TalismanRich

Nice guitar. I still love those old style wooden pickguards!!! I wouldn't swap out anything until you played it. Schaller pickups are like any others... they have a sound that may or may not be what you prefer. If you go back and read comments you'll hear that they are hard, soft, bright, full, like an SD59, Alnico Pro II, a Dimarzio PAF or a Gibson PAF. That pretty much covers the range from left to right. They are a potted, Alnico 5 based pickup, with 4 wire connections for coil splitting if you want to go that route. Schaller quit selling pickups which is what prompted Heritage to switch to Duncan (59s and Seth Lovers). They have 3 mounting holes on the baseplate, so you can adjust the tilt if you need it. I've got Schallers in my H-157, Sheptone Tributes in my H-535, Seth Lovers in my Millennium, and Alnico Pro IIs in my H-140. I can make more of a change in the sound by changing my amp than I can between any of the guitars. Playing clean through the Princeton sounds nothing like the Patriot or the DSL401. In the end, what's most important to me how the guitar feels in my hands. Then I can tweak the tone to what I want.

I've heard some of George's amps at PSP. They did sound very good. But I can see how running a business like that can be rough. From Metropoulous to G&L and Hofner. The music busines can be saturated, which makes it tough to continue. It's becoming more common for small to midsized businesses to close up, especially when the owner begins to run into health issues. The amp that I have brought to PSP for quite a few years is a hand built '65 Princeton circuit made by a fellow in Asheville NC, John Schuske. He did repairs and built amps based on classic Fender and Marshall designs for quite a few years. He passed away in August of this year. His partner of 10 years is taking over the business for now. Some years back, I brought my Melancon T to PSP, built by Gerard Melancon in his one person shop in Louisiana. He passed away from cancer back in 2019 at 58! The business died with him. I hope George gets his health under control, and wish him well in his next phase, whatever it might be.

Yeah, there are some classic songs with fuzz, most of the time it's a solo and the fuzz is used to punch things up. The ending of the Carpenters "Goodbye To Love" is and ES335 into a Big Muff played by Tony Peluso, who was in Mark Lindsey's backup band. It's classic fuzz tone. It's just that I find an OD to be more useful overall. An overdrive rolled back can be left on and when it comes time to solo time, roll up the volume on the the bridge pickup for some bite. At some point, you just run out of room on the pedal board!

They have finished the promo. I got the email from them today.

AE definitely means that it's a 2014 not a 2006. In 06 they were stamping the serial number and they started with W ( have a 2006. On mine, the W is above the number. I think they had to get a new stamp as the old one was wearing out). They didn't start hand writing numbers until later. It's hard to say what the '06 designates, and don't know they'll have any special info regarding it's specs. Sometimes Ren or Jim would remember special orders, but if you built a few thousand guitars over 25 years, you wouldn't remember every one. I don't know that they kept a computer database, although by 2015 they may have well converted. If I remember the first two numbers are the days working backwards from Dec 31, and the last two is the number of the guitar issued that day. That would make it the second guitar of Monday Oct 27th 2014. The Seth Lovers could easily been owner changed, or factory installed. It's also possible that the paper label either wasn't installed or came loose. Still, they are of a close date to the guitar serial. I don't think it would be worth the time to pull the pots just to look at date codes.

For what they were selling the Standard I guitars for a while back you could buy a couple of Ascent 137 or 150s. The prices on the Standard II line has risen back to the original Standard l pricing.... $2600 for the H-150 and $3000 for the H-535 and 530. The Ascents that were in Ren's Picking Parlor felt like pretty decent guitars. Even our own Yoslate seemed impressed with the one he was picking on. I don't know if it was an Ascent or Ascent+. He might remember.

All the original P90 Heritages that I'm aware of have Jason Lollar pickups. Unless it was a custom order, or the pickups were changed, those would likely be the stock ones. The control cover may even say the pickups. Check there.

It's the same reason that G&L and now Fender are still showing pictures of Leo Fender, and Gibson is still touting their latest "59 Les Paul". It's about lineage, history, a familial connection. Guitar people are enamored with the past, whether it is reality or not. Otherwise nobody would be trying to recreate the past!

How many of the folks in the video have we met? Ren, Pete, Curly, Marv, Arnie, Bill. There are several that I've seen through the years but didn't get names. The rack from the prototype room should have been donated to the Kalamazoo Valley Museum. Here's an article I ran across a while back. I never saw the "passing of the torch" headstock before. https://the-guitar.com/a-heritage-of-guitar-making/

Agreed! I think the standard Les Paul guard looks clunky.

They are currently listing the guitars as Custom Shop Core Collection, which is the "high end" spec (lighter weight mahogany, 225 pickups, 50s C shape neck). Guitars that are "Custom Shop" exclusives like Sweetwaters, appear to be dealer spec'd guitars, much as Wildwood does with Fender and Gibson. If you want to buy enough guitars, I'm sure they'll happily make 25 or 50 with your choice of pickup, color, etc.

It wouldn't matter what Heritage put in the guitars, SOMEBODY would complain and change them. I've seen HRWs panned, and then see them sell for $350 a set, and 225s were listed for the same, when you can get Seth Lovers for $200 a set.

Great tune. I'll gladly join in for it at PSP next year.

If you check mine, it doesn't have a fixed bridge!

There's nothing inside except air!

CVS, This is mine. I picked this up one night at Brents house. LK155 had it at PSP one year and I really liked the guitar. When it became available, I jumped.

Yes, the 525 IS a nice guitar! It surprises me that it wasn't more popular. I actually preferred it to the 575, which for some, is probably sacrilege.

Did I do that? 😁 For sure, that's a one-of-a-kind! So now he's got to buy ANOTHER guitar!

Here's an old video of them building a semihollow. It appears that the main block is maple. You would want a strong wood, since you need to put your neck joint in there, just like a solid body. Its definitely not mahogany, it's way too light colored. You can see the color difference of the mahogany kerfing below. From what I have read, an ES335 will have a maple block and the filler piece is spruce which is kerfed to bend more easily. If you listen closely, I think that he says they use a basswood insert for the filler section that goes between the top and the block. It's about 3:30 into the video. He also explains about doing floating blocks (top is fixed, back is not).

I tried get in touch with Scott some years back. He had been a DJ in West Virginia. Turns out he passed away in 2020. https://www.leavittfuneralhome.com/obituaries/Dowe-Scott-Fauley-II?obId=14987495

I'm with you about the block inlays. I think they rock!

I guess that deserves a cake too!

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.