slider313 Posted January 24, 2014 Posted January 24, 2014 August 1987: I walked into Ron DeMarino's shop and saw a pair of 140's on the wall. One was a goldtop and the other cherry sunburst. I asked to try one. He explained the history of the company and the fact that the 140 had the same grade maple cap but 1/2" less mahogany on the back. I was playing a Norlin era Les Paul Deluxe, which weighed over 10 lbs, and liked the idea of a lighter version of basically the same guitar. What I really didn't care for was the dot inlay on the fretboard and the "decal" logo on the headstock. Ron explained that I could order the guitar with any upgrades for a small fee. October 1987: I decided to trade in my Deluxe LP and order the 140 with; pearl block inlay, bound neck, bound headstock, pearl logo and asked if they could pick a nice flamed piece of maple for the top. I took delivery in Feb. of 1988. Here's how she looked before the refin: After the refin by Jack Briggs:
Gitfiddler Posted January 24, 2014 Posted January 24, 2014 I first heard about Heritage from a jazzer buddy of mine back in 1996. He scored a cool NAMM Show display guitar Academy Custom. I didn't care that much about it, but it played so great, I started checking around for one of their hollow body archtops. Then while surfing Ebay I spotted this beautiful archtop. I had to have it!! Even my wife said it was beautiful and to get it!! These are the first images of my 'Sweetie' from the Ebay seller's auction: (It's Almond Sunburst, more brown than red in person)
Millennium Maestro Posted January 24, 2014 Posted January 24, 2014 Saw a beautiful 574 on Gbase--looked up the Heritage guitar company---immed bought the 574 & joined the HOC! Didnt sell me that 574!
rjsanders Posted January 24, 2014 Posted January 24, 2014 '99, was looking for strings, hit the smaller stores in San Mateo, San Jose, Berkeley, ended up ordering a Millennium Ltd. Ed. (#028) a few months later & got it summer of '00.
smaj Posted January 24, 2014 Posted January 24, 2014 Learned about Heritage thru Joe's Music in Eastpointe Mi. I went down to his store and played a beauty 555 in almondburst , that was in 87. Still have today.
HANGAR18 Posted January 25, 2014 Author Posted January 25, 2014 Some very interesting stories. Thanks to all!
Dell18 Posted January 25, 2014 Posted January 25, 2014 They used to run full page, full color ads in....I think it was Guitar Player, maybe Guitar World in the late 80's, early 90's. Looked nice, and made just a couple hours away from me but I didn't get the full story until I started to play more frequently after a short break in the late 90's.
Stringman Posted January 25, 2014 Posted January 25, 2014 Heard about Heritage in Magazines first with limited advertising. Living in Michigan I knew the factory because of Gibson being there for so many years. The first one I played had to have been at Smith Music, in Portland, MI. Old Milt Smith supported two brands: Heritage (I bought a beautiful H-535 from him for my first Heritage) and G&L. He was stronger on G&L at the time, but liked Heritage, too. Milt is still selling guitars in the same store and once in a while has a Heritage in stock.
tsp17 Posted January 25, 2014 Posted January 25, 2014 Great Thread! Thanks for starting it Hangar18. About 10 years ago I had been playing acoustic for a year or so (started at age 42), decided i liked it and to look for an electric. As a newbie i was familiar only with the major brands, so i started looking at Gibsons since the shorter scale was easier and more comfortable for me. Was in a local shop and saw a very cool looking used 335 style guitar on the wall listed for $1,000. Not intending to spend that much on my first electric, but intrigued by the beauty, I asked to play it. Found it to be a great feeling, great looking, well made, great sounding alternative to the Gibsons i had tried. Just starting out there was no way was i going to spend even $1,000 on a guitar, let alone what they were charging for a Gibson 335. The shop was right near my office, and i stopped by to play it again a couple days later. Seemed so cool. So i started poking around the internet for something like it, but less expensive. Went to the Heritage website to figure out what i had played so i could look for something similar. I loved the Heritage story and found out what it really was, a two year old H535 with HRW's in a beautiful Antique Sunburst finish. I called the factory and one of the older guys answered, great conversation. I still don't know who it was, but he explained the whole thing to me and talked me through what to look for to make sure it was in good shape. Now smitten i was trying to figure out how i was going to get that 535. Next day i went to the bank and withdrew $800, way more than i had originally budgeted (sound familiar?). Walked into the store, made a cash on the barrel-head offer, they countered, and we settled on the $800.
Dell18 Posted January 31, 2014 Posted January 31, 2014 A 535 with HRW's for $800? That sounds like a good way to get jumped at PSP. Sounds like a killer shop. Being a G&L/Heritage guy myself I may have to check that out.
Redsand Posted January 31, 2014 Posted January 31, 2014 Great Thread! Thanks for starting it Hangar18. About 10 years ago I had been playing acoustic for a year or so (started at age 42), decided i liked it and to look for an electric. As a newbie i was familiar only with the major brands, so i started looking at Gibsons since the shorter scale was easier and more comfortable for me. Was in a local shop and saw a very cool looking used 335 style guitar on the wall listed for $1,000. Not intending to spend that much on my first electric, but intrigued by the beauty, I asked to play it. Found it to be a great feeling, great looking, well made, great sounding alternative to the Gibsons i had tried. Just starting out there was no way was i going to spend even $1,000 on a guitar, let alone what they were charging for a Gibson 335. The shop was right near my office, and i stopped by to play it again a couple days later. Seemed so cool. So i started poking around the internet for something like it, but less expensive. Went to the Heritage website to figure out what i had played so i could look for something similar. I loved the Heritage story and found out what it really was, a two year old H535 with HRW's in a beautiful Antique Sunburst finish. I called the factory and one of the older guys answered, great conversation. I still don't know who it was, but he explained the whole thing to me and talked me through what to look for to make sure it was in good shape. Now smitten i was trying to figure out how i was going to get that 535. Next day i went to the bank and withdrew $800, way more than i had originally budgeted (sound familiar?). Walked into the store, made a cash on the barrel-head offer, they countered, and we settled on the $800. $800? Even 10yrs ago that was a GREAT DEAL!!!
tsp17 Posted January 31, 2014 Posted January 31, 2014 $800? Even 10yrs ago that was a GREAT DEAL!!! i had no idea what it was really worth and neither did they. was a beautiful guitar, but a little big for me. sold it later for much more to get my beloved 575MH.
morbidrockgod Posted January 31, 2014 Posted January 31, 2014 It's been a while since I post anything here, but here we go: The folks at Blue Note Music, in Berkeley, CA, were the ones who hyped me up on Heritage Guitars, back in 2001. I was fresh in the San Francisco Bay Area then, having moved all the way from South America, and was guitar-shopping. At that time they carried both Gibsons and Heritages. Seeing that I was interested in a Gibson Les Paul Standard they had hanging on the wall, the employees showed me the Heritages they had in store. They were very excited about them. In the early 2000's Heritage guitars were substantially cheaper then Gibsons, and the ones I tried there did sound nice. Fast forward to 2008. I "accidentally" found a new Gibby ES-335 for a bargain price on eBay and bought it. Although a fantastic instrument, it did not intonate to my liking, and after taking it to authorized repair shops to set it up I ended up trading it for my current 2008 Heritage CM-150. I've had a 2008 Gibby Les Paul Standard that I bought just to resell until a few weeks ago. It was a very nice guitar, with impecable finish, but to my knowledge it is the exception with Gibson USA, not the rule. I feel that you get more bang for the buck with Heritage, and that's why I stuck with mine.
pressure Posted January 31, 2014 Posted January 31, 2014 I was doing my usual tour of small guitar shops and pawn shops when I noticed a little music store in Island Lake Illinois called, what else, "Island Music". They were having a going-out-of-business sale so I stopped in. I don't remember what the other guitar brands they had were because I was too focused on 2 Johnny Smiths they had up on the wall. I asked about them and was told they were Heritage Johnny Smiths and that they also had 2 Heritage Gary Moore 150s. I had never heard of Heritage but I had wanted a Johnny Smith since Gibsons first introduced them in 1961 (i was 10 years old). I asked to try them out and what was the price. The Smiths and Gary Moores were priced the same, both incredibly expensive for me, but it was my life time dream to own a Johnny Smith. So what to do? Call the wife! She said to buy what I wanted and didn't even ask me what the the price was. I realized my dream with a Heritage Johnny Smith. After I got home I did some research to find out about Heritage and went to the factory in Kalamazoo to meet the people that made my guitar.
SouthpawGuy Posted February 15, 2014 Posted February 15, 2014 How did you first hear about Heritage Guitars? For me it was a natural progression of steps. My story starts when I was still playing drums in high school garage bands and I would ask the guitar players to show me how to play a riff or two. The Les Paul design was my enduring favorite but I had a lot of different kinds of guitars pass through the revolving door of my guitar collection. After high school, I went many years without owning a guitar (or drums) because I just got busy doing other things in life. Later in life, I made the consience decision to get back into guitars instead of drums, only this time I wanted to take the subject a lot more seriously. I went to a small Gibson dealer and made a deal, trading a large caliber handgun (a Desert Eagle chambered for .357 Magnum) for a brand new and very nice Epiphone Les Paul Standard (trans red with a quilted Maple top). But because I am very mechanically inclined and like to build stuff, I not only wanted to play the guitar but I also wanted to know how it was made, down to the most subtil details. My driving question at the time was, "What's the difference between the Epiphone Les Pauls and the Gibson USA Les Pauls?" Learning about the materials, construction methods and even doing setups was just as important to me as playing, maybe more. But that's just me; I'm into that sort of stuff. Eventually I felt like I had become an expert on how a Les Paul was made. I felt like I knew everything there was to know about them and I had owned many Epiphones as well as Gibsons. Then one day, I walked into a small guitar shop and I saw a whole bunch of expensive guitars hanging on the wall which clearly resembled the Les Paul design, but they were different... a lot more wood to look at. Brilliant flame Maple tops, flame Maple finger rests, binding everywhere and the name The Heritage on the headstock. I thought to myself immediately, "Who the hell do these guys think they are?!!". Well, the owner of the shop told me the story about Heritage guitars. My previous knowledge of the Les Paul guitar design was the one thiing that really helped me recognize right away that these Heritage guitars were not Les Paul copies but instead, they were actually BETTER than the Gibson products I was already familiar with. If anything, Heritage makes a more pure, more legitimate Les Paul style guitar than Gibson does. Over time, all this new information fully settled into my brain and then my next course of action became obvious. "Sell all my Gibson and Epiphone guitars and replace them all with Heritage guitars", and that is exactly what I did. Has to be said .... Ed Roman. Never knew Heritage guitars existed until I came across his website, must have been about 2005 or so, and then quickly realised they actually made most of the range in lefty. Bought my first two Heritages off Wolfe guitars in Florida in 2007 / 2008. I think ER was no longer a Heritage dealer by then. Got this one used off Ebay a couple of years ago, and turns out it was originally from Ed Roman .
Mack Posted February 17, 2014 Posted February 17, 2014 The music that made me want to learn to play was Guns n' Roses and Aerosmith, along with others, all of which used Les Pauls. So then I got into Gibsons, and quickly learned that the old Gibson factory was only a few miles away, and I wondered what happened to it. Then I discovered Heritage! I owned a few Gibsons before I got my Heritage. What really pulled me over before I had played any was that for the same price as a used Standard, I could get a "Custom" with the 157. So that's what I did, and I haven't played a better guitar yet.
cobo Posted February 17, 2014 Posted February 17, 2014 I grew up a couple of miles from the old Gibson plant on Parsons street. My dad worked at a cardboard packaging manufacturer a couple streets over from the plant. My dad used to design the shipping containers for Gibson. In 1970, they have him a J200 acoustic with a badly damaged neck (broken truss rod, I think) to use as a sample while designing the shipping box. When he was done designing the box, he went to return the guitar, but they told him to keep it since it wasn't sellable. I got that guitar for Christmas that year. I was 5 years old, and the guitar was as big as me! The action was crazy-high which made it very difficult to play, but it sounded great. We couldn't afford to fix it, or for me to take lessons, but I loved it anyway. Somebody showed me "Smoke on the Water" a couple years later, and the rest is history. Fast forward to the 1980s, I saw some of the first Heritage guitars at Farrow's music on Westnedge in Kalamazoo. I played a Strat at the time, and was basically a broke college student at the time, so buying a new one was out of the question. I finally saved up the money for a new H-535 that I bought from Jay Wolfe in 2002 or so. I ended up selling it a year or so later when I decided I was still a single-coil guy and needed the cash for something else. But I always was drawn back to my upbringing and wanted to own another that was built so close to where I grew up. I just bought a used H-140 from DetroitBlues a couple weeks ago, and really enjoying it! Colm
yuominae Posted February 17, 2014 Posted February 17, 2014 Two years ago I really really wanted to get an ES 335. I was in Japan at the time and used ES335s were quite expensive (the yen was expensive at the time...), so I googled for "best es335 copy" and found a thread on MyLesPaul where somebody said that for the money you couldn't get much better than a Heritage 535. So I bought a beat up Heritage 535, which incidentally was nearly as expensive as a used es335 off Yahoo Auctions. It's the one in my signature by the way. Then I joined HOC and went on a H150 buying spree Buying a Heritage was the best guitar-related buy I ever made.
les paulverizer Posted February 17, 2014 Posted February 17, 2014 Few years ago I simply needed another guitar (i.e. Les Paul) and I wanted the best as this was going to be my go-to guitar, so I looked around. I went to a shop where all the pro's in London, UK go and went through almost every PRS they had (can't say I didn't give them a shot...!) and even though they were good, actually they were excellent, for some reason they just didn't "move me" enough. Then the guy in the shop handed me this plain looking Les Paul and said "try this", which I did and it blew me away; it turned out it was made by the Gibson Custom Shop guys for this top English session player, so it had to be good; and it was, it sounded terrific! He was selling it as he wanted to finance his own studio, and I very nearly bought it.....as I kept thinking about it nearly every day. Then, at the Texas Guitar Show there was this Heritage H150...and that was it! One strum, few licks, and it was over! I have to say this H150 managed to beat some very stiff competition, and I'm glad to say...it still does, every time!
HANGAR18 Posted February 17, 2014 Author Posted February 17, 2014 Awesome stories! If I do say so myself, I think this thread deserves to get pinned to the top. After all, we in the HOC are the best spokespeople Heritage Guitars has working for them. Threads like this will help instill confidence in the brand for anyone who is considering a Heritage guitar as their next axe.
Redsand Posted February 17, 2014 Posted February 17, 2014 Awesome stories! If I do say so myself, I think this thread deserves to get pinned to the top. After all, we in the HOC are the best spokespeople Heritage Guitars has working for them. Threads like this will help instill confidence in the brand for anyone who is considering a Heritage guitar as their next axe. I second the motion!
yuominae Posted February 17, 2014 Posted February 17, 2014 Awesome stories! If I do say so myself, I think this thread deserves to get pinned to the top. After all, we in the HOC are the best spokespeople Heritage Guitars has working for them. Threads like this will help instill confidence in the brand for anyone who is considering a Heritage guitar as their next axe. +1 too!
Spectrum13 Posted February 17, 2014 Posted February 17, 2014 Agree this is a banner day for this thread with some teriffic stories. Relating to another active thread on heritage resale value, I know I am preaching to the choir but nothing I am reading in these stories suggests why a R8 - R9 - R10 or standard is in a different ball park than a Heritage150. Many of us (me too) have owned Gibsons and I just don't get what the additional $2,000 gets you if you tape over the name on the headstock.
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