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Heritage Owners Club

Happy Birthday Heritage Guitars Inc.

NoSnowBlower

By NoSnowBlower
in Heritage Guitars

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FredZepp Mentor

FredZepp

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In June 1984, the last Gibson guitars left the loading dock of 225 Parsons St.

If there was still any magic or mystique about Gibson in Kalamazoo, it remained there, as many Kalamazoo employees refused to uproot their families for an insecure future in Nashville.
Among those were four key Gibson employees - Jim Deurloo, J.P. Moats, Bill Paige and Marv Lamb - who stayed not only in Kalamazoo but in the Parsons St. factory, where they formed the Heritage guitar company and found success as the company that, more than Gibson, continued the Gibson tradition.

"The heart and soul of Gibson was still at 225 Parsons St. in Kalamazoo, where the core group of guitar builders had stayed"

"They formed the Heritage guitar company and found success as the company that, more than Gibson, continued the Gibson tradition."

 

from Gibson Guitars: 100 years of an American Icon. Walter Carter ) Edited to remain on-topic.

 

  • " I had said that Kalamazoo is Mecca," Deurloo says. "A lot of people tried to argue that, but it didn't matter. There's an assumption that if you can make widgets in one place, you can make them in another. But I say that only Rembrandt paints Rembrandts."

    poster+inlay+hert.jpeg

"Heritage is more than our name; it’s who we are," says Jim Deurloo, a cofounder along with Marv Lamb, J.P. Moats and Bill Paige. "We’ve been building guitars all our lives," adds Jim, who started at Gibson in 1958 at age 19.

Marv was 16 when hired on May 31, 1956, a date he recalls with pride. "We were farmers in Alabama. I came north in October 1955 and worked with my brother and brother-in-law at a bakery. Dad came to the Gibson guard shack where they took applications every day until they hired him, and he got me a job here, too."

Like Marv, J.P. also hails from Alabama " My sister worked at Gibson and she got someone to hire me — that was in 1957 — and I worked for them for 28 years."

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holyroller Collaborator

holyroller

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Happy birthday heritage guitars!! Thanks for sticking it out and continue to make the best guitars made. Gibson took there name to tennesee but the crafstmen , machines , building, and everything that started the electric guitar stayed right were it all started Kalamazoo Michigan. The heritage , continues to this day!

Thank you!!!🎸🎸🎸🎸🎸

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tsp17 Proficient

tsp17

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Happy Birthday Heritage!

 

for those of you who know the history best- who were the original Heritage founders, and what is the insider's version (more than the general story) of how it happened?

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