H-576 info

[rwinking]

I have a jazz gig on Friday and jazz is not my forte. I can get around but there are no keys ....percussion, bass, violin and me. I pulled out my H-576 and as I had not played it in like 4 years, I forgot what a cool guitar it is. I guess it is like a 575 with a Venetian cutaway and gold tuners, bridge, etc. lots of blingy stuff. it also seems to have a center block. I'm not sure if the 575 is fully hollow or blocked. It really sounds beautiful....warm and full and jazzy. And it is really nice to look at.

Anyway, does anyone have any info on these guys? how many were made? mine is an H seriel number which means 1992.  I don't know how long they were made. Does anyone else have one or am I alone in the universe with mine?

[TalismanRich]

The 576 is semihollow,  laminate top and back with solid rims.   Here's the spec from the '89 catalog.   I have the H525 which is thinner,  laminate like the 576 but fully hollow and with P90s.   It's a bit like a smaller version of the 550 to my thinking.   16" vs 17",  24.75 vs 25.5 scale,  both semihollow, so you should have a center block.  2 3/4" thick vs 2 7/8"

It's not shown in the 2005 catalog that I have.   It was shown in the '93 catalog.  

[rwinking]

Mine must have been ordered with upgrades or someone upgraded it. It has gold bridge, tuners, switches, etc. When I got it the owner had put alunitone pick ups in it. They really did not sound good and looked even stranger on a traditional looking guitar. I put a pair of Dimarzio Anniversay humbuckers in it and it sounds really warm. I don't use it much and am thinking about selling it. But I am not sure I want to part with it as it is so cool.

[ElNumero]

18 hours ago, rwinking said:

I have a jazz gig on Friday and jazz is not my forte. I can get around but there are no keys ....percussion, bass, violin and me. I pulled out my H-576 and as I had not played it in like 4 years, I forgot what a cool guitar it is. I guess it is like a 575 with a Venetian cutaway and gold tuners, bridge, etc. lots of blingy stuff. it also seems to have a center block. I'm not sure if the 575 is fully hollow or blocked. It really sounds beautiful....warm and full and jazzy. And it is really nice to look at.

Anyway, does anyone have any info on these guys? how many were made? mine is an H seriel number which means 1992.  I don't know how long they were made. Does anyone else have one or am I alone in the universe with mine?

Sell it to me

[ElNumero]

12 hours ago, TalismanRich said:

The 576 is semihollow,  laminate top and back with solid rims.   Here's the spec from the '89 catalog.   I have the H525 which is thinner,  laminate like the 576 but fully hollow and with P90s.   It's a bit like a smaller version of the 550 to my thinking.   16" vs 17",  24.75 vs 25.5 scale,  both semihollow, so you should have a center block.  2 3/4" thick vs 2 7/8"

It's not shown in the 2005 catalog that I have.   It was shown in the '93 catalog.  

The 576 is way cooler than a 525

[big bob]

How does it compare to a Roy Clark? 

[MartyGrass]

This is my Roy Clark.  It's the size of a 535 with a deep single cutaway and a bit more bling.

[MartyGrass]

[Spectrum13]

32 minutes ago, MartyGrass said:

This is my Roy Clark.  It's the size of a 535 with a deep single cutaway and a bit more bling.

On the 576 the bridge aligns with the diamond shape in the middle of the f hole while on the Roy the tail piece aligns with the middle of the diamond. So is the body longer? 

[111518]

I don't own either of these models, but, speculating based on what I know and from the pics, the neck meets the body (on the non-cutaway side) at different points.  Maybe this is because the Roy Clark is essentially a 535 (semi) but with one cutaway instead of two, and the neck slots into the solid central block, and the 576 is constructed like a full hollow but with a block under the bridge, like a 550.  

--in other words, I basically agree with Talishman Rich's post above.  I don't think the 576 has a full through-body block.  On the 550, it's actually more like a plate into which the bridge is mounted, but not sure if the 576 is exaxtly the same.  

Edited 7 hours ago by 111518
acknowledge previous post

[Spectrum13]

31 minutes ago, 111518 said:

 Maybe this is because the Roy Clark is essentially a 535 (semi) but with one cutaway instead of two, and the neck slots into the solid central block, and the 576 is constructed like a full hollow but with a block under the bridge, like a 550.  

 

 If the Roy C is a single cutaway 535, how come a 535 bridge intersect the diamond in the middle of the F hole and the Roy at a different point?

[111518]

--sorry, should probably be more clear.  On the Roy Clark, there can be more neck clear of the body because the block into which the neck is set is integral to the structure of the guitar.  On the 576, this is not the case, the neck is set into a block as with traditional acoustic guitars or archtops. 

So the issue become neck stability.  Sort of like the difference between the two versions of the es330; the later version --full hollow but with more neck clear of the body like a 335 but mounted into a relatively small block-- had neck stability issues, as did the LP Signature for similar reasons.  I seem to remember that Heritage addressed this with the 525 by extending the neck block further into the body than Gibson had done with the later version of the 330 or the Signature.  

The 550 and 535 are the only versions of these that I own and can speak from my own inspection of how they are built.  The rest is hearsay and speculation.  I do think all these guitars are made with top and bottoms laminated with the same molds and then cut to 16 or 17, and cutouts added, which is why the 550, and I presume the 576, have tops that are not very deeply arched.  

[111518]

15 minutes ago, Spectrum13 said:

 If the Roy C is a single cutaway 535, how come a 535 bridge intersect the diamond in the middle of the F hole and the Roy at a different point?

Good question.  I think you are right, but it's hard to tell for sure given the angle of the pics.  I looked for, but couldn't find, a catalog that had a pic of a Roy Clark and a 535 from the same angle and from the same point in time.  Based on the pics in this thread, there's not as much difference in the relationship of bridge to f-hole between the RC and 535 as there is between the Roy Clark and 576, but there does seem to be some difference.   I'd guess they had to do a little finagling to make the guitar look right with no cutaway on the top, but, again, that's just speculation.  

My sense is that they tried to use the same parts and jigs as much as possible between models, but that sometimes changes in, for example, scale length, meant that they had to make modifications ... and, those mods were not always consistent over time.  

In digging, I found a pic that MartyGrass had posted on another site that showed a block under the front pickup on the 576, so, maybe my speculation that it was built more like a 550 was wrong, which would undermine most of my other guesses.   

 

 

 

[rwinking]

I've never played a Roy Clark but if it is a single cut 535, I see my 576 as a bit fatter. I havn't measured them but just looking at them it appears that way.

[TalismanRich]

IF you look at the neck join,  the Roy Clark cutaway comes in at the 16th fret,   but on the 576, it joins at the 14th fret.  The two fret change in the point where the neck joins the body means the bridge and tailpiece need to move.  

It also means that the neck pickup is a bit more towards the center of the scale, so it is probably a bit more mellow than the Roy Clark.    The 575 also joins at the 14th fret.   That would make the 576 like the 575 in pickup placement.

[TalismanRich]

FWIW, with the Gibson ES330,  the neck joins at a different point than an ES335.    On the H-530,  it joins at the same point as the H-535.   You can see that the bridge is mounted at a different point of the f hole. It was something I noticed when I was trying out a Blues Driver and used an ES330.   It felt different than my 530, and I couldn't at first, figure out why.

Here are the Gibsons  vs the Heritages.

   

[111518]

--sorry for screwed up formatting on this post.  Can't seem to fix it, and don't have time to start over...

Gibson did move the neck joint to the 19th fret (like a 335) in 1968, and these are called "long-neck es330s or 330L's." 

There are a couple, both original and reissue, on sale on Reverb:  We had a thread. about this years ago.  There's a post that I think TalismanRich made that shows the interior of a 530, which has a pretty substantial block.https://www.heritageownersclub.com/forums/topic/37263-question-about-the-h-530/  

 

Edited 35 minutes ago by 111518
added apology for screwed up formatting