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The H-157 3 pickups guitar has H.R.W.s and it is a 2002. The 2 pickups H-157 is a 1999 with the Schaller golden 50s.

@LenzGuitar...Beautiful and rare Heritage H157's. What year were they born, er, I mean built? Welcome to the HOC.

There are some quirky things on a real Heritage you might notice. I don't think many here mention it though. After owning and playing dozens of Heritages from 1986 to 2023, I've notice a few things. The binding does not hide the maple cap at the cutaway unlike Gibson has over the years. One curiosity is the dot inlays on the side markers in the neck. One of them above the 12th fret sits slightly off center, making it obvious the same tooling was used for well over 20 years. Headstocks have changed slightly, a little less narrow and the points a bit sharper Necks progressively (and I mean PROGRESSIVELY) got thicker and rounder since 1986. Hardware and pickups have changed. Schaller pickups and hardware until early 2000's, then Seymour Duncan humbuckers and Tone Pros hardware, and now inhouse built pickups and Heritage embossed tuners. Up until 2016 or so, every single Heritage was a custom order. They were a boutique builder before the term was ever coined. Despite all the changes in the past ten years, the company is doing better than ever. Their work is some of the best there is and overall, the history tells a tale of persistence, devotion, and generational craftsmanship that is hard to duplicate these days.

Now there's a good start to a post! Nice pair... of 157's...

Doesn't seem like much of a deal...

Yes, my Redstripe is the USA made variant.

Double good introduction.

These are being discontinued so I grabbed one for $179 ($20 off).

Everything comes from China now. But you can still find plenty of the USA gear on the market

Actually? Peavey led the charge in PA systems hands down. And their amps were no let down either. My Peavey arsenal is Peavey Bandit 112 Peavey Express 112 Peavey Classic 50 212 Peavey TNT 115BW bass amp

Yup, but I also think there is a difference between analog and digital technology. The old transistor, analog Bandit is still a serviceable amp just like a tube amp. The modeling/digital stuff has a shelf life and when it fails, its trash.

What's this? Tube people embracing solid state. 😏 I've always maintained both for this same reason.

@mars_hall...Wow, what a colorful trip down memory lane...all triggered by a LP Junior. You should write a book. Oh, and I love your P90 black H-150. Never seen a TP6 on a Heritage. Wasn't that one of Ren Wall's inventions?

Great story. Great photo.

I've read about the Special 130 and the Studio Pro, both of the Transtube variety and nothing but praise. One would think Peavey would bring them back. They do still make a Bandit, but its a digital amp these days.

This was one of the finest little angry guitars I've ever owned. It was a dark cherry 1960 Les Paul Junior, in the true 3/4 sized form and it had its P-90 growl. It could get a tad noisy, strings left untouched, but she could sing, and she made your hands feel absolutely huge. Bought it in Indy for $160, as I recall, this after seeing it in a local ad paper, The Trader... So it was about 14 years old at the time and came from a kid living on the depressed side of town. Was intended to get me going for that articulated Leslie West sound... My apartment was burglarized on Christmas Eve that year while I was away doing the annual family get-together thing, with the Junior being snatched, along with my home stereo and tools. The police called me into the station to file a report, took my picture, and eventually the Junior would be returned, along with the stereo in about a month. Supposedly it had been recovered from a taxi driver who had a side hussle going as a fence. The tools would forever remain AWOL. When it came to court, the accused got a pass. Strange to me, but that's life. Months later, he happened to be in a bar where our band was playing and started up a conversation with me, while sitting up at the bar during our break. Never really got a straight/complete story out of him, but I suspect he was a snitch and it was implied that the whole burglary thing had been a setup to see what, if any activities, the band was up to on the side. We were your typical life of the party band and all that goes with that, but nothing out of control. The force, on the other hand, were a tad corrupt in those days with redneck heroes everywhere trying to make a name for themselves. I had been seeing a girl at that time for about a month, a right fine looker, who, the first time I'd seen her, just happened to wander into another gig/bar we'd played in November. We always drew a crowd and had a regular following, so a new pretty thing was always going to happen. She walked across the floor there in front of the stage while we were up there hitting it, and proceeded to pass out stone cold right there to the floor. With little second guessing, something inside told me I had to get to know this child better, at least for that night anyway. 😜 She was 21, educated, pretty, an ex-cheerleader, yet quite vulnerable, and yes totally strung out in life and values. She was also the daughter of the nearby air base commander, a girl who had grown up early with a wild crowd who lived off base and on the streets, just outside of San Antonio. Aside from the addiction and life choices, she had a lot going for her. Family wealth, brains, looks, personality, skills... And, well, skills... Within about 3 days of that first night, she would check herself into detox, and since she checked quite a few of the required boxes, I would go to visit her in detox. This, and presumably the base command connection, put me and the rest of the band on some kind of a special list to be watched by the locals. The pic from the police station ended up in a drawer in the office of the local highschool, where a freind and later singer in the band found it a couple of years later and returned it to me. I did look tired, but rarely got enough sleep during those days. Another time.... Carla, who was actually a good person, would later become a local politician and city councilman, only to die in the end of a damaged liver... Loved that Junior and it did teach me a lot of things about life! Does bring back an interwoven lot of strangely related memories and tales... Seems I sold the Junior to pick up an original, now vintage Firebird III, though it was only 11 years old at that time.

The Bandits have been one of those amps that just work without any problem... mostly bulletproof, don't need to worry about spare tubes, and sound pretty decent. The Peavey folks actually knew what they were doing!

Yeah, me too as I could really cash in on it these days!! 😡

the horror

Years ago, I played in a country band and we did a lot of winter gigs in Wyoming. We would do 2 nights at each bar, and we would leave our amps in the equipment van overnight. It would get cold as hell up there, sometimes below 0 with windchill. I didn't want to leave one of my expensive tube amps out in the cold, so I bought a Peavey Special 130 which was like a Bandit just more powerful. I paid a few hundred bucks for it used and it never falted once. When I quit that band, I gave it to a close friend who needed an amp. But while I had it, I was surprised how good that amp sounded! I had a simple pedal board that I made with a piece of scrap plywood painted black, that had a volume pedal, Rat distortion, Danelectro DanEcho Delay and a Boss tuner. That was all I needed to get the job done with that amp. Talk about a cheap rig! My guitar was an early seventies Les Paul Deluxe.

A couple months ago, I sold off my Jet City 2212 combo for a nice sum of a few hundred bucks, made a few dollars off it. The amp was my band practice amp, so it had about a 100+ hours on it over a three year period. Being such a high gain amp, I really couldn't use it with playing all country music, so I took a little bit of the proceeds and found a used Peavey Bandit Redstripe, (USA made version) at Guitar Center's used gear. This was supposed to be my new amp for band practice since its kept in a barn with little climate control They have a reputation for sounding really good and built like tanks. A couple weeks ago, our bass player took the PA out of the barn and grabbed my amp assuming it was my gig amp. When I arrived at the fairgrounds, he already had my amp on stage, so I just went with it. Honestly, the amp sounded really good. Didn't need to turn it up, just needed to position it so I could hear it (often my amps are a few feet behind me and flat on the floor so its hard to really hear it). I might just get another one as they just don't make them like this anymore. Analog, solid state, loud, and very usable all away around.

I hate it when that happens...

I do remember playing an old Jr at PSP on a Sunday morning in the Barn.... Through a Marshall half-stack too... sounded marvelous, although it was loud and Kuz started yelling at me... as if I could hear him though.... 😁

Pressure, I hear you. Here's the piece of Mun Ebony I chose for the fretboard of my Doug Harrison custom archtop. He was allowed to put a maximum of two MOP inlays on the top of that lovely slab. (Fortunately, he did put inlays along the side as well.)