Leaderboard

Never sell. My youngest daughter has dibs on it.

Well I finally had time to dive into this guitar today. I have mixed feelings about it. The construction/fit and finish are quite good. Fretwork is pretty good too. The electronics are very decent. I’m not exactly in love with the bridge pickup. I love the neck pickup. The push/pull coil taps are useless to me. I’ll never use them. But the pots have good taper (mini pots). The toggle switch is very tight. I’m able to get a pretty low action. There were 2 main problems. One, the tremolo springs rubbed the bottom of the cavity when you did a divebomb….thats not good!! So I had to take a wood file and file away some wood inside the trem cavity. Two, the Floyd would not stay in tune. Cheap springs!!!! I set it up for 9s. Came from the factory with 10a. !!! I bought a set of Floyd Rose noiseless springs….problem solved. The neck carve is a medium C. It’s close to a 60s neck. The satin finish is smooth as a baby’s bottom. Fast n smooth. The sculpted heel joint is great for upper register access. It’s light and quite resonant. Playability is quite good. Neck has almost no relief and sets up quite nicely. If I wasn’t a DIY person, I probably would’ve instantly boxed it back up for a refund. The springs rubbing on the back cavity, in my opinion, is a huge drop of the ball by QC! That is inexcusable, especially for a Guitar of that design and style! And is obviously a playability and Tone problem because when the springs rub against the wood like that, it obviously makes a really bad noise that disrupt the vibration of the strings! As far as the Tremolo not staying in tune, I think it was a combination of junk strings and bad springs. I put a nice little dab of BIG BENDS nut sauce on each pivot point of the Tremelo before I installed the new strings on it and between that and the new springs, I am not having any tuning issues at all. And I do some pretty heavy dive bombs with it. After a lot of TLC, this is actually a really nice guitar. Out of the box, it was not. And I blame Heritage for not checking for quality control issues, this Guitar was in Kalamazoo before it shipped off to me so they had every opportunity to double check the quality control of the Chinese factory, and obviously they chose not to! If you’re going to charge $1200 for a Chinese made guitar with the Heritage name on it, the QC needs to be A LOT BETTER!!!!

Against my better judgement, I’m gonna try one of these. I will report back.

Wondering what one would need to pay to get a marvbird, not an assembly line 357?

The standard run 357 had thinner wings and the slim 60’s one piece mahogany necks.

New favorite pedal, at least for today. Bought used and as with many Lovepedals, no control labels and no manual. Couldn’t find a manual on line either. But - Simple to dial in once you figure out which dial does what. Works great in front of my Mesa California Tweed 40 at low gain (both pedal and amp) for “always on” tone enhancer then a a little hair and grit as you dial up the guitar volume and dig in a little. With guitar volume at 10 - Doesn’t take much pedal gain to get a nice dark and complex breakup kind of like the lead guitar part on the Beatles “I Want You” from Abbey Road. Nice not expensive, fancy or complicated “amp in a box” for a pretty good approximation of Black Panel Deluxe Reverb base tone and breakup. No reverb on the pedal, but my amp has that, so no problem. Add a little delay and it is great clean for jazz and rhythm playing, dime the guitar volume and play a little more aggressively (doesn't take much) and you’ve got a great lead tone with some hair around the edges and more sustain. Definitely a keeper. I’ve got a Greer Lightspeed on the way and thinking to pair the two together and see if there is good synergy between them or maybe run them separately for different flavors, or both.

My friend that I play guitar with just bought one of those, basically exactly like the one Skydog has. His friend put on some better pickups - maybe the 225 Parsons ones, and it plays pretty well. he likes it and plays it at our band practices. He said it was set up decent and the hardware and pots etc. are not too bad. I played it and it didn't seem bad at all.

I put a Duncan JB in the bridge position last night and discovered that it is a mahogany body with a carved maple cap that has the Ash veneer on top of that. I should have taken a pic. I forgot. lol. 😆

I have been using my Iridium as a direct into an interface, either recording, or at our jams where everything except drums are direct (it's a the drummer's house anyway). Usually on the Deluxe Reverb setting. I don't think I've ever even plugged it into an amp. I'll probably take it off the pedal board when I come to PSP. I could put my EHX B9 organ pedal there!

Thanks for the report, Brent. Manny's must have delivered it pretty quickly. I've been looking at one of the H-150+ models but haven't pulled the trigger yet.

Were the springs just too big for the cavity? It's strange that they would rub. I probably wouldn't get that model with the Floyd, so I wouldn't have that problem. I only have two guitars with trems, and one is decked. There other is my G&L Legacy but I don't really use the bar.

After a few weeks with this pedal, pairing it with different tube and solid state amps: I’m finding it most useful in front of a tube amp. Very warm overdrive. Thickens tone and gives it more weight, with just a bit of softness around the edges. Really nice. Not “transparent”, definitely colors your tone in the way intended. I’m sure I have not explored or mastered all it can do, and I haven’t used it as a “pedal in a box” straight to interface or PA, but I like it a lot used simply. Maybe because I’m an effects simpleton.

found locally at a killer price, picking it up this afternoon . . . the Deluxe Reverb will take a breather . . .

We saw Albert Lee a few years ago at the Acorn in Three Oaks. He was playing his signature guitars through an old Silverface Twin. It’s a small venue so the amp wasn’t jacked up much. It still sounded stellar, both clean and with pedals.

last I heard was about $3.50 and a pack of smokes

There’s been one for sale near me for the last year. It’s a Silverface MV model that’s been completely refurbished. No affiliation. I’ll send you a PM

And they weighed a ton! My friend's 2x12 combo buckled my knees when I lifted it, I imagine the 4x10 combos weighed a bit too

Those MusicMan amps were great.

He was THE BEST.

I saw Johnny Winter in a medium size club and he was playing through 2 Fender Twins with JBLs stacked on top of each other. That's 170 watts of power through 4 JBL 12s. It was loud. Good times.

You might also try a set of half rounds. You get much of the ringing of a round wound but the smoothness of a flatwound. I have a set on my 535. I got them after I tried half rounds on my bass. No more finger squeaks, but it sounded more like an old broken in set of roundwounds than the typical dullness of flatwounds. D'Addario makes them. $10 a set, so it's not like there's a major investment. 9-42s thru 12-52s so you have options. I tried them instead of using Elixers to quiet the finger noise. GHS calls them "Bright Flats". Same style as D'Addario.