Leaderboard

I forgot I made this slide show of some of the Custom Orders I made. Old School Heritage Custom Shop.

Custom Core 150

I attended the Kalamazoo Fretboard Festival on March 2. I wandered into a performance room and was surprised to see and an acoustic Heritage 12 string guitar. I couldn't get a closer picture of it during the performance. I did see the owner as he was leaving the festival and told me it was custom made in 1986.

For those who don't know, Scotty Moore was Elvis's main guitarist for a very long time. He also was a studio musician and an extraordinary player. Here is a page from his website about his friend and fellow musician Don Dean. http://scottymoore.net/dondean.html Some years ago a friend of mine, who is a great player, really wanted a Heritage Johnny Smith. Both he and I are Johnny fans but he couldn't afford a Gibson. We searched for a few weeks but found nothing. Late at night I found one in a national Craigslist search that was in Kentucky. I called, probably first thing in the morning, and learned that the guitar belonged to Don Dean. Don had died recently and his widow asked the guy on the phone, a pedal steel guitarist and friend of Don, to sell his many guitars. The HJS was stored under Don's bed with a couple of other guitars and was found a bit later than Don's main collection. I drove to Kentucky that morning and arrived in a modest country house with gorgeous scenery. The seller and his wife were very nice. I had a meal with them as they talked about the old days. The seller was a studio musician and road player with Elvis and others. Scotty and Don were friends to both him and his wife. Don died slowly with dementia. They talked about the lean and the better days. It was great. He brought the case out. It looked like someone had vomited on the top and the clean up was less than thorough. The guitar was mint. Further, it had the extra rose inlay in the pickguard, which was a $500 upcharge. I measured it and it was 18" across the lower bout! To my knowledge there were only two of these made, one finished in rose natural and this one a natural. Both were special ordered by Don, a Heritage dealer at the time. Even more surprising was the body depth was between 3 1/4 and 3 3/8", making this truly unique. I made the long drive back that night. I emailed my friend to say I got him a guitar. The next morning he let me know he found a standard HJS while I was in Kentucky at a pawn shop in Ohio and ordered it. Some time later he tired of his HJS, sold it, bought the 18" HJS from me. He had Kent Armstrong rebuild the Floating #3 pickup to increased output, something quite a few people did with that pickup. Eventually I got the guitar back. It is now my favorite, in part because of the story but also because it plays so well and is stunning. In Don Dean's photos you can see him playing this guitar. On the same page you can also see an 18" Heritage American Eagle, probably the only one made. Here is the HJS in action played by my friend 6 years ago. It is seasonally appropriate. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1xH_0qJ0Pt0&list=PLZKJqrSIMuspiR9CbV8ztncKUecx6o1Qu&index=2

I guess a good time for me to come back, after a reset/reboot. 😄

Since it’s Friday again,

I play George Benson's "Affirmation" with Heritage guitar. If you have time,please listen to it. Thank you.

Venerable and Stalwart Heritage Owners, Am straggling in with my contribution: a "C", 1986 Golden Eagle, the 38th they made. Bought it about a year ago from Dan Keller, of Kansas. It's not in mint condition, having a few minor dings and I'm thinking there's a slight twist to the neck that needs a luthier's TLC, but overall in wonderful condition given it's age. X-braced. It has a handwound Kent Armstrong floating humbucker. The neck is a bit thick for my hand, and am struggling with whether to sell, as it's the nicest guitar I'll ever own. I found where this guitar had been posted on Reverb five years ago, but have no other knowledge of it's provenance. Dan said that he owns the first Kalamazoo Award, and that the Golden Eagle was meant to be Heritage's take on that. I'm 70, and have been playing since 10. Got as far as a garage band playing an SG Special through a Marshall stack in the early 70s. But got off drugs, and sold that gear before college and raising a family. For many years just banged on a Seagull acoustic and howled at the moon to folk and the cowboy songs that Dad used to sing us to sleep by. Around 2016 decided to take guitar playing more seriously. Took jazz lessons and purchased a 575. Wanted something with better acoustical sound, and meandered a bit before lucking into this Golden. Have since bought a 1999 Eagle Custom, my fave with a neck that makes my fretting hand smile more than the Golden's. Even with my geezer's hearing, the Golden sounds better, though. You might see this Golden posted for sale here sometime this year, after my luthier works whatever magic it needs. Well, thank you for all your contributions to this site. Your collective wisdom has educated and guided me. I believe this is my first time posting to the HoC, though I joined 6-7 years ago prior to purchasing the 575. Best, Latham

One I still have.

My Super Eagle and a stop-tail 150 built for the late Sam Moss, who introduced me to Heritage guitars almost twenty years ago. I think Guy still has that 150...maybe?

I got together with a couple of friends again this afternoon to play some tunes. Mostly I've been taking my H140. Once I took my G&L ASAT. A couple of weeks ago, I took my G&L Legacy. I like the way they all play. They sound pretty darn good, although the guys commented that the Legacy sounded "thin". Yeah, it's a SSS, so it doesn't have the beef on the bottom. I haven't taken the 157 or Millenium, and while I took the 525 once as a backup, it never got out of the case. Today, I took my H535, the one with the new machine heads. After playing for almost 3 hours, I have to say that if I had to pick a favorite, that would be it. I don't know what it is about that guitar, but it sounds good, to me, it plays like a dream, it's got great upper fret access, and it's comfortable to hold for 3 hours (well 2 3/4 after taking a short bourbon break). It looks sexy as hell with that nice Faded Cherry finish. There's nothing that guitar can't do. I even did some finger picking on Helplessly Hoping! It's a winner!

...but it is it's solid body step cousin! Figured we could all use an extra pallet cleanse after seeing the bolt-on neck overseas thread.

I post this every year. Ren playing a guitar I custom ordered.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve been haunted by the thought of owning a Heritage Gary Moore, never seen one over here in the UK, but the next best thing appeared over here on my doorstep a few days ago, no less than a H150 Deluxe from 1989, it needs new strings, a setup and a couple of small jobs and I’m in heaven. I would have sold my spleen and multiple organs to fund this, but luckily , after some serious horse trading, it’s now at home with me, once it’s sorted I will get some pics up .

I had a nice Gibby ES-347. Now I have something that sounds better. A 535 with flamed bat-wing and ThroBak ER Custom pickups. If I wanted a 335 I'd have one.

Hello everyone, I’ve been reading and unregistered for awhile, but here I am. Love all the knowledge, wisdom, history and everything else this wonderful place has to offer. Here is my only Heritage for now. I was a strat player for a very long time, always changing/selling/experimenting with different guitars but mostly in the Fender or fender style world. For a wedding gift my wife bought me this beauty and it has been my go to guitar for everything. It is the most versatile guitar I have ever owned. One day I want a H575 or eagle classic, a sweet jazz guitar… but until that day comes all I ever record with is the 535. It’s the perfect guitar. I’m very excited to delve into all the threads of music theory and explore all the other awesome topics here. Thank you for creating this forum!

Hello all, I’m new here! In real life two of my favorite things are coffee and guitar. I just recently bought a custom core h-150 in dirty lemon burst… I posted some pics in another thread, here’s one of the pics of from my NGD lol

How fitting that this is right under Kuz’s pic..

My entry for Throwback Thursday (Friday) is my very first Heritage. It was love at first sight and still takes my breath away when I open her case. This 31 year old 1993 Golden Eagle has aged nicely and sounds better each year.

G serial number. My first Heritage, bought new in 1990.

I got this quite a while ago and sold it to a fellow HOC'r and friend years ago, and now I bought it back. This was built for Vince Lewis. Looks good, sounds good, plays good.

My experience is Market. Usually not making a lot on them. Most don't appreciate or know what goes into these.

Hi, I play "Milestones" with Heritage Sweet16. If you have time, please listen to it. Thank you.

Have yourself a Merry Heritage Christmas!! Merry Christmas to all HOC Members!!

Tim Pierce is a Pro's Pro Guitarist. Nothing is ever flashy, but everything is perfect for the application. He has said before is working on trying to play faster and he really is not a shedder at all. I believe many on this forum could play faster than Tim. BUT he can play over any chord progression and have the perfect melodic solo. He doesn't play the same old tired licks, but is imaginative and melodic. I love TP's playing and he seems like a really super guy. He is also an adamant proponent of new guitars overs vintage guitars. He says new guitars (including PRS) play better, have better intonation, and sound just as good as vintage guitars. He believes we are in the golden era of guitar making and I absolutely believe he is correct. It doesn't surprise me that he loves Heritage Guitars along with other new company's builds (Heritage, Collings, PRS, Harmony, Novo, ect.... Great video Tim!

I just picked up my first Heritage last week from Sweetwater - an H-150 in Vintage Wineburst. This "sweetwater exclusive" has SD Alnico Pro IIs instead of the usual SD '59s. So far, I love it! Plays wonderfully, sounds great, is resonant as hell/sustain for weeks! I don't ever buy new guitars, but this was a special treat for myself! There are a couple of issues I found though - nothing world ending to me, anyways. There was a ding under the pickguard where the bracket screw hit the top of the guitar (sucky but not a huge deal for me) and the neck pickup ring is cracked. Neither of which are a huge deal, but kind of bummers. You'd think they'd put some felt under the pickguard screw or something...Sweetwater offered to exchange for a different guitar, but the only other one in this color is heavier and uglier They said they'd try to get me a replacement p/up ring. The only other thing with fit & finish that has me going "wait, what?" is the wiring job: That is some SLOPPY solder work - the only thing I can think of is that it originally had the SD 59's then there was a "oh s**t this one is supposed to have the Alnico IIs" and it was a Friday before a long weekend (You can also see the stepped carve from the CNC; I don't know that I've seen a cavity like that before.) Anyways, other than those teeny issues, I absolutely love this guitar and it absolutely blows away several other LPs I've played lately.

Hi all, ‘I just got my Heritage H150 Custom core aged (dirty lemon burst). Tried it in the shop and the guitar speaks to me ? Cheers!

Upgrading the harness will do certain things depending on the parts used. You can get pots with different tapers, which means that how quickly or smoothly the sound changes will be different with a 15% audio taper vs a 30% taper or a linear taper. What these numbers mean is that for a 500K pot, a 15% will measure 75K ohms when turned 50%. A 30% taper will measure 150K ohms at the mid point. Linear taper means it will be 250K when turned half way. Since volume is a logarithmic function (because we hear that way), the use of a log measurement is supposed to make it more like what you hear. Turn it up from 50% to 100% and it sounds twice as loud. The capacitor value will make a huge difference in the brightness. In the typical humbucker setup, a .022uF cap is used. The higher the value, the darker the sound as you roll off the control. You might even want to have different values, like .015 for a neck pickup vs .022 for the bridge. I really don't hear a difference between the Vishay metal film caps that Heritage uses and an oil filled cap. The Vishay caps are good units. If you can solder, then it's not hard to make up a harness. I made a template out of a piece of cardboard, and soldered everything except the pickup and switch on the cardboard. Then I mounted the pots, connected the caps and ground wire and installed it. This is the result. Finally there's vintage wiring scheme vs modern wiring scheme. You can read how these differ lots of places. Seymour Duncan has wiring diagrams for each type. https://www.seymourduncan.com/resources/pickup/wiring-diagrams For Heritage guitars, you want short shafted pots. That's all for now. It's a fairly easy job assuming you can solder.

I checked with Grant Green about keeping the pickguard. Here's his reaction...

That would please me. When I bought the H535 with P90s that Kuz sold me, he already took care of the bridge mount with the Faber screw in ABR inserts! He and I are both so OCD, I just knew when the guitar got here, that it would set up as good as it could be, and I was right, it was I waited a long time till I got a semi-hollow Heritage, and I'm glad I did. I seriously doubt a custom core would be any better than this one...

Hi guys, newly proud 150 owner. I'm from Chile, south america cheers guys.

Hello everyone. Just bought my first Heritage tonight. Thought I would introduce myself. Been playing since I was 8 years old. I've been through a lot of guitars over the years. I am down to 5, now 6, I guess. I did a lot of investigating before I bought this guitar but I'm hoping for the best. H150 custom core artisan aged dirty lemon. Couldn't find the top I wanted without the aging, oh well. Just thought I would say hello and introduce myself. This is my virgin run please be gentle! LOL

It seems like forever since I have made an entry in my blog about the story of my playing in a band, maybe all the lockdown had a lot to do with that. After Lockdown, we started trying to gig again but the market for bands had really slowed down and many of the social clubs we were playing were no longer booking bands. Bars and pubs were booking less also, as they were building their trade up after Lockdown. We were playing several gigs, but something was just not sitting right with me. We had lost our drummer to a serious stroke, although we had already decided to replace him as we were fed up of his forcing his political viewpoint on us all, in that there was no discussion and if he didn't like your opinion, he took offense. We got a fabulous new drummer after some long auditions, but that didn't work out personality wise. Eventually we settled on a guy in his late sixties who had a wife a fair bit younger than him, which has some relevance. The point being that wives were always welcome at gigs but any wife interfering in band business was considered very bad form and well out of order. It had caused extreme trouble previously. But back to the main plot. I had for some while feeling that I wasn't really doing what I wanted to be doing by being in the band, I had a vision for it that was successful when that vision was followed, but others were not sharing the vision that I had set the band up with along with my bass playing friend when we decided to give it a go. Because that vision was not being followed, it was getting harder. I'd taken on the role of lead vocals and I know the songs I can sing and can't sing - for example, I can really do well on singing Rolling Stones songs. And, because the vision was harder for me to fulfill, I was losing interest. On top of that, it was down to me to find gigs, no one else made any effort. Put all this together with the effort to rehearse, play gigs, lose weekends with my family because of gigs and all the effort involved, slowly buy surely, and with accelerating speed, I was losing all desire to be in the band, and just over a week ago, the day before a gig, I decided I'd come to the end of the road. I played the gig, wasn't happy in doing so, and then the new drummers wife told the rest of the band and their wives that she'd been told I was seen playing at venue during the week with another band - a total untruth. Shaun, our bass player, is not just a friend, he's my brother from a different mother and we have a deep brotherly love, we know each others extended family and we used to hang around as kids, stopping over at each others homes. The relationship is close. Anyway, Shaun's wife, Debbie, is a lovely woman who understands how things are, and she tactfully told me what had been said, which didn't make me angry, but just made me even more sure that I'd come to the wright decision. I didn't tell anyone that night because I didn't want to cause any upset, or have people try and tell me I was just being silly. And of course, I wanted one more night to sleep on it. When I woke up on Sunday morning, I knew the decision was right for me, and prior to going out to church, I sent an e mail to the guys in the band explaining how I felt and why I had come to my decision. The decision was made because my priorities have shifted. I'm now 62, have six grandchildren who live quite a distance from me and I want my weekends free to spend time with them. I want to spend Saturday nights with my wife Helen, we have busy days and after doing all the Saturday jobs round the house, I want to sit down with her and enjoy our time together. Going out for a day is also something we want to do and not worry about what time we need to be back for. The bottom line of why I've decided to put the band down can be condensed into one word, and that word is "family" Shaun, my partner in the band, has taken it really well, hes been very supportive and I hope they carry on with a new singer and guitar player, they are good musicians and the band has a good name. But for me, it's time to call it a day with bands. The highs have been great and the lows terrible, but that is life in a band for you. For now, I'm gig to sit back and enjoy others playing, and sitting at home enjoying my guitars and maybe, just maybe, I might get that PRS custom I've always wanted. Thanks for reading - Mark.

Just picked this up from Nick Hall. Looking forward to hearing those P Ralis! And the 'Heritage' of this guitar is impressive too. I'm surprised no one snapped it up before I did. I'm glad I have another Heritage H150 in the fold. It's been years! 😎

And here is my all time favorite guitar.... my H170 with a C serial number. It's not my go to guitar, but my favorite. I got this one and the afore H140cm at the same time back when nobody really cared about Heritage guitars except maybe you folks. There were in a mom and pop store. I traded a Greco Les Paul copy (which was actually pretty cool....) and $400 for both of them. Both sound great but there is something about the H170....feel and sound. I did take out the Schallers and put in some Dimarzio PAFs, probably anniversay series or something. Maye the 140 has Seth Lover's....I can't remember nor do I care as they both sound so great.

The one I wish I never sold.

Well as many of you guys know, I work on guitars quite a bit, and in the last year, have built and rebuilt 5 different Tele style partscasters. In all of the different building I got try quite a few Tele pickups, and recently I stumbled on the Duncan BG1400. The reason I did was that I was trying to find a bridge pickup that would be strong enough to get a good middle position tone with a Tyson Precious And Grace neck humbucker. I also wanted a lead sound that would be less ice picky than standard Tele, something with more mids and a rounded top. I also loved the idea that it would be hum cancelling as some of the stages I play on are less than stellar noise wise, and when recording I love quiet pickups! Well I really like this pickup as it gives up what I wanted hear. It barely fit through my bridge plate, but other than that, there was no craziness installing it. And I've got a DPDT switch on the CTS volume pot to split it, which just makes it sound a bit louder and brighter. Stacked humbuckers don't generally split well but this one does. And this one really does make for a good middle position with the neck humbucker. Here's the guitar that I put the pickup in... This is what it sounds like.... This

This one is still in my gallery, but it fits. Happy Holidays everyone!

Well, I said before that if they ever introduced a pelham blue with P90's, my wallet would be powerless to resist... Someone at Heritage must be calling my bluff now -

New to the Heritage family. Been interested in a while but hadn't seen any in real life. Dealer in town got a few in and thought they were nice. I opted for an Artisan Aged H-150. Wow. Very cool. Excellent build quality, sound and playability. I would prefer a hair fatter neck, but not a show stopper. Here is the latest addition to the family.

Hi all, I have been a member since June and finally getting around to introducing myself. I have been a guitar player for 40+ years. And mainly Strats. I have done my best to love humbuckers without success until this last spring. I took a road trip to Kalamazoo to look at 535's. Ended up buying a 150! It's a beauty. One piece top and perfect neck for me. So I end up playing a whole bunch of guitars and Mike and Pete bring this one out. I am playing it and in walk Marv and Bill. We end up meeting and talking with them for a while. Getting a picture with them and the guitar. What great guys! I am talking with Mike and Pete about ordering a 535 in the future and my wife goes well, I don't think you should leave without that 150 after the picture and mojo it now has! So how could I not? Anyway, it is a fantastic instrument. And what a great experience at Parson Street. Ended up with a private factory tour, meeting Marv, Bill, Ren, Jim, Pete, Mike...I feel very lucky and blessed for that day. And the 150 has knocked my strats off the front line, it's all I play and gig with. I have never been one to name my guitars but this one is Mabil. After that day. Rock on! Nick D.