TalismanRich

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

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.

OUCH! How bad was the damage? I've seen a few cars that had major damage... bumper, grill, hood, windshield, airbag.

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! 🔥🔥

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!

Nice.... I like the natural finish in this style. This is turning out to be the year of the H-530!

Sorry to hear this. RIP LedZef.

Don't feel bad about the 575 not fitting. I don't feel comfortable when I was playing them either. The 525 is slightly thinner and felt better. I bet you could play Girl from Ipanema on that 530. This morning I've already played Lying Eyes and Fire on mine. That's kind of a wide spread.

It really doesn't matter what reality is... you can find opinions going both ways. More weight = more sustain. Light resonant wood = more sustain. As to what qualifies as "tone", that's entirely whatever the person wants it to mean. I remember playing a Guild Bluesbird that was chambered. It rang very nicely. Millenniums do as well. I can't say my Mille is missing anything in the tone department.

This is more H-530s than I've seen in a long time. I must say, I'm really enjoying this guitar. It sounds really good plugged in, but it also does great unamplified. I play a lot just sitting in the den, and for a while, it has been my ASAT that sat on the stand next to the recliner. The ASAT is now in it's gig bag, and the 530 is next to me to pick up and play on a moments notice.

I wonder what the weight relief scheme is for these guitars. I don't think they will be full chambered bodies. I remember when Heritage came out with the LW guitars. I don't remember ever seeing what their chambering scheme was. The Guild Bluesbird was designed as a chambered guitar. Of course the Millennium is chambered and it sounds great. Heritage obviously has the history to know that the mahogany part of the body needs to weigh to achieve a target weight.

Those must have been older Standards. I see two Dirty Lemons at 8lb 11ox and 8lb 7oz, a Bourbon Burst at 8lb 14oz and 2 in Wine Red at 8lb 3oz and 8lb 11oz. So that's right about 1lb lighter than the standards which run in the 9s. The Custom shop and Custom Cores seem to run in the mid to upper 8s. These are the Lemon Bursts.

Alright! You can join DaveCTOK and myself on a big H-530 jam next year!!!!

I'm guessing at least a pound. Did you get to hear Pete Farmer when he was pointing out the different select pieces of mahogany. They had the ones for Standards, then for Custom Cores, and then over on the other rack, were the "hold these for special things". Once Sweetwater gets in the Standard II guitars, you'll see exactly how much difference there is since they post the weights of the guitars.

I thought they were closing up shop and moving everything to Guangdong China. Next year's PSP was going to be held at the Country Inn in Guangzhou with a tour of the tin shack where all the guitars are made! Man, the rumors that get started on the internet! You just don't know who to believe anymore. As for the Standard II collection, I kinda like the idea. In-house pickups is a good thing. Keep those winders going. I would have to feel the neck... I don't need a Louisville Slugger but a little bit of beef seems to give a bit more stablility. Weight relief is a good thing. Witness the recent purchase of my H-530. Much more weight relief and I would be playing air guitar!

As I remember, some of us saw something at the factory that was WAY cool, but we were sworn to secrecy lest we be curse with all our guitars being out of tune for eternity!

According to their website TKL gets cases from both Richmond, Virginia "and numerous partnerships throughout North America and around the world." From the info I have found, Canadian builds are made by Etuis Boblen in Montreal. It wouldn't surprise me if TKL also had a manufacturing partner in China or Indonesia. Companies will change sourcing from time to time. According to Matthew Larrivee, Larrivee bought cases from a half dozen companies over the years, including cases built by a private company in China starting in 2011. Boblen supplied cases off and on for close to 20 years.

I think that the change over started with the design of the custom core series. It seems that now they are spreading it though the whole line. There were still guitars with the narrow headstock. I don't know if it qualifies as a big announcement. There have always been wider headstocks on 575s, Eagles, 525s, etc. The narrow ones were on the 140, 150, 535, 137 lines.

That's the wider headstock. This is the older headstock.

So which headstock do you think it had? Heritage has different size headstocks for different guitars. My new 530 is wider at the top than my old 535 by 1/2". Its easy to see the difference by looking at the string pull and the space on the sides of the logo. The archtops always have had wider headstocks than the solid bodies.

Isn't this just like guitar people. If you have humbuckers you're putting in P-90s. If you have P-90s, you gotta replace them with humbuckers!

OK, here's the deal. Next PSP, you bring your 530, I'll bring mine. You pick a song and let me know and we'll jam on it! When mine showed up, it had been sitting in the Fed Ex truck and temps were in the mid 90s. It took a few days for things to settle in. The low E string was buzzing, but a truss rod tweak and bridge adjustment to get it back to 5/64" pretty much cleared that up. It rings nicely now. Interestingly, it sounds quite different from my H-525, even though both are maple laminate tops with Lollar P90s. I don't know that the pickups are the same version, as the guitars were built many years apart. I took the 530 to jam with some friends, and it pretty much sat on the neck pickup the whole day, just some knob twisting and hitting a couple of pedals over 3 hours.

TKL makes them in Richmond Va. Gator makes cases in Columbia City, Indiana, just down the road from Sweetwater in Ft Wayne. G&G cases are made in Los Angeles. I think that's probably why Fender used them.

Yeah, that's part of the new "sustainable sourcing" initiative.