Leaderboard

Well I finally figured out how to post the picture - My new H535

But how does it sound, now, Steiner? Quickish ancedote: Headed to a party in my S-10 about thirty-five years ago. Rutting season, and I was being careful! Middle of nowhere, small herd pops out of the scrub pines to my right. I t-boned a large doe. Stove in the front end, radiator Swiss Cheesed. Truck, with the headlights still on, sits there steaming like the Union Pacific's Big Boy. This is pre-cell phone days. I have about ten miles to hike back to town. About that time a car, big Buick Estate Wagon, rolls up from the other direction. I wave, and the car stops about twenty-five yards past me, about where I hit the deer. Great! A ride home. Two Good Ol' Boys pile out of the Buick, pitch the deer into the back...and take off. I got home at about 3:00 a.m.

All this talk of H530s started me thinking that one would be quite nice, then I got a message from Cliff Brown of 633 amps. One of his customers had an H530 to sell and, knowing I was a fan of Heritage guitars, would I be interested? Er, yes... Cliff gave me his contact details, I got in touch and arranged to have a look at the guitar, which was located about 1.5 hours drive away. Suffice to say it's a 2018 model in Antique Natural, and playing it through a 633 Firefly (like the one I recently bought) was enough to convince me to buy it. It's light, 2.69kg or 5lb 15oz, and those Lollar P90s sound great! Some pics...

I thought I was done chasing the full-hollow-with-humbuckers will o' the wisp. Then, the esteemed Talisman Rich posted in another thread that Wolftone makes HBs in P-90 size . . . Little wheels in little head turned . . . Found a 2023 530 in ebony at Dave's Guitar for $1750 and bought Wolftone Legends for it . . . Ebony is good color so I can tell my axes apart: 535 in OSB, 530 in red, and now RichCaster in ebony . . . Looking for good bankruptcy lawyer . . .

To put this politely, reasonable people have different opinions. I have no quarrel with someone whose preferences differ from mine. I would appreciate a certain humility that precludes stating an opinion as a universal fact though. I do understand that love of guitars is a certain manifestation of mental illness that I suffered with most of my life. I am confident of this much on the topic: weight relieved H-150s weigh less.

May have posted this in the past, But since we're focusing on fuzz here.... Never a fan of it, but given this is a Lucinda Williams tune, and I'm a big fan of the fearless Stuart Mathis, I thought...why not get way out of my little box. This is from the Be Good To Yourself project, and since we were tracking nearly thirty songs, I figured I'd better come up with a variety of tones and approaches. I'm pretty much down with what Randy (fdx99) observes in his notes, above. As I recall this track was my Tele for electric rhythm, a Nashville tuned Red Label Yamaha FG-110, and the fuzz was my Nash Strat, bridge pickup, into my Low Power Tweed Twin clone. The fuzz was an MXR Hendrix Octavio, which has a pretty great fuzz! Fuzz is there in a couple of early chords, but doesn't really appear until the guitar outro, last 1:30-ish of the tune. I'm a little proud of this one. The vocalist is eighteen-year-old phenom Māya Beth Atkins.

Ive never worried about dinging or scratching a guitar, Im going to at some stage if Im going to put serious play time on it. My most gigged guitars are the most dinged, scratched and worn. What relics are good for, for me, are taking in trades, because they are easy to sell on, there is a demand. I took on a lot of them because of that. Oh man, I spent so much time trying to be less direct. I cut paragraphs out and redid them, then deleted them, reworded what I kept, re edited again.....all I want to say is, I cant stand relic'd guitars

NIce job, Brent. It totally baffles me as to why someone would want to mark up a beautiful, new, expensive guitar like that. I just don't get it.

I've never licked a guitar, so I couldn't imaging re-licking a guitar.

I have very good aim, that was from 105 yards or was it decibels, I can’t remember. Here is the latest, I’ve been working on it diligently day in and out. This morning I got the hammer and chisel out and made a lot of noise!

Well congrats!! I always liked that gtr. If I remember correct some guy at a PSP shredded the hell outta that thing, back in the barn days? did it justice for sure. A good repair shop should be able to repair the neck & truss rod.

Beautiful guitar DBlues. IIRC, you sold it because of the neck. The top also has mineral streaks and, at that time, some here considered the streaks to be a bad sign; it is not a bad sign. With a little research you’ll find mineral streaks are indicative of maple grown in wet areas where the ground has plentiful minerals. The maple that grows best in wet areas is the red maple AKA swamp maple. A fair number of ‘59 Pauls also have mineral streaks. I’m not at all opposed to mineral streaks and even covet them; so much so that I’ve planted red maples in the wettest terrain at the ranch for the next generation. That’s my, long winded, way of saying Happy New/Old/Refurbished Guitar Day. She’s a Looker!

Authentic relicing from my grubby hands and sweaty forearm. This picture is a couple of years old, the bare spot is now a bit bigger and as beautiful as ever. Pre-relicing. But all my guitars that I gig with eventually end up with the same worn area.

Rob, this may have more than one meaning.....

MORE AFTERS…

Some relics look like real playwear. The finish cracking on every square inch and a few dings don't. This one is decent. Still I won't pay to have it done.

Feels like an Old Friend (50 yrs) _____________________ New Friend ( 5 wks) Neither one has the finish worn off.

I met a girl like that in Ipanema...aaahh. I think there was a saxophone playing in the background but I might be mistaken after all it was the 70s.

Really? $150 for a Squire Strat, $2.59 for a can of Zippo lighter fluid, $.99 for a box of matches. PRESTO! It's like printing money! 🔥🔥

Oh fuck!!! That sucks. He was a great guy.

In my life I have witnessed in myself and others the same feeling of an instrument not fitting well. I have also seen looks of disbelief. A friend of mine was asigned the upright bass in high school. I had a cello. It didn't matter how we liked it. I had a Howard Roberts as a kid. It was big. My teacher said after a while I'd get used to it. He was right. But we are grown men. We don't have to put up with that anymore. One of my guitar teachers was Joe Fava. We were in his small teaching room, and he would smoke. He focused on technique and stopped me everytime my fingers didn't move correctly. It was constant criticism with occasional "good". I practiced this uncomfortable technique two hours a day. Eventually it became natural. Violin players told me the same thing. I wouldn't dare to complain. He'd say play your instrument properly or quit. Eventually it because okay. I went through the same with a bass clarinet. I have a H-575, two actually since I'm borrowing one, but like the feel of the H-530 a bit better. To get sentimental, I enjoyed the days being a kid and having a strong teacher who told me exactly what I'm supposed to do. It cut out a lot of noise from the other voices. Then Hendrix came along.

While at PSP, I was checking out a few guitars, but since I had to get over to the VFW, and had little room in the car there was no time to sit down with Mike and discuss things. So yesterday, I gave him a call and now there will be a new addition to the family.....

Here's another cool fuzz, this is a germanium pedal Ryan built for me, a Rangemaster style treble boost combined with a Big Muff with an adjustable bias. At 22 seconds in the first fuzz lick kicks in, and at 2:06 I crack it wide open for the slide solo!

When I'm recording demos/songs, I have a few fuzz pedals that I love the sound of, and almost all of them are germanium based. But I've always been against using fuzz pedals on my pedal board because of the instability of the germanium transistors used in most of the pedals that I like. When they work, they sound killer, but if the temperature changes in the room, so can the sound of the pedal. But recently, my buddy Ryan, my guitar partner in crime, and who's a fuzz afficianado of the highest order, gave me a silcone based fuzz made by Analogman, the BC183 Sunface which has earned a permanent position on my pedalboard. It just makes the solos cut so much better. And it's ridiculously consistent sounding. I love combining it with my Origin Effects M-EQ Driver for serious vowel like singing sounds! Not the prettiest board, but it gets thew job done... the solo i play at the end of this song is the BC183...

I apologize if this has already been overdiscussed. I find that the relicking process is weird. To begin with, I've seen many lacquered old instruments and that don't look that relicked. Secondly, why would someone want that process done to a guitar? Do they think someone is fooled? I had a 70 year old well worn Gibson L-5 played by a studio musician and gig based professional player. There was some checking, but nothing like a new relicked guitar. I have to wonder if they take a guitar that got a little checking or a ding or two and decided to relick it and charge more than the way, which was to call it a second. I'm sure I've offended someone. So I best leave in my relicked car.

Another 2.45 inches and it will be just like Willie's Trigger!

So, our group had a tee time at a golf course on the other side of the river, which meant that I paid the toll to get to Indiana. While I was over there, I decided to run by a local shop, Maxwell's House of Music. This is a sister store to Mom's Music which happens to have been started by the drummer of the first band I went to see as an 8th grade graduate. (Ok, enough back story...) My thought was to see if they had a Blues Driver in stock. I would rather support a local store than Guitar Center. Two local shops I check didn't have any in stock. Maxwells had the standard pedal, and the guy was more than happy to plug it up to try. "What do you have for an amp?" He pulls out a Princeton Reverb for me. "What do you play?" That's a bit trickier. I explained that I've got several Heritages with humbuckers but recently got my H-530 with P90s. We walked over to the wall and I pulled this one down from the wall. It was a choice between this ES-330 and a 335 next to it. It was a very nice guitar, but was it nicer than my 530? Nah! It does have some nice grain. Other than the block inlays, there's wasn't any real advantage. They played very much alike. I still don't like the plug on the front rather than the rim. At $3500, it was priced between the Custom Core and the standard. A fellow about my age was picking up a white Tele and he and I jammed a bit on some blues. He said he's still got his father's original '64 ES-345. In the end, I left with a Blues Driver. I'll be pulling out the pedal board later today and cranking it up.

Glad to see you're still out there playing gigs. I agree completely. You can cover most all bases with the 535. I've heard you play that 535 enough at PSP to know that it's a killer. It's good that it's still in your arsenal, even if it is "on loan". Your band must have been playing REALLY LOUD if you coudn't play without feeding back. On the other hand, it's perfect to get the acoustic feedback going when you want to sustain a note infinitely! Turn away and it should go back to normal.

thank you all for your kind comments. I am thinking about getting an H535. I must be crazy....

So I saw this Custom core 535 on the gear page…. The guy had gotten it in a trade and was told that it was “artisan aged” but the guy lied to him, someone had tried to age it themselves by taking 120 or 80 grit sandpaper to the finish!!! (I’m not joking) So the guy I bought it from was very upset and really felt defeated. And basically just wanted to get out from underneath it. So we made a deal. It’s a 2023 CC 535 in Dark Cherry Sunburst After opening the case, and evaluating the damage done to the finish and how deep the scratches were, and the fact that the gloss was gone, I decided to take the bull by the horns and try to make lemonade with the lemons I was handed. If Pete Moreno were still alive, I would have taken it to him I sure do miss Pete I thought about taking it to a professional luthier and seeing if could be buffed out, but that would have cost a lot of money and I’m sure there would have been no guarantee that he would have not burned through the finish. So the first thing I did was completely disassemble the guitar. Took all the hardware off. Pickups out. Dropped all the electronics inside the body. Then I wet sanded the back of the body, front of the body and the front and back of the headstock with 2000 wet/dry sanding paper. I sanded and sanded and sanded and sanded The scratches were just too deep. I was afraid I was going to go through the clear. After sanding, I put some liquid scratch remover on it, that I bought at the auto parts store and used my cordless drill with a small buffing wheel. I buffed and buffed and buffed… the gloss started to come back but 75% of the scratches remained. Then, to bring back some more of the gloss, I took some turtle wax and my drill and buffed on it with the car wax some more. I was really happy with the amount of gloss I was able to get back!! It just looks like an old, scratched up Heritage now!!! Then I pulled all the electronics back up, installed a different set of pickups (I’m not a big fan of the 225 classic pups), put the tuners and hardware back on, oiled the fretboard. Then put new strings on it and did a complete setup!!!! I’ll let you be the judge. But I think it looks A LOT BETTER. Yes, it still has a lot of scratches in it, but at least it’s not all dull looking now. It’s always gonna be a player because of what some dumbass did to the finish. But in reality, it just looks like a guitar that has been played A LOT 🤣 Anyway…the most important part is that this CC 535 PLAYS AND SOUNDS ABSOLUTELY STELLAR!!! It’s a friggin TONE MACHINE!!! BEFORE…. AFTER…..

I said it on the gearpage to you, and I'll say it again. Buy some clear and respray it with a clear topcoat, I know you are afraid you can't do it, and you think it's a valuable guitar, but there are plenty of how to videos out there, and you will increase the value with a decent job. And the buffing out of the new coat would be less work that what you've done already. Nitro is pretty forgiving. Educate yourself, take your time and I bet you can do it.

thanks, it was great guitar!

I don't know if simply buffing would have fixed it, but the advantage of nitro is that it could have been resprayed with clear and then buffed out. I don't know that Heritage would do it but Arnie Hileski or Dave Teske might have been able to do it.

Who’s impressed with these? I am. Actually considered shelling out for one in bourbon burst but right now financially it’s not the right time.

I don't think that any of us have been privy to the current practice. Some years back they had the LW series which we saw, and of course we are familiar with the Millennium. I don't remember seeing any H150 body blanks with chambers when we visited back in August. Tim Pierce just did a video about his special guitar and their new Standard II guitars.

No worries.. As you know, it's always so easy to work on the electrics of a semi hollow guitar. 😕 When I was working on my 535, somehow the lead from a tone cap broke off. Turn the knob and ... nothing changes. So it's pull the harness out and do it all again.

To me, Relic'd guitars FEEL much better, SOUND much better (less nitro finish), and I don't have to worry about dings. We have been through this before, but many artists including Greg Koch, have stated publicly that the weathered & less finish on relic'd guitars make them ring & sustain better and they have more bloom & overtones. I didn't buy relic'd guitars because of the look, but for the feel and sound. When I bought relic'd/aged guitars, they were either "ultra light" or "light aged" guitars because they look more like vintage aged guitars.

I've never personally relic'd a guitar (or re-licked one). But some of the best Telecaster tones I've ever heard came from a Nachocaster which is a heavy duty relic'd guitar. This one... I think the one I played cost $6000. And up to that point, I would've never ever considered spending that much on any guitar, modern or vintage. The most I've ever spent is $4500. But that guitar had me rethinking about what a guitar is worth. It was that good. As a matter of fact one of my best friends bought a used one just like it for a $1000 more, and he thought it was the deal of the century, HE LOVES IT!!! And the fact that you could nick it, dent it, whatever, and wouldn't lose a cent of value is kind of appealing. These guitars now sell for over $8000 new, and there's a waiting list. He sells them that fast. So people pay even more than that for used ones if they want one immediately. Frankly, I don't think I'd like if the man himself, Nacho, made me one that would look new. It just felt so good, and better than any vintage Tele that I've ever played (I've played a few). A few weeks before I played this one I had a 50's whiteguard Tele at my house and this Nacho smoked it! Here's the only song that I recorded with it, a song which came out of me with less than 20 minutes of play time on it. The pickups just sang and the vibration in the wood rattled my ribs...

I was looking at Wolfetone's website yesterday and it looks like they will make any of their humbuckers in P90 dogear setup. https://www.wolfetone.com/product/dachswolff/

I don't think the Standard II is an entry level guitar. They are basically the same as a standard. The Ascents are more entry level. So I guess, you have the choice of the Standard C (.88 to 1.0") or the Standard II 60s (.84 to .92) neck. The biggest problem is that not everyone prefers a fat neck. If you make them all baseball bats, the there will be folks like me that won't be comfortable. But DetroitBlues will be ecstatic! Were they bolt on necks, you can have 2 or 3 profiles, and then someone could choose their favorite. That's not possible for a set neck. I remember early on when G&L had about 5 different neck profiles, and if you ordered a guitar, you just told them which style you wanted. I think they even offered different radius and nut widths. Keisel still allows you to choose thick or thin, and 5 different radius options.

Golly. When I intersected with a local deer while on a 55mph road last Thursday it never occurred to me that I was increasing the value. I feel better.

I don't get it either but I understand it. Not everyone can afford a strat Jimi Hendrix lit on fire, but everybody wants one

I've seen girls buying new jeans that look like this! I've worn jeans with fewer holes to paint the garage. When we were kids, if our jeans looked like this, my mom threw them in the garbage! Who knew that they would be worth $100. RE: your reliced car. How much extra did the dealer charge you to do the relic job. Did he also put some sand in the crankcase so it would wear out the bearings and seals and burn oil like a car with 200,000 miles?

Look at you using financial restraint, just like an adult!

RIP Eric. Blessings to your family. 🙏

Sorry to hear this. RIP LedZef.

Says the guy who owns the most Fab of Millies.

Millie's are Fab.

Welcome to our community CVS! I was a drummer (still am) before getting hooked on Heritage guitars in 2000. I currently own 14 ( many have slid in and out of my hands in 25 years). You have a sweet little stable going, guaranteed it’s only going to grow larger! I see a Heritage H-150 or H-535 (perhaps both) in your future! As far as this community, we are a closely knit group that shares information and helps each other out so don’t be shy about posting anything Heritage related, or if not Heritage related, in the Family Tree. Cheers!

CVS, I just got my H-530, but I see no reason I can't play any of my normal music on it. Heck I've played Allman Bros on a 525 and Billy Holliday on my Millennium. CSN on an H-157 and Stray Cat Strut on a 535. I've even played Led Zeppelin on my acoustic! It's all good.