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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.)

Yeah, the fretboard on that custom sunburst Millie is more like it! That would definitely be my preference for the H-555 models!

Beautiful

That junior!!!!! Oh man. I’d love to have that back.

I also love P-90s. This is my H170 from 2014. Spruce back, very flamey maple top, ebony fretboard with 5mm pearl dots, 5-piece neck and ThroBak P-90s. It was Fab getting guitars built by Heritage. Good Times.

I agree that the half & half fretboard inlays were not the best design. I had Heritage correct that with a Millie custom build in 2011. Sunburst Spruce Millie from 2011 on the right Millie SuperLight from 2017 on the left. I had a change in guitar philosophy in my later custom builds preferring more wood less shell.

Sounds right to me... I definitely remember the driving in the freezing rain part, which started turning to snow later in the evening. At least four hours to Michigan, then the run for Brent's to O'Hare, so quite a long day of it for me. I prefer the growl of P-90s to most pickups and then I was a big fan of Leslie West's tone, so every time I see a Heritage with P-90s, I kind of go into deep and needy mode.

Yeah, I remember including that one in a 3 guitar trade to Brent. He had a 56’ Junior that I just had to have. That was late in 2013. I remember meeting Brent half way to do the exchange on a freezing rain laden Saturday morning. It was shortly before Christmas. That one is the only Heritage that I regret letting go of. As for the Junior, I moved that in 2016. It was a great player after a refret. But ultimately I still sounded like me playing it. Sad thing is that I should have held on to it for about another five years and quadrupled my money. 😫 I still think about that 150 a lot. Glad to see that it’s getting the love it deserves.

I tend to think that it's a very nice-looking guitar! However, I've always felt that the two different inlay schemes in general on the H-555 fretboard looked to be a bit odd. I can't help but to wonder why Heritage couldn't have designed a more consistent scheme throughout the board so, if I have any gripe at all, that's probably it.

If memory serves, we all debated on what made it so special from a standard 555 model. Thought it had a larger archtop headstock being the only major difference?

Bought this one from Dave who lives/lived near Detroit. I want to say this was back around 2017, while Ta was in Thailand and unaware 😜 Brent did the handoff on my way up to O'Hare to pick the little girl up. I like the uncluttered functionality of it. Lollar's and TP-6

If the TRC is mushroomless, it’s not a real GOG Heritage!

Nice! I had to play guitar to fill in time.

Doh!