Leaderboard

Back in the club. I had to sell my H-150 Vintage Wine Burst about 6 months ago and immediately regretted it. I recently found another Vintage Wine Burst, this time a 2009 H150 and I am happy again. It needed some TLC as a number of things were not working, switch, pots and the pickups had been swapped out. I completely stripped the guitar and used Virtuoso cleaner and polish to buff out a fair amount of scratches. I had a pair of Seymour Duncan double creams and thought it would be a nice contrast to the darker burst and they seem to match the binding well. I added aged Faber hardware to allow the pickups and reflector knobs to pop. I also removed the pickguard to show off the top, because why should that top be hiding behind a boring piece of plastic. The guitar weighs an impressive 8.4 pounds and has a nice authentic and woody tone. Out of curiosity, does anyone know why the burst is so wide on these? My previous VWB from 2017 was more of a typical burst around the edges only. This one seems to graduate almost to the center of the guitar.

They are brothers but not identical quads. Each has a different quality. The far left is one is a 1991, one of the earliest. It has a 12 pole pickup installed on a second pickguard Heritage made. It's 17" across and 3" deep. It weighs 5# 9 oz. It's in a natural finish. Next to it is a 1992 rose natural with an 18" body and 3" depth. It is 6# 11 oz. It has a Floating #3. The next one is a green burst 17" by 3" weighing 5# 14 oz with a Floating #3. This came from 1996. Lastly, the antique natural is 6# 12 oz and also was made in 1996. It has a stock pickup. Its measurements are 18" by 3.25". I don't know how many HJSs were made. Over the years I had a few others. I'm guessing there were a few hundred made, but I don't know. I doubt Heritage has records. Maybe. There's an irony about this model. Johnny left Gibson because he was concerned about quality and consistency. He knew JP Moats from the Gibson building days and worked toward the design specs on the HJS. Johnny specifically wanted a custom finish they called rose natural to be an option along with the usual natural on his guitars. The first ones came out in 1989. It didn't take long for variants to emerge. This eventually led to Johnny leaving Heritage and eventually joining Guild. By 1996, Heritage built HJS with bodies ranging from 16-18" and various other finishes. The 16" guitars were not labeled HJS, but they were the same sort of build without inlays. I believe the quality remained high, and the Heritage workers confirmed that they treated HJS with special care. But the build specs were what was ordered, not necessarily what Johnny wanted. I have a couple of Heritage ghost-built Gretsch Synchromatics built around the same time period, the early 1990s. It should be no surprise that their weight and dimensions are almost identical to the 18" HJS. The second pic shows how they line up. The main difference besides cosmetics is the nut is 1 3/4" on the HJS. That's all I got for today.

Here is my HJS acoustically played in smokes and sounds great.

Stumbled across this video: great playing & a beauty new custom core H535 from Kalamazoo

Oops. I can count. There are four. I started the thread and then recalled i had a fourth in storage. I forgot to change the title. My go-to guitar is a H-535 these days, but I was raised on jazz boxes.

I was in the showroom at the PSP gathering this last summer and really liked the vintage wine burst finish on this H-150. I kind of impulsively bought it and I am glad I did. It is hard to find this finish on new models anymore.

The Marv Wineburst that Kuz was kind enough to send on to me... And for you blasphemers, here it is with a proper pickguard...

YouTube suggested 'Bangles Frank Zappa, Tonight Show - 1986'. Hoping that FZ was actually sitting in the Bangles (of course not to be), I watched it. The Bangles played their hits of that year, Walk Like an Egyptian and the Prince-penned Manic Monday, both of which sounded pretty good live. Nice vocals. On Manic Monday, spotted what I think is an H-170 being played by Vicki Peterson, which may make the Bangles an early (first?) 'famous user' of Heritage guitars.

Yeah and once they cleaned the shop floor up, all that dust & clutter that had been laying around since the 50s was gone too! Haha, no more dusty mojo... I'll take the skills of someone who can tap tune & build a big hollowbody jazz guitar over a solid chunk of wood with a neck glued on, anyday. I think it's ludicrous how much 50s Les Paul's are worshipped, and priced, compared to the much more demanding & involved build of a hollowbody jazz gtr.

That's one reason I liked the old wooden pickguards. I prefer the Heritage shape, and dislike the clunky plastic. Screw "vintage". I would probably change the pickup rings before the guard if I was worried about the color..

Yeah, when I was first started fooling around with swapping the bridge, it looked as though the protruded portion of the Pinnacle thumbwheels being on the underside would come very close to hitting the body. However, once I put the ABRN bridge on with the altered 8-32 thumbwheels, it became apparent that I would've had enough room to use the Pinnacles. By that time I had already had a few thumbwheel holes enlarged, so I stuck with them. Also, while I gave the locking Faber bridge a try, for whatever reason my guitar just lost a little something, mostly just a slight loss in sustain. Everything looked good and tight and felt solid but, once I put the ABRN on, it resolved that issue. I'll have to try the locking bridge again at some point in time. I do have the feeling that some guitarists will evenutally run into some issues with the 8-32 posts, though, for I'm not aware of any other guitar maker that uses them. On the other hand, I would think that the larger post size would also add some strength to the system, so perhaps that might be a good thing? Regarding the 8-32 thumbwheels, I had a longtime machinist friend enlarge the holes free of charge but, if push comes to shove, with the 8-32 thread count that matches the 6-32, it's a relatively easy job for any pro machinist to enlarge it to an 8-32. It's a bit of a hassle for sure, but doable. Thanks for the kind comment on the burst finish! I just had to grab it when it popped up for sale a couple of weeks ago, and I'm loving this guitar! The bonus is that it's a pretty sweet-sounding instrument, too! Regarding the quality aspects of the Faber ABRN vs the Heritage bridge, at first glance I think I have to favor the Faber. It just looks a little more polished and refined. But, the Heritage bridge is clearly a faithful design of an ABR-1. While I don't know what kind of alloy it's built from, I instantly noticed that it's heavier than the existing Pinnacle bridge. I'm thinking that it's probably a zinc/aluminum mix of some kind, but I wouldn't know. The string saddle slots will also need some attention since they're only slotted for the placement of the string and not to the actual gauge of the string. Since I only took the time to see if the Heritage bridge fit okay, at the moment I'm not able to provide any kind of a tone comparison between the two. All in all, though, it seems that the Heritage bridge will certainly do an adequate job! One thing that you'll notice is that the Heritage bridge will slip over the 8-32 posts quite easily with just a tiny bit of play. Conversely, since the Faber ABRN has a hole diameter size of 4.2mm, which just happens to be the same nominal diameter of the 8-32 posts according to my digital calipers, you'll find that the Faber bridge will feel just a bit tighter upon slipping it over the posts. I certainly didn't have to force it down, by any means, and while it did align perfectly, it will be just a tiny bit tighter. I personally like it that way simply because it seems to make the system a little more solid. But, as they say, YMMV. And oh......one more note......when I first installed the ABRN bridge, I noticed that the posts were actually turning just a bit while putting the thumbwheels on, so I took two thumbwheels to tighten the posts down so that they'd bottom out into the post hole. This brought the posts down on each side by about 1/8", so while it may not be necessary to do this, the posts won't sit quite as high as they previously did. On the other hand, I just felt that it couldn't hurt to make as much contact with the post and body as much as possible, so that's what I did. The G-pickguard was just a part that I had on hand from owning Les Pauls previously, so I decided to see if it would fit. I found that the screw hole near the neck pickup was about 1/16" off, so I just filed a bit of an extension of that hole to fit the existing hole in the body. If you zoom into the photo, it is visible, but not enough for me to worry about it. I also found that the mounting bracket was as a slight angle, too, so I just put a felt washer along the binding side so that the mount wouldn't dent the body. If I ever do another one, though, I think I'll try to find a pickguard with no holes so that I can drill my own. If I'm not mistaken, I think WD has them. Anyway, I hope that helps, and thanks for asking!

Just after 12'45" you can see him try to do a swell with the bridge pickup selected. It doesn't work, so he selects the neck pickup and swells away!

Here's 5 reasons in a Haiku No No No No No

The guy is a monster player, and if this video doesn't sell some Heritage guitars, I don't know what will! At first he had too bright of a tone, but you can see/hear that he dialed it in pretty quick. Those Fishman pickups definitely have something going on. And at 15:05 he started to burn. The guy is truly a freak of nature guitarist.

When I was a kid I worked for the Kalamazoo County Fair. Aside from all the manual work of putting up huge tents and taking them down, I worked the stage area. I assisted Jerry Reid and Bobby Vinton. I was with them immediately before the show around their dressing rooms, on stage to hand them instruments, and to escort them off stage. Honestly, I didn't care for their styles of music. But both were very nice to me. And both were amazing musicians. Bobby Vinton sang wonderfully, played some great piano, and then played the clarinet, the sax, and the trumpet. He did all of this effortlessly. Jerry was an amazing showman and incredible guitarist, particularly speedy. What I learned as an 18 year old was that these guys worked hard and made it look easy and enjoyable to them. They brought joy to audiences every day despite the drudgery of life on the road doing the same gig to a smallish crowd of yahoos. Bobby Vinton was particularly nice to me and asked me about myself in the 15 minutes we sat in a room together. I remain impressed with both of them.

Wasn’t it @rjsanders who exclaimed “boutique amps for boutique guitars”? If there are no tubes, I have no time. There is so much more buried in a tube amp’s sound.

ps the original owners were masters of building big hollowbodies, those were really Heritage's flagships IMO

I think the serial number starts with O. But it suffered a tragic headstock break and Marv made me a new one. It’s a 5 piece maple neck with an eagle size headstock. Funny story when I got it back I asked who I should make the check out to and Marv said in his dead tone voice “Marv Lamb”. If memory serves me it was $400.00. photo by Ron Warren

I'm not sure if anyone has posted this yet or if this news is still relatively unknown, but upon speaking with Mike at Heritage the other day, he informed me that the new 2025 Custom Core H150 and other CC models will receive a new ABR-style bridge as well as the standard flat thumbwheels. In other words, the Pinnacle system is getting replaced. My conversation with Mike began when I inquired about finding some standard thumbwheels with an 8-32 thread pitch, for I was hoping to install a Faber ABRN bridge while using the existing bridge posts that share the same 8-32 thread pitch. I also became concerned about flipping the Pinnicle thumbwheels over to use the flat side, for I felt that the centered protrusion being on the underside could potentially hit the top of the body if the action was set low. For the life of me, though, I could not find any thumbwheels other than a 6-32 thread or M4 metric, so not only did I have a machinist friend enlarge the holes to 8-32 on some thumbwheels I had laying around, I also went ahead and ordered the new bridge upgrade from Mike. Well, the parts arrived today, and the bridge and thumbwheels mount perfectly on the H150 bridge posts without any modifications whatsoever. I'm not sure who's building these bridges for Heritage, but it seems to be well-built and pretty solid: Just for reference sake, I am keeping the Faber bridge and the modified thumbwheels on the H150 for now, simply because I'm loving the way it sounds with this system. Still, as long as one obtains a set of thumbwheels with the 8-32 thread pitch, it's entirely possible to use a Faber ABRN or to upgrade to the new Heritage system without any installation issues. Of course, it's getting away from the lockable version, but I tend to prefer this system myself.

Yeah, both my '98 H150 and 2001 H535 are wearing Faber locking ABR bridges and tailpieces including the threaded bushing inserts. My H150 was factory equipped with a Nashville bridge and standard (heavy zinc) tailpiece instead of the Schaller hardware that was usual at the time. The bushing didn't make much difference on the H150, as the bushings installed in it were actually pretty decent. My 535 had the Schaller roller and top-loader bridge and tail. It had the really crappy short bridge bushing inserts. I used them with the Faber bridge for a while, as the holes were not drilled deep enough in the body. I got the right size and type of bit to do the job correctly and installed the longer Faber steel bushings. Wow, I was not expecting how much they improved the tone of the 535. It really just did the trick, they fit solidly into the maple center block and that seemed to couple the bridge into the body way, way better. The original bushings were so short they really didn't contact much but the laminate top. All in all, I really like the Faber hardware. Seems like a great choice by Heritage to switch.

Just out of curiosity, I searched for reviews on Schaller's humbuckers from back in the day. Specifically I looked for the German made ones. I looked at non-HOC posts. There were several threads in the Seymour Duncan Forum on these. The comments were largely favorable, even glowing. This does not prove anything except some people liked them a lot. Here's an example. https://forum.seymourduncan.com/forum/the-pickup-lounge/114718-schaller-golden-50s-humbuckers My guess is that Heritage had some deal going to use Schaller hardware and pickups, which makes sense from a business perspective in an emerging company. Even back in the earlier years the Heritage founders would defend their choice. Specifically, the four original owners and Ren said Schallers were good pickups. Ren told me that the bridge and tailpiece were very well engineered. Yesterday I spent the afternoon with a pickup engineer and luthier who knows Heritage well. He has been designing pickups for decades. He did not disparage the Schaller pickups Heritage used. It's refreshing to get his perspective. Not that many would be surprised though. To paraphrase, whatever a skilled pickup designer makes, someone will call junk. He likes Seymour Duncan's quality and says Paul Reed Smith is very fussy about his pickups. He also has respect for Fralin and Lollar. Lastly, he commented that he's sad to see such harsh criticisms for new winders on pickup creators forums. A budding designer shows his new ideas and their sounds and will receive harsh criticism from some, not encouragement to keep going. It sounds like the same sort of stuff that happens on various guitar forums also about pickup opinions. For example, I recently looked for reviews on Phat Cats. It seems that hate motivates posting more than praise. I've heard good reviews about the 225 hots on the H-555 from a person I don't think is over critical in nature. The big picture I get about Heritage is that it has morphed from the origins we all know well to a different company which is more refined and that has a R&D process that's pretty sophisticated. I have my older Heritages that I cherish. I've also have handled the new ones and understand the changes. I'm optimistic about the company. There's a reason Gibson moved to Tennessee from Kalamazoo. I don't fully understand why, but it certainly had something to do with cost reduction or profit ratio. Now Heritage can make a guitar consistently as good as Gibson for less money. Some will differ in which is better, but that's soft opinion. Kuz, for example, gave an excellent and detailed review of two LP style guitars made by each. Neither seemed shabby and there was a significant price difference. That's remarkable. I posted recently about a H-535 I got built just a few years ago. It is as good as any I've seen and better than some. It has PRS pickups in it. They sound good. Would I pay twice as much for them and replace the harness? No. But I don't think I would get a better sound out of any other setup. I also got a 2019 ES-345. The pickups were replaced with Phat Cats. Various forums contained hate reviews of these pickups as well as a little praise. People are nuts. They sound like single coils, hotter than stock Fenders. I have the T-types to put back in it but won't do that, at least for now. I'm done rambling. The bottom line for me is that Heritage is in a great place as a quality electric guitar producer and innovator. I have not always felt that way but have always respected the original owners and what they could do. Heritage is not the same without the internal soap operas, which were a source of interesting drama. Here are pics of my 2002 Ultra that just had a bone nut put in and frets leveled.

That's a swell catch Bob!

This is my HJS. It was made for Jay Wolfe and one of the finest guitars I have ever played sound and neck-wise. I also have another one that is virtually equal in all respects but almond sunburst and has real Gibson Johnny Smith Tailpiece on the guitar. I am sure it was done after it was made. Both are acoustically powerful and strong. Here is is play acoustically and recorded only an iPhone but I think it came ok.

Yup I like yours better than the one on their webpage. Good luck at the gig! To quote some brilliant musical visionaries: "whip it good"

Late to the party here, but I recently purchased a 2022 CC H150, and I've tried doing a similar mod as well. I also started with Kuz's idea of using the Faber Tone-Lock bridge while using the existing Pinnacle thumbwheels and lock nuts, and I also beveled out a bit of the metal from the underside of the bridge so that the Faber bridge would sit as it should on the Pinnacle thumbwheels (photo below). Everything seemed to fit perfectly well but, for whatever reason, the change seemed to deaden the tone of the guitar a bit while also losing sustain. Whether it was just a dead-sounding bridge or if the connection went awry in some way or another, I don't really know. With that being said, I decided to try another approach after determining that these CC bridge posts are actually an 8-32 thread pitch as opposed to the standard 6-32 thread that Gibson and older Heritages have typically used. I then proceeded to have a machinist friend enlarge the holes on some thumbwheels I had on hand to the 8-32 thread pitch so that I could put a Faber ABRN bridge on it. Since the post diameter of the 8-32 posts measures out to about 4.2mm, I became a little concerned as to whether or not the ABRN bridge would actually fit, but it fit perfectly! Granted, it was just a tiny bit tight, but I certainly didn't feel any need to force it on. If anything, it helped to make this system a little more solid. But, in my honest opinion, this system is pretty clean and is now working flawlessly, and once I tested the guitar again, all of the tone and sustain I had previously lost with the Tone-Lock system came back and then some! Needless to say, I'm quite happy with it! I also just happened to have a set of Faber's locking tailpiece studs on hand, so that became a part of this mod as well. I might also add that while it's entirely possible to simply turn the Pinnacle thumbwheels upside down if one is looking to place an ABRN on the thumbwheel's flat side, I also became a bit concerned about the center protrusion on those thumbwheels hitting the body of the guitar if the bridge height needed to be set too low. Of course, using a pair of standard thumbwheels with the holes enlarged solves that problem.

Well, to be honest, I use a small hand truck to get my amp from the car to the stage and back - same within my house to the car - so the only lifting I really need to do is to heave it in and out of my car and perhaps occasionally on an amp stand or on to the stage itself. Thankfully, the lifting is so minimal that it doesn't bother me much. If I know that I'll need to haul an amp up and down a full flight of stairs, though, I'll definitely choose a lighter amp. My primary amp is a Two-Rock TS1 combo, and even though it's a 100-watt beast of sorts, between the loop and the master volume control, I can dial it in for the kind of tone I like at any stage volume without having any issues. I'd be the first to say that I'd go for a modeling amp or a much lighter tube amp if I could produce the same kind of vibe that the TS1 puts out, but since I have yet to find anything that'll do that, I just tolerate the weight. Funny, but since the TS1 1x12 combo is still relatively small in size, the other guys in the band think I'm just using a small amp. Little do they know that I could run that same amp at the Madison Square Garden and get away with it.......LOL.

Warm beer and cold women!

I just turned 71, and I'm going out with my tube amps! For whatever reason I have absolutely no interest in buying a modeling amp.

There is definitely a difference for no covers, and that's been measured many times. Is it a positive difference? I guess that just comes down to taste. Typically, without a cover, most pickups are a bit brighter than they would be with covers on. And speaking of cover material... One of my favorite sets of pickups, is what I installed in my #1 Zemaitis metal top guitar, a set of 12 Pole Kent Armstrongs. These pickup are encased in EPOXY, and Kent even ships them with epoxy pickup rings. I have many traditional guitars with classic style PAFs, and since I use this guitar to play my original music, I wanted something that was unique. The reason that I bought them, was because I heard a demo of an original Zemaitis guitar which featured these pickups, and I heard something in that tone that I liked. So I called Kent Armstrong and asked him of he still wound them, and he said he still does, exactly like the originals that were in that Zemaitis. They required a little work to get them to fit into my Zemaitis. I actually had to make spacers to get them to the right height. I made the spacers by sanding down a set of larger epoxy rings that Kent sent me. It took me a long time to dial them in. It was a bit time consuming getting the pickups and pole pieces where they sounded best, which was a close to the strings as I could get them without the stings touching the pickup, and the poles set parallel to the strings. But it was worth it, because these pickups are great sounding. The clean tones are fantastic, and they sing through the dirt. I have them wired G&L fashion with a passive PTB system (individual volumes, low cut, and master tone). And making the spacers wasn't the only thing that was odd about these pickups I actually had to wire the pickups on the bottom specifically for how I was going to uses them (parallel humbucking, series humbucking, or switchable). Here's picture I found on the web to show this...

Hearing a guitar includes the setting, often more than the micro-acoustics. A guitar won't sound the same at 9 AM and it does at 9 PM. It will sound different in January than July, at least where I live. A ton of factors come in to play. Our expectations may not affect the true acoustical pattern, but it can greatly affect our perception. I asked AI how magic works: "Magic," in the context of a magician's performance, works by utilizing a combination of skilled techniques like sleight of hand, misdirection, psychological manipulation, specially designed props, and illusions to create the perception of supernatural abilities, essentially tricking the audience's perception by exploiting how the brain processes information and focusing attention away from the actual methods used. Here's more for those who are into this. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/achievements-the-aging-mind/202107/the-role-context-in-perception Heritage names its guitar the H-150 Ultra, uses highly flamed wood, puts in its mysterious upgrade pickups, and uses gold all over. Of course I hear the best possible sounds. Then someone brings in physics.

My hearing was in fact recently tested, and is just fine. Despite my age and life experience, I've managed to preserve 95-percentile hearing acuity. It isn't what it was when I was 20, but it passes and exceeds US government requirements. Humans are notoriously poor at making objective absolute judgements about sound or really much of anything. For instance, very few people have absolute pitch, and those that do, often lose it with age. Most of us though, have the ability to judge relative pitch or learn to do so. What's cold and hot, same deal. Those who are married probably understand the constant battle some of our spouses have with the thermostat, despite the electronic sensors reliably indicating the same temperature, yet, they feel too hot or too cold. (I don't recommend pressing the argument with one's spouse). Color is another area where human perception is both amazing and terrible. We perceive very slight differences comparing colors amazingly well and reliably. However, human sight is terrible at recognizing an absolute color when it is presented alone. Hence, I use test equipment when repeatable and measurable results are required. So, I can absolutely measure what any particular pickup actually does. A guitar pickup is an electromagnetic device that converts the motion of a magnetized guitar string into an electrical signal. What is presented in its magnetic field is converted into a current at the wire terminals. No human perception is involved with that, since we cannot perceive magnetic nor electrical currents, it isn't a human perception problem. If two pickups measure identically in their electrical and magnetic properties, they will function identically in their interactions with cables and amplifiers and so on and produce the same sound when processed and amplified through the same apparatus.

No disrespect but does your engineer hat cover your ears? For real. All talk and studies on what is or is not on pickup design and construction lack two of the most important considerations especially for players and listeners as we age. When was your last hearing test and what is the spectrum of frequencies you can actually hear? There is as much a chance everybody you are communicating with has the same number of hairs on their heads as the same drop off of high frequencies. Fact The way our brain interprets sounds and vibrations hitting our eardrum is unique to each of us. Suggest you read

That (SD 59/JB pair) is exactly what is in my Fender Robben Ford model. Curiously, the basis guitar that Robben was playing, the Fender Esprit, (have on of those too from 1984) had a very unique set of pickups that Schaller made specifically for the Fender "Master Series". While the pickups have a unique appearance and some very cool features, the LCR (inductance, capacitance, resistance) values are right in line with the '59/JB pairing. These were used on the three D'Aquisto designed Fender models made in Japan during the CBS-to-private ownership transition in the early/mid 1980s: The Esprit, The Flame and the D'Aquisto jazz guitars. They're quite nice, largely unknown and pretty rare. The Esprit was slightly changed and became the Robben Ford model. Pickups are one of those weird things. What was hailed a few years ago, is dogged on today on the internet. My H535 (2001) has the HRW pickups in it. I absolutely love them. They're similar electronically to the SD "Jazz" SH-2 set. When the HRW was a new girl in town, the online crowd praised them and now the internet talks them down. LOL. It is flavor of the month on the internet.

That's a stunner! I agree on the pickguard removal, a nice burst should never be hidden behind a pickguard unless it's one of the wood guards that Heritage used to spec. Enjoy.

They are all hand sprayed, so every one is different, depending on the way the painter feels on that day. There's no "template". It's free hand.

Well, you can't hunt deer, turkey, or fight off zombies with a guitar.

@dvnmjcNIcely Done! Some nice KB voicings there.

Very cool!

these pics give a little better sense of the color and the nice layout. some good user friendly details: bias points and pot on the back panel, tube dampening rings on the tubes, 2 4ohm outputs so i can add another cabinet (looking forward to trying that.)...Dylana Nova Scott founder and still tinkering owner of 3rd Power knows her stuff and what musicians need. I believe she's got a patent on the Hybrid Master. Really good feature, very useful. I'll pull the back off and post some interior shots later.

Oh yeah!! Very nice indeed

I think in these cases, it's not the instrument that is sounding different, it's a person's variability. Your mood, how much noise you've been exposed to that day, your blood pressure, all these things can affect your system, including your hearing. So if you've lost some "highs" tonight, your Tele sounds good. In the morning, that humbucker sounds nice but the Tele sounds like an ice pick. People can be very good at hearing slight differences, but when it comes to better or worse, we are affected by our biases. Since in audio there is no absolute "target" it's purely a judgement call. I've seen cases where a race driver will comment about how a change has really improved the car, but then the stopwatch numbers say he's 5 tenths slower. Is that an improvement? Maybe, if it means you don't crash, maybe not if that 5 tenths puts you in row 11 instead of row 1. At least you have a real measurable target.

Actually, covers are an interesting topic, and I touched on that. Covers can and do influence the sound of a humbucker pickup, measurably. There is in fact, a physical explanation and it depends on what the cover is made of. The reason is something called eddy current. Here's a demonstration of eddy current in this video: So it turns out that metal covers over a pickup can alter the response of the pickup, in audible and measurable ways. Humbuckers and Telecaster neck pickups are particularly vulnerable to this. It turns out that brass is not a great material for pickup covers vs. nickel-silver due the magnetic and electrical properties of the metal. Sometimes a good nickel-silver cover is plated with copper to better accept the final shiny nickel or chrome plating. The copper plating will also audibly change the response of the pickup. Also, the design of the cover can be accomplished in such a way that interrupts the eddy current. Here's a link to an interesting paper on pickup covers, materials and designs. https://kenwillmott.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Pickup_Cover_Geometry.pdf

Or, should that be New Amp Doubleday? It's been so long since I posted anything here I've forgotten much of the protocol. The amps are a Henriksen Blu 10 and a Swart Atomic Jr. One sounds really nice for an arch top, say a 575 and the other is a fun little gadget for say a 535. Probably you can imagine which is which.

I would prefer more of that curl and less of the dark edges on that burst as well. Don't know what we can't see under the finish though. Fantastic top!!!

Yours is stunning.

R9 Murphy Ultra Light Aged