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I think "50s" neck is meaningless. It varied at Gibson from 52 to 59. Every one was hand rolled and there were more than one person doing the work. Generally 50s means thicker. 60s SGs had thinner necks than 59 LPs. I certainly haven't played enough old Gibsons to say they are all the same, but the ones I've played varied. As for quality issues, I have 5 Heritage guitars from an 87 to 08. The only thing I have really done as a "repair" was changing the pickups in my H140 (it was used and one of the pickups was really screwed up). I put Sheptones in my 535, but just to try them. They sound different from the stock Schallers. I also changed the pots and caps in my 157 to see if there was any improvement. I can't say it was better. The Vishay Poly caps are good, so I don't think the oil filled caps improved anything. One advantage of the later models is the use of SD59s in place of the Schaller pickups. People used to pull the Schallers and put in new pickups, often SD59s or Seth Lovers. Now they pull the SDs and put in something else. On a Semi, that's a harder task than on a solid body with an access panel for the controls. Some people don't like the Schaller bridge and tailpiece. They change them to ABR or Nashville types, which are usually lighter. My 535 already came that way, so not all have the Schaller hardware. A couple of the Grovers on my 535 were getting tight, so last year, I changed to locking Grovers, and used keystone buttons instead of kidney beans. Strictly a choice. Normal factory is Grovers with kidney beans. They can be replaced in about an hour for under $100 if you want. You can see how they look in this thread.

I have a Mesa KingSnake which is also supposed to be simple but there is simple and then there's Mesa simple. I think it weighs about 85 lbs. I can't move it anywhere, ha. Good times.

Good advice from TR above I'll add I had a 90s 535 & sold it because the neck was too slim for me. I replaced it with a 2013 or 2015 H-535 & it is the bomb!! Amazing gtr, nice beefy neck but not a baseball bat. I also put Wolfetone Legend pickups in Gratuitous pic And a shoutout to Bill Paige: it never had a pickguard installed; one year at the factory I asked if I could buy one, he walked back into the shop retreived one & gave it to me. So thank you Bill!

A quick post to say hello and ask a couple of questions. I joined this forum in the spring of 2021 but have not been active. In my younger days I owned a foolishly sold 2 H-535's (early to mid 90's) I'm here because I plan on buying an H-530 sometime soon. I currently have a Kalamazoo made Harmony Comet which is a great guitar but I prefer a larger bodied instrument and the Harmony is not that. I plan on selling the Harmony and grabbing a 530. It looks like the H-530 can be found at @ 2k or so on the used market which is where my budget falls. Now for a shopping question: Among the dealer sites I frequent is Dave's Guitar Shop in Wisconsin. I've done a fair amount of business with them over the years and have always been a happy customer. Dave's always has several used 530's, 535's and H-150's of very recent vintage in stock. It makes me wonder how they come to have these. Seems unlikely that there is that much turnover of high quality US made instruments and that one dealer always has a supply of them. I wonder how they get these guitars on a regular basis? Does anyone have any insight? Is Dave's buying stock from other dealers? Are they getting guitars directly from Heritage? I did ask this question directly via email but their answer was vague and not clear. At first I wondered if these recent used guitars were factory 2nd's or something but I don't get the feeling that's the case. Anyhoo, I've always wondered how they get that many nearly mint condition Heritage's. Just for fun I've attached two shots of my Harmony. One with and one without the Duesenburg Les Trem. TIA for any info!

My musical partner in crime Ryan, who plays guitar with me in our band Vorraro gifted me this great Fuzz, check it out… https://on.soundcloud.com/WFeDMaVeSHaYBDgT9

Does it bark? Yes, yes it does indeed, and it is full of KERRRAAAANNNGG. Classic Marshall tones from the 70s and 80s, done right. I had been thinking about a Friedman, particularly the JEL-20, for a long time, before this one was announced. As I have a good stock of SED EL34s, and wanted a bit more "thump", i decided to go for the larger wattage example. There were a bunch of pretty much brand new returns, so I saved a bit and picked one up. Cabinet is an Avatar contemporary closed back with two Avatar M65 speakers by FANE. I did not expect to bright switches to have such a huge impact on the sound, especially at lower gain levels. Gonna get to know it a bit better, and then swap in some old production glass into V1 and V2. Also gotta change the strings on the guitar to 9.5 or 10 gauge, as 9s feel like noodles to me. As it is, channel 1 is pure plexi style, and it's got the three way bright switch, which is almost like a gain control at lower gain levels. With it to the right I think it's the same as an OG Plexi, which is quite bright, though I don't have confirmation on that. In that setting it's hard to even get a clean sound, but with the bright switch in the left, or the center where it's the least bright, it's got a great clean sound. As you up the drive you get more dirt, and I think even near the highest gain levels you still get a good amount of extra bite with the bright switch to the right. With the gain fully dimed you're definitely a bit past AC/DC level gain, but if you want the real "plexi" sound you do need to get the master up above 5. However per Pete Thorn, Dave Friedman designed the amp so it isn't as woofy at lower master volume levels, so it still sounds good. Channel 2 is the JCM 800 style channel, and serves that up just right. The bright switch is also quite useful at lower gain settings, but once you get above 7 or so you can barely tell it's on. I'm not sure if it even makes a difference when you pull out the boost on the lead gain, but I think I can hear a change. The gain is usable throughout the entire range, and pulled and pushed are kinda like two different voicings, so there's a lot of ability to customize the sound using the pull gain and the bright switches. The presence and thump in the back are great as well, though they are more something I would set depending on the room I'm in, or the cabinet I'm using. And speaking of that, this is the first time I REALLY got to put some volume through the Avatar cabinet with the M65 speakers as well, and I can say they are definitely some really nice speakers. I'm fairly certain that Avatar pretty much asked Fane to make some Creamback style speakers, but they definitely have their own voice. Nice and crunchy with a lot of definition. I'm going to make that my standard cab for a while, and hopefully break them in a bit more.

Those are great amps though. LOUD, but great. Those early designs were the favorites of people like Santana and Keith Richards. One of the guys that hangs out in the Mesa facebook groups owns one of "keef's" former Mesas. Also seen some of Prince's old Mark IIB and Mark IIC+ coliseum heads floating around.

Heritage use 3 different headstock sizes. Large for Jazz guitars, medium and small for most electric guitars. I wish I had found that out sooner. My last custom build, the Heritage Millennium SuperLight, should have had a small headstock but I had them use the medium size because it looked more balanced to me. Don't forget Heritage had a number of unconventional guitar models that used completely different headstocks, I'm looking at you MarvBird.

MIne is .88 at 1st and 1.03 at 12th. Bolero, the trick is to have a small piece of wood or plastic that is thicker than the strings, and fits between the and stringsfrets. Measure that, and subtract from the total. I have a small piece of wood that is 2.1mm. So I measure 24.40mm and get 22.30 which is 0.878 inches for the neck. For me, shape is as important, or more, than the total thickness.

TBone, It appears from your photo that the Carvin contraption you have is water-cooled. Impressive.

Many years ago, custom options were almost the norm. The guys would work with people to build guitars that are much different from the standard line. Pressure has several custom made guitars. He likes spruce, so he has a unique Millennium with a spruce top. Heritage had a system called the VIP (Var-I-Phase) and D-VIP. The switches could implement a coil tap, and phase reversal. The 3 knob, 3 switch is a D-VIP. You have master volume and master tone, and the third knob would vary the blending of the phase of the pickups depending on the switches. I would probably go with the 22, as I like Seth Lovers, unless it was a color I didn't like. My favorite is obviously the red, followed by natural, then sunburst. They now use Heritage branded tuners, with kidney beans. I don't know who is making the tuners, but I'm guessing that Edwin Wilson probably chose a manufacturer and had the branding set up. It's not an unusual thing to do. Just call Gotoh, Grover, Guyker, Wilkinson, etc and tell them you want 1000 sets, and they'll happily give you a price. Many people change the tuners. It's not difficult, as long as you check the dimensions.

Ok I'll look for some calipers

Not this one Goon, this one is fixed bias. I have used the sun faces with the sun bias knob and they are pretty cool if you really want the thing to spit, but I don’t really go to that dirty so it wouldn’t be as useful to me

Bolero's looks very much like mine, which is a 2005. This has the Sheptone Tribute pickups, otherwise it's stock.

All earlier 535s don't necessarily have thin necks. First, since they were all hand carved, there was some variation in the necks. They had templates to check as they were working the neck, but they would vary. My 535 neck (2005) is rounder and beefier than my 03 H157 or 87 H-140. There's a slight difference in shape as well. Second, different people did the carving. Marv could be different from Arnie. The guitars from the past few years have tended to be on the thicker side, but you'll still see a bit of variation between individual instruments. If you have the opportunity to play the guitar first, I would highly advise that. Some people are very picky about the feel, others can play varying thicknesses, but shape makes a difference. My Strat has a VERY thick neck, my 140 is relatively thin. Both are comfortable. I've played several PRS guitars and I hated the shape. They hit my thumb in a manner that was actually painful in a short time. I have a dislike of wide/flat necks. Hardware can be changed if you want, but the neck and body are pretty much set in stone.... er... wood.

I was hoping it wasn't a self portrait!

A pinball machine.

I also approve because there's so many out there, people who have real '59 Les Pauls can gig them & tell everyone it's an aged replica Honestly I don't care if other people buy relic'd guitars

Well, I forgot one last comparison... Case - 150CC win (slightly) The Gibson Custom Shop case is CONSIDERABLY lighter (in a good way) and has a smaller footprint (which I like) than the Heritage Custom Core case. But the Gibson case only has one substantial, full closing latch. If you close the four other latches and forget to close the main latch (I don't know how you would forget) there is a very good chance the Gibson case would still open. Maybe this Gibson case is "period correct" but it is not the most secure case for your investment. The Heritage Custom Core case is a direct spin off Ameritage cases that other high end companies use (Collings, PRS Acoustics, ect..). It has fully 5 substantial, full closing latches and is built like a tank! The trade off is that it is extremely heavy (probably close to the same weight as the guitar) and has a much bigger footprint.

Brent bought them all