TalismanRich

They just got worn out. I guess I'm just playing it too much!

....Or they might be Gotoh Minis or G6s, or the Gotoh Grovers.

Looking at tuners recently, the CC tuners look like Gotoh SGL381s with the 20 button. They look the same as the CC- H150 buttons to me.

H-140s are great guitars. Clearly this one is a real Heritage. The label is vintage early Heritage, the "Les Paul 1979" is strange, but it could be a very early build. It appears to be refinished, which is not uncommon, especially for folks who don't like the original cherry burst. (ask Detroit Blues... he's done that very thing). Also, there are LOTs of folks who have thing about glossy necks. It might also indicate a headstock break that was expertly repaired. I would contact the seller and get some back story on it. The Schaller hardware is pure early Heritage. Clearly the electronics have been changed, but that's not much of a issue. These weren't made to be collectibles, they were designed to be played, so anything goes. Clearly it's a player grade guitar. Cases get worn out if you're playing professionally. As long as the case it solid, that's not a problem. I would say it's worth a visit if it's a local guitar. Maybe offer $850 or 900 if things are in order. Consider it "artisan aged" and it would add $500 to the price!!! ?

If I like the Grovers in the 535, I might consider trying the Ratio tuners in my 157 or my Mille 2000. I'll have to go with the gold tuners for those guitars. Looking at the specs for the Ratios, it says it's a 9.7mm hole, so that should easily fit in the hole from the Grovers. I haven't seen any comments on the weight of the Ratios or the Grover locking vs the stock Grovers. The Chrome 102 tuners are supposed to be .622 lbs where the Ratios are .496 lbs, so a very slight difference. I don't know if the Grover spec includes the shipping material, tho. The number came from StewMac's website.

0.1mm is a really small amount. You're talking .004 inches. The tuners aren't exactly press fit into the holes, so I suspect there would be enough clearance.

Rod, I think you are mixing the measurements. The Gotoh is 27.5mm from the back of the tuner to the base of the button. The Grover is 24.8mm, so not a huge difference. While I'm pretty certain that the Ratios would work fine, I decided to stick with the Grovers. I've had Grovers on all 5 of my Heritages, and they are on my 74 Guild and never gave me a problem. This issue on my 535 is the first time I've run into a problem, so that's pretty reliable. One place even had Grovers with the plastic keystone buttons, but I decided to stick with the metal ones. It's just an aesthetic thing, and I think the metal ones will last longer than I will. I've known of plastic buttons that needed replacing after they cracked or started slipping.

I placed an order for some Grover 502NKs. I decide on the nickel instead of the chrome. They should be here by Thursday or Friday. The plan will be to do surgery this weekend. This will be my first set of locking tuners. Maybe I'll change strings more often after this.

Good info so far. I found some dimensions for the Gotoh tuners, and they are supposed to be a drop in as well. I'll have to track down some of the 502NKs. I'm narrowing down to those and the Ratios.

A couple of the tuners on my 535 are getting flakey. The high E seems to be seizing up somewhat, it gets really hard to turn. The D seems to drift, which makes tuning vary after only a song or two. So, I've been looking at tuners to replace the stock Grovers which I'm pretty sure they are just the 102 Rotomatics. I've been considering going to locking tuners, and have narrowed the candidates down to Grover 502 Rotogrips, Gotoh Magnums, or Graphtech PRL-8341 Ratios. One thing that I DON'T want is to have to redrill anything on the headstock. Anyone have experience with the Ratio tuners? I like the idea of consistent turns for tuning. They come with plates that match up to the original holes. Plus, you can get Ratios with keystone buttons instead of the kidney beans, which I would like to have, but they are more expensive. Obviously the Grovers are a drop in replacement. How about the Gotohs? Are they are drop in replacement? I can't seem to find the spacing between the mounting hole and the screw (0.413 inches). Has anyone used them? Any other candidates that might work?

So the cat's out of the bag! I remember Pete saying that there would be CC versions of the 535 and 530. He didn't go into detail about what specifically would be different. Of course he also told us to keep it quiet until they announced. The blocks are great. It's one appointment that I would want on my 535. I wonder, are they are plastic or MOP? I can live without the bound headstock, as I like the CC headstock, and the inlay looks classy. Now all it needs is the classic maple pickguard. I understand that one reason that they moved away from the wood is that the finish on the wood gets worn off just like the guitar would do without the guard. However, I like that touch. It looks cool, and there are no worries about static buildup in dry weather!

I wouldn't think it unusual for the tailpiece to have more space than the bridge. The top carve drops down there. I remember them saying that the CC guitars have a different carve than the standard line (if memory serves me). I don't know if it's a deeper carve or not. Maybe one of you folks with both types can compare and comment. My only guitar that has the bridge decked is my Vint 54 Strat. I don't use the whammy, it's never been screwed it in.

The Schallers in my 2003 H-157 aren't muddy at all, they sound nothing like the ones in my H-140. Likewise, the ones in my 535 (2005) weren't bad either. I put the Sheptones in just to see how they would sound.

There might have been something weird about some early Schaller pickups. My 87 H140 just sounded dead, very dark and wooly. I tried changing the caps, etc and nothing helped until I put a pair of Alnico Pro 2s in. Now she sings. She made the trip home this summer for PSP2023.

I remember covering the equipment after Friday night so that the bats didn't bomb everything overnight. Saturday, we just removed the coverings and fired the amps back up. Good times, for sure!

My H157 is Almond Sunburst, and it's ALSB. Pressure has it right. Antique SB. It's funny that their chart is "incomplete"! The H535 that I have is labelled "Faded Cherry". It's perfect, goes well with the shirt!

Rockaman, I did a full cavity shielding of my G&L Legacy. It really quieted things down. I got a nice roll of copper sheeting at Hobby Lobby for a few bucks. I've got enough to do a couple of guitars, but I haven't had to do any of my humbucker guitars.

Looks good! I'm a big fan of Heritage's wooden guards. You can tell that's an early model between the cutaway and the triangular guard.

Oh, to have a nice 555. I've got my 157. Sometimes I wonder if I should have gotten a matching 555.

Don't you wish you still had the Jag? I sold mine for $225 in '75. Now they are selling for $5-10,000 on Reverb. If I had mine, I would let it go for a paltry $4900! The Kent that I had looked just like this one. My cousin had it until his basement flooded. He said it fell apart after sitting in water for a day or so..

OUCH!!! I always solder in the basement, so if anything falls, it's on concrete. I probably would have just grabbed the cord, although it's a knee jerk reaction. You don't know what will happen until it happens! I'm amazed at all the people who think that soldering is some special talent. I will say that the new lead free solder is much more of a pain to use than the old 60/40 stuff we had as kids. As I said, a lot of my early soldering was slot cars. That included building a lot of chassis, and for the really good ones, we used silver based solder. It was a lot stronger than tin/lead solder, so the joints wouldn't break when you slammed the wall. For that you need a really hot iron, and the corrosive liquid flux. Thats a cool photo of the Teisco. My first guitar was a Dano built Silvertone with one pickup. It had a body fashioned out of old growth masonite, to give the ultimate in tone! ? The thought of people paying high prices for those guitars baffles me. Seriously, $600 to $900???? It was replaced with a Guyatone built Kent with 4 pickups. Looking through all the pictures that my Dad took of us as kids, I have yet to find one of me with that guitar. That lasted a couple of years before I finally got a Fender Jaguar. Looking forward to you opinion of the new guitar. No worries about barrel jacks, they use the plate mounted jacks for H150s these days.

I've never used the solderless setup, I have been soldering since I raced slot cars in the 60s, so I have no fear of firing up the old iron. Besides, I love the smell of smoking flux in the morning!? I do like the way they have done their solder work. My only concern would be if the holes and pots will line up exactly the same as your H-150. GIbson uses as CNC to drill out the cavity, so they should all be exactly the same, within thousandths of an inch. Heritage can use a template, but it may not measure exactly the same as Gibson. My 157 has the Mojotone Vitamin T caps. They are oil filled polypropylene/metal film caps. The difference is that it's two actual layers, not a metal that has been vapor deposited on one side of a plastic film. In that respect, they are close to a paper/metal film capacitor. The pots are stamped 500KBD which tells me they are 20% audio taper 500K CTS 450G series which are excellent pots. Not sure if they are std or low torque, I have low torque pots in mine. If you worry about hitting the knob and changing the volume, you probably want standard torque. If you want to do swells, then low torque is easier to turn. I've used both Mojotone's Pots and some from The Art Of Tone. The H-157 has Mojo 500 pots. I bought 8 along with a pair of the Vitamin T and Mojo Dijon capacitors years ago from Mojotone when I was at a guitar show in South Carolina. I checked the pots and picked the closest 4 for resisitance. I still have three in a bag downstairs. The Dijon caps went in my H-535 when I rewired it with new Sheptone pickups. It has TAOT pots. My 157 has a black plastic jack plate. The H-140 and Millennium LE both have barrel jacks. I replaced the barrel jack in my H-140 after 30 years. I was on Ebay, and bought 3 of them, so far after about 6 or 7 years, I've only used the first one. I wouldn't switch it out for a standard style jack as it requires drilling and not having the proper tools, I'm sure to screw it up and wreck the job. That's the same reason that the Seth Lovers that i got to put in my 157 are still on the shelf. The route isn't deep enough for the long legged Seths. I'm not taking a drill to the pickup cavity as I don't want the ultimate in "buckle rash" on the back. As for hearing the differences between a PIO, Oil filled Metal film and Poly/metal film, that's something you can decide for yourself. There are some electrical differences in different types of construction, things like ESR, inductance and voltage handling in addition to the capacitance. I confess that I really can't tell the difference in good capacitors. About the only way I could do that would to build a switching rig, start playing and have someone switch different caps in while I play. In the tests that I've heard, I hear more difference in the "performance" than the capacitor as long as the values are well matched. Soldering in a capacitor, then playing, stopping and soldering another cap, playing again, etc is not a reproducible process to me. I would feel better if I could do 10 takes and have them all the same with one cap, then do 10 with another, mix them up and be able to pick them out. Plus, I can touch the tone control on the amp and make 50 times more difference. (hey, I'm a skeptic, or totally deaf... not sure which). But why would people selling capacitors admit that the $5 metal film cap sounds the same as $30 cap with vintage looking stripes? (you can get 2 orange drops for $10 vs 30 for a Luxe bumblebee). I can change from a medium to a thin pick and make a HUGE difference. One good thing with caps like the orange drops is that they are VERY stable, and not microphonic at all. Ceramic cap values can vary with temp, be microphonic and usually have a pretty wide tolerance (like +/-20%!) You really don't need a 600V capacitor for a guitar circuit where you are working with 1 V or less. However, voltage handling is somewhat a function of the dialectric film (polyester vs polypropylene vs styrene vs paper). Have i confused/frustrated/scared you off enough? ? Seriously, it's not a massively huge deal or hard job to do. It wont make you suddenly sound like Jimmy Page or Joe Pass. I just find it fun to learn how all this stuff works. As I said, I'm somewhat skeptical of some of the lore that is put forth on the internet. It's probably part of my Deming/ISO 9000 quality training. Tribal knowledge vs verified observation and all that. I'm sure there are people who can hear this kind of stuff, just like there are drivers who can tell a 1/2 degree difference in a wing, or 1/4 pound difference in tire pressure, but I'm not Max Verstappen or Helio Castroneves.

That's true if you're running with a lot of gain. If you're plugged into a Princeton Reverb or a Heritage Patriot with a clean signal, it just lowers the volume. That's more a function of the amp. But lowering the volume on most guitars will also tend to get darker, which is why some people put in a treble bleed circuit. It adds a bit of treble back into the signal. There's a pretty cool worksheet called GuitarFreak that will show how the changes in capacitors and pots will change the frequency response of a guitar pickup. http://www.jocidapark.com.au/circuits/GuitarFreak_6_41_161016.ods You can run it in the Free LIbre Office spreadsheet. There's also an Excel version. http://www.jocidapark.com.au/circuits/GuitarFreak_6_40_210816.xlsm

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.

Something about that setup looks fishy. I've never seen that much corrosion, crud and dust in any of my factory setups and I have guitars from 87, 00, 03 and 04. Did you buy that one new in '99? If not, I would suspect that someone else had a hand in there.