is a very nice price. It reads like it is well broken in. is the silver face as desirable as the 64(?) black face?

There’s been one for sale near me for the last year. It’s a Silverface MV model that’s been completely refurbished. No affiliation. I’ll send you a PM

My guess would be whatever a person was willing to sell it for.

Priceless

Wondering what one would need to pay to get a marvbird, not an assembly line 357?

Congrats, that's a beauty!

I miss my '71 twin reverb. But I don't miss moving it around 😁 I have a musicman 112 combo now

Whoever designed that HOC logo deserves kudos, nicely done!

I have flats on my H575 and Country Gentleman, they work well for those . My 575 has Seth's .

Again, that depends on the maker. The info said it's using Alpha pots which are decent, and polypropylene caps really aren't that much cost... a few pennys, which shouldn't be an issue on a guitar in that price range. It appears that they aren't using the generic ceramic humbuckers that most Chinese manufacturers install. They're Alnico pickups. I'll bet they will be similar to what GFS sells for <$40 each.

With the level of rework you perform on any guitar you have, I'm sure it will be a good instrument in the end. One drawback I can think of for these Chinese imports is low-end electronic components.

Against my better judgement, I’m gonna try one of these. I will report back.

I also missed the inaugural meeting. Unfortunately, there were some issues at work that necessitated me being there. Didn’t get out to my first one until 2013. I also made it to the following, and final “Barn” year. Man those were sweet!