New Heritage Owner!

[Rockaman]

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. 

 

[HANGAR18]

Vintage Wineburst is such an awesome finish!
Congrats and WELCOME!!

[Gitfiddler]

@Rockaman...Congratulations on your beautiful and unique H150, and welcome to the HOC.

[Steiner]

Pretty guitar!  Nice snatch.

[kbp810]

The best burst color there is! Congrats!

[rockabilly69]

Congrats, Wineburst is the color that got me to pony up for a new Heritage!  Yours looks great. I love the cool squiggly looking flame on yours! Also Pro Alnico IIs are more my cup of tea vs the 59s so it's cool yours has those. 

Mine looks a lot like yours under the same lightning! Here's when I first got mine before I installed the pickguard and the rest of the mods.

 

But It looks quite different under different light. And I Iike it much more after I swapped pickups (SD custom shop Peter Green set but without the swapped magnet), rewired (my solder job looked a lot like yours), swapped bridge and tailpiece with Faber locking stuff, and added the pickguard. I love this guitar!

 

[kennyv4]

Welcome aboard, nice looking guitar, enjoy.

[lavern23]

That’s a beauty!

[brentrocks]

Nice!

[GuitarsGuitarsGuitars]

So much for that Sweetwater FIFTY-FIVE POINT inspection. ?

[TalismanRich]

I'm surprised that Sweetwater didn't see the cracked pickup ring.   An indentation under the pickguard is a different matter.   You would have to remove the guard to see that.   That's one weak point with the elevated pickguard.   If you press hard enough, it can bend enough to allow the screw to hit the surface of the guitar.   Putting felt on the guitar under the screw might not be the best thing.   You need to make sure an adhesive doesn't react with the finish. 

That said,   I've replaced 4 pickup rings that have cracked.    When the Schaller ring on my 157 cracked,  I took a new ring ($4), and drilled four extra holes so that I could keep the 4 adjustment screws on the Schaller pickups.  

I hate soldering to the back of the pots.   I've thought about just doing the joint where the tab gets grounded to the case and then solder to that lab.  It would all be the same point electrically and wouldn't risk overheating the case.    It would be nice if CTS would just make a little tab on the back to use as a soldering point.  

Edited September 24, 2023 by TalismanRich

[bolero]

Nice looking gtr, congrats!

 

[slide13]

Great looking top on that one!  

Yeah, my Cadillac Green H-150 has a small dent from the pickguard as well.  Unfortunate but not a huge deal, still would be nice if they'd just set them up with a sufficient gap, it's definitely doable.  I don't remember how clean the wiring itself was but the cavity in general was definitely not as cleanly finished as my R8 was.  That being said, that is and the undented top are about the only things the R8 had over my H-150.  Fretboard wood quality, binding quality, nut prep, etc are all significantly better on my Heritage.  My R8 had very obvious and noticeable binding ridges on the neck and body and while the fretboard wood wasn't awful by Gibson standards it was not in the same league as my Heritage. 

[Anthony]

 

Great guitar!  Is the head stock "Heritage" or "The Heritage" (classier IMHO)

Looks like 50s style wiring. I've been meaning to convert my 2005 H150 with Seth Lovers.

[ElNumero]

Beautiful. I have a 535 same finish.  

[hinesarchtop]

Beautiful

[rockabilly69]

On 9/22/2023 at 3:45 PM, Rockaman said:

...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. 

 

When I first opened this post I didn't see the complaints, just the picture of the new guitar which looks sweet! BUT.... I've had more problems with Sweetwater than any other online dealer when it comes to missing things. The 55 point inspection is a joke! And worse yet, after buying some picks or a few sets of strings, you get a bothersome follow up cold call asking how you like them. If they really did a 55 point inspection and let that: dent, cracked ring, and abysmal soldering job get through their inspection, then shame on them! The neck pickup volume pot may be the worst solder job I've seen on an upscale electric guitar. It sucks when pots are soldered like that, because cleaning up those globs of solder means you have to reheat the back of that pot chancing damaging it. I do a lot of soldering of pots, and one thing I can tell you without a doubt, is that modern pots are not very well made, and don't handle the heat as well as the older stuff. If it was up to me, I would ask for a new pickup ring, and some replacement pots and solder them in correctly. The newlywed phase of buying a new guitar wears off fast, and after that, you're left with a guitar with less resale value than what it would have had without the issues! 

If you really love the guitar then I would address the solder job and ring, if not, I would return the guitar, and wait till you find a new one in the same finish without the issues, especially the dent!!! Have them ship it without the pick-guard on! That way if the grain looks nice. and you like the pick-guard off, the choice will be available to you!

It was a special treat to yourself, why live with "the bummers"???? If Sweetwater doesn't make it right, return it and go to a better dealer! 

Edited October 3, 2023 by rockabilly69

[aGuitarSolo]

I have a 1999 Heritage H150CH. I just started to refinish it. I was going to remove all of the electronics until I took a closer look at it. I've never seen such a mess in my life. One of the flanges from the input jack is literally soldered to the top of one of the tone pots. As a result, the knob of that one pot has always been at a slightly different angle than the other 3 controls.

I'm afraid to even try to unsolder it.

[kbp810]

5 hours ago, aGuitarSolo said:

I have a 1999 Heritage H150CH. I just started to refinish it. I was going to remove all of the electronics until I took a closer look at it. I've never seen such a mess in my life. One of the flanges from the input jack is literally soldered to the top of one of the tone pots. As a result, the knob of that one pot has always been at a slightly different angle than the other 3 controls.

I'm afraid to even try to unsolder it.

Wow, I don't think I've ever seen a mess like that come out of the factory before. Stranger things have happened though. 

Either way, I'd be doing a wholesale electronics change on that. Get rid of it all and start over fresh. 

Would be interested in seeing the refinishing progress

[TalismanRich]

14 hours ago, aGuitarSolo said:

I have a 1999 Heritage H150CH. I just started to refinish it. I was going to remove all of the electronics until I took a closer look at it. I've never seen such a mess in my life. One of the flanges from the input jack is literally soldered to the top of one of the tone pots. As a result, the knob of that one pot has always been at a slightly different angle than the other 3 controls.

I'm afraid to even try to unsolder it.

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. 

[aGuitarSolo]

On 10/4/2023 at 7:21 AM, kbp810 said:

Wow, I don't think I've ever seen a mess like that come out of the factory before. Stranger things have happened though. 

Either way, I'd be doing a wholesale electronics change on that. Get rid of it all and start over fresh. 

Would be interested in seeing the refinishing progress

Thank you very much for replying. I probably should not have posted that without providing more context. The real story behind this is one that I hope I don't ever have to fully explain publicly because it involves the name of someone who is very well known, someone who should have known better (I realize I'm being obscure here but I posted this because I'm looking for solutions and not looking to tarnish anyone's reputation.)

Please forgive me for not providing a bit more explanation. What you are seeing is NOT how it came from the factory. I actually don't know what it looked like at first. I had always had problems with intermittent shorting since the day I purchased it in January of 2000. However, my career was that of a general contractor, not a professional musician, so the problem constituted an annoyance but not a professional hindrance or else I would have addressed it more aggressively.

However, in 2005, a friend of someone who is now my EX-girlfriend, dropped my guitar and broke the headstock off. I don't mean cracked it. The only thing holding the headstock to the guitar was the strings. Heritage recommended a luthier for me. In the course of that repair, I also asked him to address the shorting problem. What you see now, for the most part, to the extent that it differs from the factory, is due to his implementation of the solution and it DID work. However, more than 18 years later, it does leave me with a bit of a problem.

I didn't intend to rewire the guitar but now, after reading your observation, I'm thinking I should do that. (Thank you for breaking the bad news to me, seriously.) So, this dovetails into the next question I have and that is, "How?" I compared the photo of my existing condition with the photo of the OP of this thread and I was unable to reconcile them.

My first impression, beyond the sloppy work, when comparing the 2 photos, it appears as though mine is wired incorrectly. Here are the two photos together oriented how I think they should be oriented. I attached a copy of to this post.

“A Dummies Guide to Rewiring a Heritage H150…” This is what I need.

Do you have any suggestions?

[aGuitarSolo]

17 hours ago, TalismanRich said:

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. 

Thank you for replying.

“FISHY” is a good word for it. I explained a bit more of the back-story to @kbp810 above. In summary, it didn’t come from the factory that way. Yes, I did buy it new but how it got this way, is a whole other story you can read about above.

What appears to be corrosion is actually the remnants of my first “FAILED” attempt to refinish the guitar.

[Steiner]

A lot of components used on new guitars are simply placeholders; the plastic nut, POS bridges and Especially the wiring harness.  The $100 spent on the upgrade was the best investment ever - except they're addictive; be very careful.

[aGuitarSolo]

3 hours ago, Steiner said:

A lot of components used on new guitars are simply placeholders; the plastic nut, POS bridges and Especially the wiring harness.  The $100 spent on the upgrade was the best investment ever - except they're addictive; be very careful.

In general, I know this is true. However, I wouldn't expect this from Heritage on any level. Have you found examples of Heritage doing this kind of thing?

[Steiner]

1 hour ago, aGuitarSolo said:

In general, I know this is true. However, I wouldn't expect this from Heritage on any level. Have you found examples of Heritage doing this kind of thing?

I've never met a guitar (any brand) that didn't improve from an upgraded harness.  Heritage is no different.