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seems like a nice product for the money for sure, and yes- SOP now. makes me a little sad, but gotta remember: "Its not personal Sonny, its strictly business." I was in London recently and I always go down to Denmark Street and Soho when there to check out the old historic (and new) guitar shops and studios. Dawsons had both US and Ch. made Heritages. They told me that they are owned by the same company that owns Heritage Kalamazoo, so they are the London distributor for both factories. The Chinese ones were downstairs in the main showroom. The good stuff was upstairs in the “private” room that was roped off. Some very nice new production instruments from both places.

FWIW, just saying that something is made in China doesn't necessarily mean it's a piece of crap. There are things made in the US that are crap, and stuff that is high quality. The same happens over there. I used to deal with a few Chinese plants and a few were consistent, and more than willing to go the extra mile to make a quality product. Others couldn't make the same thing twice if their lives depended on it. China is a massive country with lots of different companies. Anyone over a certain age will remember when Made In Japan was the sign of cheapness. Now the majority of things out of Japan are world class.

Yes! Greg is such a unique player, and person! He has combined several guitar styles into his own signature sound. He is a very funny guy! I am new to this forum. Looking fwd to discussing all things guitar!

Hello Heritage! I am new to this forum-I just bought my first Heritage Custom Core H 535 Blonde! It is different than any other guitar I have played. I’m used to Gibsons, Fender, arch tops etc, but this feels/sounds so different. I love the QUALITY of the build. The neck is comfortable, pickups sound great. Very versetile. Playing Jazz, Blues, Bossa Nova and Swing on it right now. I love it! It has lots of flame in the wood-front, back and sides. The tuners work really well. I’m using Thomastic Strings, flatwound 11’s.

Eh, lots of variables and generalizations in play... but in a nutshell; if the amp wattage is higher than what the power/watt handling of a speaker is, it's going to lead to 1 of 2 likely outcomes - 1) the speaker will easily distort... which in some scenarios could be a desirable effect and compliment the amp distortion (especially when paired with another higher power/sensitivity speaker); in other scenarios, it could just sound muddy, "farty", or bad. 2) The speaker could just fail...blow the cone out or toast the voice coil. In the reverse role; if the speaker watt/power handling is way higher than the amp output... usually this will make very little difference. It depends more on the design and sensitivity of the speaker at this point. For example, I love to pair the 300 watt EVM-12L with all sorts of amps, including little 5 watters; fairly transparent speaker pairing that let's more of the amps own voicing be heard (minimal speaker distortion/coloration). Usually the only negative scenario is where it's a speaker with a very heavy cone and low sensitivity; that could be a speaker that needs a whole lot of power to make it move in order to sound good. There's not many guitar oriented speakers out there that fall into this grouping though. It's more in the extreme cork sniffers high end of car or home audio (or cheap garbage speakers from temu or something). TLDR - Low power amp with high power speaker; okay. High power amp with low power speaker; may cause death of speaker, or could get you that cinnamon girl sound you've been searching for all your life (if one was to ever search for such a sound).

C J Stanley band. He owns a bunch of them. https://youtu.be/oahyiijnjwQ?si=H2MRO7llLOYSSNl9

yep summed up pretty good above There is a dynamic between particular speakers & particular amps. Always good to play around with combinations but use caution. Unless you can afford recones or don't have any rare vintage speakers. I have an old ~15w tube amp I put an ancient Bell & Howell alnico film speaker in it, very light resonant cone. That thing RAWKS when it's cranked up. I bet it's just on the verge of the speaker's power handling

The wattage on a speaker is an indication of how much power you can put through the voice coil without it heating up to the point that burns out. The suspension, cone material, available voice coil travel will determine if it breaks up, and sensitivity will tell you how loud the speaker will be at a reasonable power level. The speaker will distort if you exceed the rating, especially if you try to exceed the cone travel. If you play highly distorted, then you should have a higher power speaker capacity since those distorted squared off waves are actually higher in power than a sine wave of equivalent amplitude. Something like the Celestion Peacekeeper handles 50W but only puts out 86dB for 1 watt of power. A Vintage 30 will handle 60W and puts out 100dB for that same single watt. Also, it depends on where you set the amp. A Twin can put out a lot of power, but if you only turn up to 2, you might only be putting out 3 or 5 watts.

Welcome to the cult! We have a saying, photos or it never happened.

😂

Isn't it against all known laws of nature and the universe to play a right-handed guitar lefty?

that is a well hung microphone

There really isn't a better tuner than Gotoh, made in Japan. I put them on both of my vintage Heritage in place of the rotomatics. Collings uses them on their electrics, and they are very good. Grover makes many tuners in China anymore. Schaller are still making them in Germany. Waverly still makes tuning machines in the USA. There are tuning machine companies in Korea supplying Fender and others with unique tuners, like the "70's F-branded" machines on the vintage re-issues. (originally made by Schaller).

Certainly, good guitars can be made in China, or Indonesia, or Korea. The labor costs are lower overseas, environmental and worker-safety less strict, and the currency manipulation make them even cheaper. Just like Epiphone, and PRS SE and any number of Fender sub-brands, and many others, production is offshored. Some are pretty good, some are every freaking corner is cut to hit a price. The truth is that cheap guitars outsell expensive guitars, by quite a lot. What is the value of the Heritage brand? Is Heritage associated as a USA made instrument brand? Does branding imported guitars with the Heritage brand de-value the brand? Outside of a small group of guitar nerds, Heritage is kinda unknown. Even among guitar players, I get a lot of "what is that guitar?" about my H535 (it is quite a looker in curly maple natural as well as incredibly good sounding). Gibson for instance, separates the Gibson and Epiphone lines as generally, USA and offshore brands. Fender has gone both ways. When CBS sold to private investors in the 1980's, they had no factory for a while. They were building Fender-branded guitars in Japan. (I have one, they were excellent!) They also did Squier brand and some other variants for offshore, and make Fender branded instruments in Japan and Mexico as well as USA. It just seems weird to me that it is virtually impossible to make electric solid-body guitars in the USA that cost less than $2000

Gotoh will put your label on a tuner if you are willing to pay for it. My Melanon built T has tuners with his name on it, very similar to Heritage. Gerard was a much smaller builder than Heritage and used top grade parts for his builds. I would be really surprised if Ed Wilson would have cheap'd out on tuners when he went through all the trouble to set up the custom core instruments. Save $20 on a $4000 instrument, that you've pleked, and designed the pickups for? Doesn't make sense.

You know, I feel much the same way. While the new CC models are significantly lighter than the standards, and while they make for a very good modding platform, they would indeed be a very tough guitar to beat if their parts were all top shelf along with some nicer tops throughout. After all the mods I've done to these guitars, I'm pretty happy with them, but if there's one minor gripe that I continue to have, it's the shorter frets. For what they call a "Jescar medium jumbo" fret, it feels much more like a lower vintage fret. While I'm certainly doing okay with the frets just as they are now, if I ever need to do a fret leveling on either of them, I think I'd likely opt to have a refret job done instead. I have no idea about the Schaller M6 tuners and whether or not they'd fit.

Jimbob that's a sweet goldtop!