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My dad, a failed guitar player, had a cheap Kent acoustic guitar that I learned my first few chords on, eventually the neck popped off of it from me tuning higher than it should have been Well then for christmas that year, my mom told my dad to buy me a guitar and amp. I got a Teisco Checkmate guitar with a matching little amplifier (in a plastic case). That was equally as bad as the Kent acoustic. The action on that guitar was so high I risked damage to my fingers everytime I tried to play a chord on it. After that, I took matters into my own hands. I saved up all the money that I could from my caddy job at the local golf course, and bought my first real guitar, a 1959 Fender Musicmaster in Desert Sand, and a Danelectro Cadet amp. I was off and running from there. But even in the early 70's, that little guitar and amp cost me $400. For nostalgia's sake, a few years back, I bought a 1960 Musicmaster that is pretty much identical to my old '59, and the same DanElectro Cadet amp just to see if I could make music with it, and here's a song I recorded with it. The Danelectro amp is a toy, but the Musicmaster is really a great sounding guitar, here it is through a proper amp, my Victoria Regal II...

I think Kent had a deal with parents. Buy your kid a Kent guitar and they'll never want to play guitar again, you can thank us later.

I had a Kent when I was a kid. They sucked.

MG, you're entirely correct. The Asian built guitars aren't targeting the guy who has 2 dozen guitars, 6 drum kits, 8 amplifiers and is playing in bars. Imagine you're 35, got 2 kids, a mortgage and a car payment. Your 12 yr old wants to learn to play guitar. For $270 you can get an Ascent H150 new or spend $2600 on a US H150. What are you going to choose? Or you could get a Jackson Dinky, Epiphone SG, Ibanez Gio, Squire, Yamaha Pacifica. All in the $2-300 range. Now 4 years later, the kid has actually taken to playing, even started playing with his friends. Wants a new guitar. Mexican Strat? Fancy Epiphone or Ascent+ for $6-800. Or hunt for a used Epi or Mexican Tele? There's a market for the mid and low tier stuff. In my day, it was a SIlvertone Dano, then a Guyatone built Kent, then a used Fender Jaguar. What it wasn't was a $400 ES335! $400 in 1965 was a lot more than $400 today. There's a lot more options now, and Heritage is just looking to fill that hole.

I see these in a different light. The guitar seems decent by this review. The price point is attractive to the begining and intermediate player due to the price. Those who can pay more and want "better", there are other places to go. I don't own anything in this series but have played a couple. I also recall one of my favorite rock players, Randy California of Spirit, played a Sears Silvertone in his early recording and performing days to great reviews. I have modded my H-150/157s over the years in some cases. The didn't "need" mods, but some fret work and slot cutting helped. If I were back in 6th grade, there's no way I could afford a new American built H-150 or H-535 from my paper route. If the Ascent+ was available, that may be within reach. I have an emotional bias though. I grew up in Kalamazoo. I'd take the temperature of the community since they are my audience. I don't think there would be resentment if I got the Asian version, especially as a kid. I can tell you that in Kalamazoo years ago, a lot of guys played Fenders and Gretsches. They never got any pushback for disloyalty. Rather, my friends liked trying them out. Quite a few were loyal Fender players. Some worked for Gibson. Brand loyalty has advantages. And if QC is solid, one advantage is you pretty much know what you're going to get before you open the case. If the Ascent series does have the quality and tight specs, those are strong positives. I don't own one, but I'm not allergic to them! A major reason I had a good early experience, 6th-10th grade, was a glut of Gibsons in my city. I got a Firebird V with a Kalamazoo amp from a neighbor for 6 weeks of paper route money. If I were not in Kalamazoo at the time, I'd probably would have had to go Asian! Let me mention that the Ascent line is still owned and managed by the Heritage company owners. If they can produce very good guitars with a significantly lower price in Asia, they likely have to strongly consider doing that for their investors. It is likely mandated. But it's our choice as to what we buy, and we buy for different reasons. My choice has been to buy locally. That's easy when the product is good and it supports your neighbors. If I were 13 again and had to earn the money for a guitar, amp and lessons, and a used Gibson or Heritage would cost more than a new Ascent, the lofty ideals of "buying American" may not be reachable. Lastly, the Ascent series idea came from somewhere. It may be what allowed the new Heritage owners the ability to maintain the original Kalamazoo site for the Heritage models. IDK. Recall that whatever the original Heritage factory owners were doing was not survivable, leading to its sale. Projecting from my youth when I'd stare at the Gibson catalogs, quite a few kids who get an Ascent will move up into a Heritage or Gibson or Fender or PRS. From what I see, the Ascent seems like it could work as an entry point for a kid into a lifetime of guitar.

thanks for that!

and props to Hank!

Wow what a joyful noise RIP both: masters, monsters

You have admire the guys who can pull this off, one just about nailing Terry's solo note for note, the other getting the "spirit" but not following the script exactly.

There's an album -- they play Hank Williams tunes...

That was great! I'm a huge Roy Clark fan, but I really LOVED Joe Pass's rhythm comping.

Awesome!! Thanks for sharing that video. 👍

Wow, thanks for posting this.

That's an approach used by Nearly Dan, a SD tribute band who have been going for nearly 30 years. There are a couple of iconic solos - Larry Carlton's Kid Charlemagne solo and the Phil Woods alto solo from Dr. Wu, for example - played as on the original, but otherwise it's up to the player. Incidentally, for a different interpretation of the Steely Dan canon, Chris Ingham's Quintet (aka Steely Jazz) do a neat job...

I lean both ways... there are times where it's "play what you feel" and there are times where it's "play what they played". Depends on the song, and rarely do I have the skill to match the original, it's going to be an approximation! I don't worry about getting the exact tone or effect, but I want the notes.. the "tune" to be pretty close. It's like when Carlos and Tomita started interpreting classics. Tomita's Snowflakes are Dancing sounds nothing like any other versions, but the tune is definitely recognizable. If you start changing the notes, playing something totally different, it's NOT Snowflakes! When the Vanilla Fudge revamped multiple songs, they kept the tune. Season of the Witch, Shotgun, You Keep Me Hangin' On. It was reinterpretation, and it works. But watching Jeff Beck do Les Paul licks on How High The Moon sounds so true to Les' vision that it's a joy to hear! There's room for both situations.

What you’re describing is the difference between: interpretation — making the music yours imitation — recreating someone else’s choices Tribute bands live in the second category. They’re about fidelity to a recording, not fidelity to the musical idea. That’s why they obsess over note‑for‑note solos, exact tones, exact phrasing, exact stage moves. It’s a reenactment. But in classical music, nobody treats the first performance of a Mozart symphony or a Beethoven concerto as the “correct” version. They treat the score as the real object — the blueprint — and every orchestra and conductor is expected to bring their own interpretation to it.

This!

Sweet guitar and a killer setup. I have a DSL40C I used for a few years now, but I have since started using a Kendrick 5E3 Tweed Deluxe amp. I'm really surprised how great it sounds using both single coil Fenders and of course my Heritages. No tube screamer for me, I like the Timmy a bit better. Bad Monkey if I want to kick in some saturation. The Fender Champion II seems like an interesting amp, I was considering one of them when I finally found a Peavey Bandit Redstripe (I found that amp crunch channels sound nearly the same as a DSL40.)

an espresso pedal! what a great idea hah

LOL, I had to double check my text to see if I misspelled expression-pedal! But I didn't. 🤣

Thanks for posting that, it was really good! at first I thought it was the same as the vid I posted, but it's different. I guess he always swings his arms like that when he enters a room 😁

I'd buy that if it had an espresso machine too. A footswitch controllable espresso machine, with an arm that brings it up beside the microphone

I integrated all this stuff by using a Fender ToneMaster Pro. You can use it as a modeling amp with a full-range speaker or just sending it to the PA board directly if you like. However it is also designed to work well as a pedal board, and it actually does that really well and you get your choice of hundreds of effect pedals and a huge number of presets you can build just by drag-and-dropping them on the screen. You can even change the impedance load the guitar sees, so it mimics stuff like old-vintage fuzz-faces that really load down the guitar (which alters the tone). The board also has two relay-contact outputs, so if you want to build presets that use the built-in tremolo effect in your old Fender amp, or turn the amp's reverb on and off, or operate channel switches from the Tone Master Pro itself. The Tone Master pro also processes MIDI commands and allows for two expression pedals too. I was building a new pedal board with the pedals I've been collecting since I was a teenage in the early 80's. Then I looked at how valuable they've become and how big and heavy the pedal board was becoming. It just made more sense to get the Tone Master Pro. It does a lot. It also can simultaneously accept a low-Z microphone and run a vocals chain with a preamp and compression/limiter at the same time.