Leaderboard

New (used) guitar day for me. Picked up a nice clean, 2001 H535 in natural, figured maple with HRW pickups. Very little wear on it front or back, frets in very good condition. I had an aluminum stop bar and Nashville tune-o-matic bridge, so I swapped off the Schaller bridge and tailpiece. The Schaller hardware is ok, but the rollers on that style tailpiece tend to work themselves loose over the years, and I had the parts in my parts drawer. At 7lbs, 12-ounces, it is a really nice light weight. The label doesn't say "HRW", but the black-dot on the switch and the dates match, no sign that it has ever been worked on before, so it looks all legit as shipped back then. I know HRW's are not everyone's cup of tea, but I'll give them a fair shot. So far, it sounds really good with them. Sadly, the Heritage case didn't come with it. It looks like they're out of stock at Heritage, maybe I'll call Monday and see about it. It did come with a cheap, poorly fitting generic case. It does fit pretty well in a Gibson ES335 case. But there's some disagreement as to the ES335 vs. H535 dimensions, and I don't know if the Heritage case is specifically-fitted or not. It does appear the 535 might be a little thinner than the 335. The 2002 H535 joins my 1998 H150 that I've had for over 20 years as my second Heritage. The H150 came factory with SD59's, Nashville bridge and heavy stop bar. It's been a great guitar all this time too. Photo of the H535 after cleanup, swapping the hardware and restringing. Temporarily occupying a Gibson case.

Here are some shots of my band and me playing a gig last night. A friend of mine is a professional photographer who has photographed many jazz legends up close in performance at the Monterey Jazz Festival and (and many other venues) for decades . https://michaeloletta.com/. He’s a real pro and can make even an amateur like me look like a real musician. I had no idea he was photographing. Consummate professional. The guitar is way more photogenic than me…

I remember my first LP was a 79’ Custom. I swapped out the T-Tops, because they were too microphonic. I put a set of Duncan 59s’ which in 90’ were still considered great pickups. This was way before the whole “Boo-teek” thing started. That guitar sounded great, but had to weigh 12lbs. Back in 90’ I was a kid, so the weight wasn’t an issue. Over the years I’ve found that heavier LP style guitars sounded better (to me). Not sure if there’s any science behind that, or just by chance.

I had a look at Michael Oletta's website and I like his comment, "The Jazz images I treasure are not just a "documentation" of the Jazz Artist. The image should reflect the music, mood and the moment." Exactly this. Nearly thirty years ago the tutor on a photography course I was attending said that you take good images of subjects you're passionate about. I also see that he plays bass - I know a few jazz photographers who are also musicians...

I had a '99 H-150 that must have been between 11 to 12 pounds. It sustained for days. I liken it to a piano. Great tone! I sold it because it was so heavy -even in my late twenties. I have only heard one guitar like that and it was a friend's father's '59. Yeah, nice suite... I found several suits in the dumpster out side of my apartment. I brought the jackets in to give to a young kid living near me. A buddy said to put on the jacket and glasses and do a Stephen Stills thing and he took a photo. The kid loved the jackets. I didn't tell him they probably belonged to a dead man.

This is a complete shot in the dark, but worth a try nonetheless. I am trying to track down a 2007 Goldtop H150 Classic I special ordered in that year. It had an ebony fretboard which sets it apart some. I do have record of the serial number, but won’t post that publicly. It had a unique spot on the back of the body that was lighter than the rest. I sold it to HOC member 602a in 2010. I believe he then sold it to someone living in Seattle. I had to sell it at the time. I would love the chance to buy it back or at least know what became of it. Maybe someone will see this and know. If so, please message me.

You could line up 7 R7s and they would sound similar, but not exactly the same. A while back I had several L.P. style guitars in the house so a friend and I decided to have a tone party. The lineup consisted of an R7 goldtop from mid 2000s, a 70s L.P custom, a L.P. classic, and finally a core 150 with stock 225 pickups. We played all through a Suhr SL68 100w plexi style head into a 70s Marshall 412 bottom cab loaded with original blackbacks. I really do love a good R7 with the fatty neck and burstbuckers, but I've gotta say, we both clearly choose the Core 150 as the champion that day. When I first heard those 225 pickups I was underwhelmed. I just didn't spend enough time to get what makes them good. The lower output makes for great clarity, but when run into an amp that is cranked up it was a thing of sonic beauty. Seriously, it sounded way better than the guitars that were there that day. The L.P. custom had some hand wound units...can't remember the winder. Also, the R7, whole lit was a nice guitar, I've had other ones that were better sounding. Saying that a core 150 sounded "Les Pauly" is an odd statement.

Great setlist!!

Set One Corcovado Days of Wine and Roses Lawns Someday My Prince Will Come Song for My Father God Bless the Child Saga of Harrison Crabfeathers Girl From Ipanema Set Two Georgia on My Mind All Blues Black Orpheus This Masquerade Lucky Southern How Insensitive Footprints St. Thomas

I’m a firm believer in the wood of a guitar does mater. I also find I prefer the sound of my 9.25 lbs 150 to any other LP I’ve played or owned which includes a PRS, G brand, Collings, Tokai and Eastman. I still have the Tokai and the Eastmans. The others were all lighter weight guitars and they were more resonant or louder acoustically but the actual tone wasn’t the bell like ring on the bottom end that I really love about the 150 and every note has the same intensity. That quality comes out through the amp, the Collings was close but not quite there. I have been lucky enough to play 2 Black Beauties, a ‘59 and a ‘60. Both were heavy probably upper 9 to 10 pounds and triple pickups. I passed on buying the ‘59 in 1988 for $1000 (if I could only reverse time) and the ‘60 I played in 2019 at a local shop with the $60k price tag hanging on it. The ‘60 was just dull. I would not trade the 150 for either of these guitars. I would love to get my hands on one of the limited run 157s with the p90s, I’ve always had an attraction to the black customs.

Schaller did all kinds of stuff right. Lots and lots and lots of very well made Schaller guitar parts out there. The "Nashville Tune-o-Matic" bridge - Schaller. Look how many say, "made in Germany". Schaller right there. They made a lot of very good tuning machines used on a variety of brands. The Schaller GTM bridge, aka "roller bridge" works fine, just looks weird. The top-loader tailpiece is weird looking, but very functional, especially with fine-tuners, if you want fine tuners. Schaller humbuckers were well regarded in their day and widely used by the entire guitar industry. I've taken electrical measurements of them as well as taken them apart and honestly, they're well made and nothing bad about them. Guitar pickups are about 98.9% mythology and 1.1% actual engineering. There's only so many ways to wind two bobbins full of wire and stick a bar magnet between them. You might like something else, because it is different, but that doesn't mean the other is "bad". I also can't fault Schaller on the spare parts support and ease of ordering. I've certainly replaced many worn or butchered saddles and other miscellaneous stuff over the years and you can still order them right from Schaller in Germany. You can even ask them questions about stuff they stopped making 30 years ago and if they have the data, they'll actually try to answer your technical questions.

I completely agree that G’s LPs have changed over the years. Just taking a standard model, the Norland difference is huge, many had 3 piece maple necks. If they put on a blindfold and played a mid 70s LP with a pancake body and maple neck would they say it doesn’t sound like a LP or would they gush over how great and perfectly LP it sounds. It really is ludicrous to think the branding on a headstock could make a difference in tone on otherwise identically built guitars.

I got on the phone with Heritage and bought a b-stock, or "shop-worn" case at a nice discount. LOL, yeah, the guitar world makes no sense at all. So much is voodoo and superstition and the often silly, "conventional wisdom" from the interwebs. I'm an electrical engineer by training. I have the equipment to measure pickups magnetically and electronically. I can measure the coil inductance, capacitance, resonant frequency and I can take response plots using a signal generator, exciter coil and an integrator with an oscilloscope and make accurate frequency response Bode plots. If it weren't such a PITA to get to the wiring in a 335/535, I'd have measured these already. There's a little "white corrosion" I want to clean off the bodies of the pots, and I'm curious enough, that I'll get around to measuring these. The extra long solder joint on the covers of the HRW are a sign someone didn't want us in there easily. I've never seen images of one opened up. I have a pile of Schaller humbuckers in my work bench draw and I've measured them. It will be interesting to have an objective measure of these. Honestly, the difference in tone by setting the pickup-string distance was rather marked with the HRW, more than I think most humbuckers I've played with. I started at 1/16" from the string to the covers and worked them down, little by little. At a certain point, with just a little more distance, the zingy-ness dropped away and they got right into the zone. They have relatively strong magnetic fields, likely alnico-V magnets, as most similar Schallers and SD59's also have. The Custombucker III's in my Gibson have about half the magnetic strength at the poles, as they are alnico-III and they're happy to be very close to the strings.

I detest the absolute absurdity of YouTube videos like this. There are a couple of YT formulas to get a lot of hits on guitar vids, the first being, "...I can make this cheap used squier just as good as the custom shop all those rich guys paid too much for!" The other is "you can't hear it/yes I can hear it!" First of all, Gibson has churned out a LOT of things with the "Les Paul" model name on it. Thing is, they ALL SOUND DIFFERENT even though they all say, "Gibson Les Paul". It depends, what wood, what construction method, what hardware, what pickups and even what strings are on it, what it is plugged into and most of all, who's playing it. My 1998 H150 came with SD 59's, and Nashville Tune-o-Matic and a zing stop bar. It weighs a bit over 9lbs. It also came with 70's era Les Paul potentiometer in it, namely, 300K/100k volumes and tones. So, it sounded pretty dark most of the time I've owned it. I had occasion to replace a pot, was surprised to find the values and put in the more commonly used "vintage" era 500k pots. Incredible difference in tone, much brighter, fuller and a touch more output. I have a 60th Anniversary Gibson Les Paul 1960-Reissue, V2. It's 1 piece mahogany, no weight relief, 8lbs, 1oz in weight. It has the correct "'burst" era ABR-1 screwed into the wood and the light aluminum stop bar. It has the Custombucker III pickups, unpotted, alnico-III very PAF type in it, and the 50's era wiring. It does that, "beefy telecaster" Les Paul thing, in spades. Plus, at 8lbs, it is a joy on my aging back. These two sound incredibly different from each other, despite being so extremely similar in so many ways. But my Gibson Les Paul sounds incredibly different than a Norlin era Les Paul with the pancake body and a maple neck, and different than an 11lb example from the 1980's with Tim Shaw's, or T-tops, or any of the overwound, ceramic magnet pickups they offered at the time. So, really, no one can hear the "brand", but you can discern between instruments that were built differently, of different materials and methods, even if the brand and model are the same. My just acquired 2001 H535 is super light and it gets that classic 335 tone. I had a 1997 ES335 "dot reissue" that sounded like poo, no matter what you did with it.

It's weird. I've seen posts about them, saying the HRWs are crappy pickups, too hi-fi, etc. They get yanked out for a $200 set of Seth Lovers or something, and then get posted for sale for $400 a set. I remember when people were trying to get Rendall to give up his "secret sauce" for the HRWs. Why would you want to know how to make crappy hi-fi pickups? The guitar world doesn't make much sense to me sometimes. 😁

Thanks everyone! I've been around at least one or more Heritage Forums over the last 20 years. I got my H150 back in 2002, when it was a used guitar (very used at that point!) from Buffalo Brothers at the Marin Guitar Show. The H535 is my latest acquisition. I was out looking for a fretless bass of all things, spotted this hanging in a corner and gave it a tryout. Kind of like "just looking" at puppies at the pound. When I first looked it over, was amazed at the condition, despite the used-guitar-shop, "grunge" all over it. They had misdated it as a 2020, but the R-serial number clearly dated it, along with the Schaller bridge and two-screw pickups. The black dot switch tip I also spotted as the HRW, and sure enough, there they are. Handwritten date corresponds with the serial number. I'll keep the Schaller bridge and tail aside, as there's nothing wrong with them and cosmetically, they're also in good shape. As I recall from the era, HRW were a factory upcharge and I think the wood was likely a factory upgrade as well. The top, back and sides are very "flamey". Virtually no fretwear, binding nibs all intact. Clean inside and out, very little dust inside. After a little setup work, I managed to find a sweet spot for the pickup height adjustments, where it really gets that semi-hollow sound happening. The HRW's are pretty hot but remarkably clear sounding. Tone control is also very effective, and a little tone rolloff sweetens them up without darkening them. The Nashville bridge and aluminum stop bar made it a little brighter than the Schaller hardware, both acoustically and in the amp. Bummer about the case. This one clearly lived most of its life in the case, but who knows where it went. Would have loved to have it. Looks like TKL cases are still Heritage's manufacturer. It fits very well in a modern, "brown vintage Gibson" case for a 335. Though it just seems weird to put a Heritage in a Gibson case, and I need to sell the guitar (an ES-135) that lives in that case now. If I get a chance, I'll measure the inductance, capacitance, resonant frequency and make a Bode plot of the pickups. I've been studying Schaller pickups from the 80's-2000's for another project. It will be interesting to see how they compare electronically.