Leaderboard

It's pretty unthinkable. With the with the devastion in North Carolina and Florida, this just adds up to a bad run of natural disasters. My heart goes out to all of the people that have to go through this suffering.

I have a box full of Schaller pickups, from many different brands of guitars. Schaller manufactured a *wide* variety of humbuckers, everything from low-output PAF style, to high-gain ceramic-magnet meatgrinders. Their PAF clones were really pretty good. Schaller had very good winding equipment in the 80's and 90's, as characteristically, most of their coils exhibit low capacitance, meaning they tend to cut bit less high frequency than comparably wound humbuckers from other makers. I have a Fender Esprit Elite with Schaller's most high-end pickup, also used on the Fender D'Aquisto jazz boxes from the early 80's MIJ "master series" (very nice instruments). Those are dark and highly overwound, but they are quite comparable to the SD '59 neck and JB Bridge combo, though constructed somewhat differently and with coil splitting. Can't really pin Schaller pickups to any one particular sound. They made an enormous variety of pickups, usually to whatever the OEM guitar manufacturer ordered. Schaller wasn't really available in the retail market for the most part. They'd probably still be around had they gotten into that racket. I mostly play blues and rock on the 535 with the HRW's. I find they work really well for that, and I can dial in very good tones with same tube amps I've been playing for decades now. Playing A/B side by side with a Collings I35LC and the Throbak SLE-101 Plus, they really were very similar in the H535 vs the Collings. On the other hand, I find the SD59's that came stock in my H150 to be higher output and darker, with a frequency response peak that sits a little lower in sort of a strident range. to each his own I guess. Changing pickups has become like changing socks these days. In the 1980's, it was kind of an exception to the rule, as pickups weren't quite as readily available on the retail market to players. Dimarzio and Seymour Duncan were kind of the early players in that market.

THat's EXACTLY what I want to do, as the song is going to open up a set. 4 clicks of the drum sticks and boom, there it is

In my best Ed McMann voice "How cold is it Johnny"? (Johnny replied "Even witches are wearing thermal bras")

I have a 97’ 535 amd it has a thin neck, and I absolutely love it. alot easier on my arthritic hand as I get older.

Well, having only owned 5 pre-2017 Heritage guitars, my thoughts are likely only worth about 25% of what Kuz has said. Mine were built in 1996, 2001, 2005, 2006, and 2008. None of my 5 had any significant issues whatsoever. Yes, the oldest one (1996 H535) has a somewhat slimmer neck than the others, but that was how things were done back then. And so what? With the arthritis in my left hand, neck scale length is now far more important to me than thickness. That's why I now have a 24" Ron Kirn Jaguar and my recent Doug Harrison custom build is 24.6". John's absolutely correct: listening to dumbass internet 'experts' about Heritage quality from the old days is a waste of your time.