The Heritage Buzz

[Dick Seacup]

My incessant plucking at the headstock aside (try it, it's fun! sounds like chimes, too!), I am still a fan of the guitars themselves. I had the H-127 out two days ago. The H-137D (original run, not the pretender with P90s series) is almost always close at hand.  The H-127 through the Lyle/Rob Vibrolux, by the way, is second only to the combination of same amp and #3 son's G&L Skyhawk (also original series, with the sickle headstock; well, he continues working that one off, so I guess it's still 68% mine, but you all know how these things go).  That amp is magical.  But I digress...

I'm firmly in the camp of, "yep, the old Heritage has passed", but I'm not firmly in the camp of "this is clearly a bad thing." A quality guitar is a quality guitar and I'm a sucker for value. The "old Heritage" pricing model was a gift, insofar as the absurdly low cost of really well-made new examples artificially depressed the secondary market. The lack of consistency (noted by Rob) also contributed to a non-artificially depressed secondary market. Finding the really well-made units in the used market was an adventure, especially back in 2007 or so. I think for the better part of a couple years the only buyers of used Heritage guitars were me and Brent (mostly Brent)! 

I'm fortunate to have had the opportunity to get to know the original crew and the good folks of the HOC. At a point pretty early on in the HOC, though, the guitars became a secondary concern for me. I hope the new guard find their own mojo and a sustainable business model too. The Heritage heritage would be a helluva thing to lose completely. 

 

[Vanschoyck]

How could anyone not like this headstock?  

[yoslate]

54 minutes ago, Dick Seacup said:

The H-127 through the Lyle/Rob Vibrolux, by the way, is second only to the combination of same amp and #3 son's G&L Skyhawk (also original series, with the sickle headstock; well, he continues working that one off, so I guess it's still 68% mine, but you all know how these things go).  That amp is magical.  But I digress...

I can't tell you how glad I am to hear this, John!  So glad it wound up at your house. So glad you enjoy it!  Should you ever want to move it....  The circle could remain unbroken.  Hope you're thawing.

[JeffB]

On 3/11/2019 at 10:52 AM, Vanschoyck said:

How could anyone not like this headstock?  

I think it looks overly complex.

Looks like they extended it just to get the words on it.

Im going to get mine out of the cupboard and smash out an open G chord. This threads inspired me.

[bolero]

Buzzzzzzz....

 

"I hear a lotta buzzing
Sound like my little honey bee
I hear a lotta buzzing
Sound like my little honey bee
She been all around the world making honey
But now she is coming back home to me

 

Sail on
Sail on my little honey bee, sail on"

 

Muddy Waters

[FranzMohamitz]

Buzz Update!!!

Heritage has not made a single social media post in the last 20 days.

Boy o' boy, them marketing folks sure are "killing it"!!!

[DetroitBlues]

2 hours ago, FranzMohamitz said:

Buzz Update!!!

Heritage has not made a single social media post in the last 20 days.

Boy o' boy, them marketing folks sure are "killing it"!!!

Probably because their Marketing guy, Ron Howard, has left Heritage to pursue a career in ministry outreach.

I'm going to respond to a couple of the remarks here:

Marketing/Advertising:

• For many, many years there wasn't any advertising.  It was word of mouth and NAMM shows.  Heritage was a well known brand to manufactures, but not to the masses.  They seemed to like it that way and consequently the prices were a fraction of Gibson, especially on the used market.  
• Now Heritage has advertisements in many guitar magazines and having YouTube channels review and promote their guitars.  Social Media is the way of the future, us old folks surf Facebook while the kids these days are using Instagram.  Heritage should be all over that, if their not doing that enough, they should be.   They aren't giving away guitars like Gibson does to artists left and right because they just don't have the money to do that.  
• Heritage artists, for the most part, are Jazz guitarists.  Not many rock guys out there that are still relevant.  I think they missed the boat with Frankie Ballard.  The man gets 2 number 1 hits on country music, playing a H157 black beauty and yet there is no signature model or any sort of advertising with Frankie.  (In fact, the artists list both endorsed and signature models are no longer on the website).   There are a few newcomers in recent years, like Jake Kershaw and several others, but haven't made a big splash (yet) to help promote the Heritage.

Costs:

• I do agree that Heritage does not do a good job in their branding of small batch, boutique guitar building.  If they did, it would be easier to justify the pricing models.  We are so used to thinking of Heritage as a mass production guitar maker like Gibson/Fender etc, but they are more like higher end boutique builders such as Knaggs, Suhr, etc. 
• One thing Heritage does not do is skimp on material or parts.  They don't use 4 to 6+ pieces of mahogany/ash/alder to make a body and hide it under solid finishes like Gibson and Fender.  They do not use scarf joints like PRS to make their USA S2 guitars cheaper (and PRS S2 models uses cheaper import electronics/hardware similar to the SE models)  
• I think the product descriptions should either rename the guitars or the descriptions to clearly define the hand-made USA production guitars, using the highest quality woods and components.  Perhaps if that was done, people would stop looking and comparing production Gibson/Fender to Heritage production, they are not the same.
• Finally, the labor costs have gone up because Heritage actually pays a living wage to their staff now.  They did not do that before.  Health care was not provided to most, hours were 32 a week or less, and the actual wage was so low, many employees would leave after a couple of years or work a second job to make ends meet.  Now they pay people a decent wage, providing health care, and maintaining their facility. 
• The previous owners had the Factory looking and feeling like an abandoned sweatshop.  No climate controls, no cleaning schedules, it was a cool-looking filthy mess of saw dust, old scrap pieces of guitars, dried glue, and caked on polishing compound.  That place was a tinder box waiting to burn.  The current owners are concerned about quality controls and people's health and safety.
• All of this costs money, so if Heritage upped the prices 25% after many many years with no price increases (or cost of living increases for employees), its only fair and about time.  

A couple final points:

• One of my favorite non-traditional brands is Reverend guitars.  10 years ago, new Reverends were around $600-$700 new.  The cheapest I've seen new is $899 and they go up to $1500 or more.  That is for a Korean made import guitar using multiple pieces of white limba for their bodies and import hardware/electronics.   
• Fender's USA Stratocastes/Telecasters 10 years ago hovered around the $1000 are now getting closer and closer to $2,000 for the non-custom shop USA mass production models.  Bolt on construction, with assembly line production methods (top loading, prewired electronic assemblies), and cheaper woods that would be considered scrap at Heritage.  
• We can talk about headstocks being ugly or odd, however my only complaint about them is I don't think any model except the 137 should have an silkscreen logo on the headstock, everything should be mother-of-pearl or abalone.  The 'ugly" snakehead shape is based upon a much older Gibson shape from before the modern "open book" look.  It has a better string pull to the nut than Gibson.  But its all about the look, right?  Form before Function?

I can go on, but I think I beat the dead horse here enough.

 

[FranzMohamitz]

27 minutes ago, DetroitBlues said:

Probably because their Marketing guy, Ron Howard, has left Heritage to pursue a career in ministry outreach.

I'm going to respond to a couple of the remarks here:

Marketing/Advertising:

• For many, many years there wasn't any advertising.  It was word of mouth and NAMM shows.  Heritage was a well known brand to manufactures, but not to the masses.  They seemed to like it that way and consequently the prices were a fraction of Gibson, especially on the used market.  
• Now Heritage has advertisements in many guitar magazines and having YouTube channels review and promote their guitars.  Social Media is the way of the future, us old folks surf Facebook while the kids these days are using Instagram.  Heritage should be all over that, if their not doing that enough, they should be.   They aren't giving away guitars like Gibson does to artists left and right because they just don't have the money to do that.  
• Heritage artists, for the most part, are Jazz guitarists.  Not many rock guys out there that are still relevant.  I think they missed the boat with Frankie Ballard.  The man gets 2 number 1 hits on country music, playing a H157 black beauty and yet there is no signature model or any sort of advertising with Frankie.  (In fact, the artists list both endorsed and signature models are no longer on the website).   There are a few newcomers in recent years, like Jake Kershaw and several others, but haven't made a big splash (yet) to help promote the Heritage.

Costs:

• I do agree that Heritage does not do a good job in their branding of small batch, boutique guitar building.  If they did, it would be easier to justify the pricing models.  We are so used to thinking of Heritage as a mass production guitar maker like Gibson/Fender etc, but they are more like higher end boutique builders such as Knaggs, Suhr, etc. 
• One thing Heritage does not do is skimp on material or parts.  They don't use 4 to 6+ pieces of mahogany/ash/alder to make a body and hide it under solid finishes like Gibson and Fender.  They do not use scarf joints like PRS to make their USA S2 guitars cheaper (and PRS S2 models uses cheaper import electronics/hardware similar to the SE models)  
• I think the product descriptions should either rename the guitars or the descriptions to clearly define the hand-made USA production guitars, using the highest quality woods and components.  Perhaps if that was done, people would stop looking and comparing production Gibson/Fender to Heritage production, they are not the same.
• Finally, the labor costs have gone up because Heritage actually pays a living wage to their staff now.  They did not do that before.  Health care was not provided to most, hours were 32 a week or less, and the actual wage was so low, many employees would leave after a couple of years or work a second job to make ends meet.  Now they pay people a decent wage, providing health care, and maintaining their facility. 
• The previous owners had the Factory looking and feeling like an abandoned sweatshop.  No climate controls, no cleaning schedules, it was a cool-looking filthy mess of saw dust, old scrap pieces of guitars, dried glue, and caked on polishing compound.  That place was a tinder box waiting to burn.  The current owners are concerned about quality controls and people's health and safety.
• All of this costs money, so if Heritage upped the prices 25% after many many years with no price increases (or cost of living increases for employees), its only fair and about time.  

A couple final points:

• One of my favorite non-traditional brands is Reverend guitars.  10 years ago, new Reverends were around $600-$700 new.  The cheapest I've seen new is $899 and they go up to $1500 or more.  That is for a Korean made import guitar using multiple pieces of white limba for their bodies and import hardware/electronics.   
• Fender's USA Stratocastes/Telecasters 10 years ago hovered around the $1000 are now getting closer and closer to $2,000 for the non-custom shop USA mass production models.  Bolt on construction, with assembly line production methods (top loading, prewired electronic assemblies), and cheaper woods that would be considered scrap at Heritage.  
• We can talk about headstocks being ugly or odd, however my only complaint about them is I don't think any model except the 137 should have an silkscreen logo on the headstock, everything should be mother-of-pearl or abalone.  The 'ugly" snakehead shape is based upon a much older Gibson shape from before the modern "open book" look.  It has a better string pull to the nut than Gibson.  But its all about the look, right?  Form before Function?

I can go on, but I think I beat the dead horse here enough.

 

Great post!

I think you ought to throw your hat in the ring for that newly abandoned marketing position!

I agree with alot of what you've commented on here, especially the point on Reverend. I feel like they would be an excellent company for Heritage to emulate in terms of a marketing presence considering that Reverend is truly "killing it" these days.

Thanks again for the post, I like to believe that if the folks at the Heritage mothership see enough of these types of suggestions they'll finally wake up and properly market themselves.

[DetroitBlues]

1 hour ago, FranzMohamitz said:

 

I think you ought to throw your hat in the ring for that newly abandoned marketing position!

 

I wish I could, but I don't think they could afford me.

[FranzMohamitz]

2 hours ago, DetroitBlues said:

I wish I could, but I don't think they could afford me.

That's too bad because you seem to be a million times more knowledgeable about Heritage Guitars than anyone who's currently speaking for Heritage Guitars. 

I mean if they found the money to fix that place up like they have, shouldn't they be able to spend some coin on marketing as well? I was under the impression that the whole reason that Bandlab Technologies got involved was to start handling the distribution and marketing duties.

Those couple magazine articles and getting themselves added to the MF and GC websites was a great start but you can't just simply abandon your entire online presence because one local marketing guy quits. That's just ridiculous.

[ElNumero]

On 3/9/2019 at 7:51 AM, Dick Seacup said:

Might as well talk about the elephant in the room. They don't advertise or market because they're embarrassed by the headstock. The Circle-H inlay was clearly an attempt to get people focusing on the silly logo instead of the silly headstock. Not even that level of shock-and-awe change worked.  It's all about the headstock, people. 

Dick, I usually agree with you, but now its clear you have lost your mind!!  ha ha

[ElNumero]

Opie left? When did  this happen? I didn't get wind of it. Of course the wind never blows from North to South towards Florida anyways. 

[ElNumero]

On 3/10/2019 at 4:40 AM, High Flying Bird said:

Franz, I know what you are missing.  I miss it too but it had to happen some day and it has happened.  The Heritage brand has lost it's Mojo.  The old timers were the Mojo and it is gone, along with it's best guitar builders who created that Mojo.  Now Heritage Guitars is just another business.  You can still get a nice guitar from them but it ain't the same.  I drove 11 plus hours to visit that factory -so many times.  I made great fiends.  Now I don't even have a desire to ever darken their door steps again with my shadow. 

While many on this forum will defend the new Heritage brand I don't like it.  They can keep their plaza.  I sure as hell will not be visiting their bierhalle. 

Hey Ron, did you make a few great friends along the way in addition to the great "fiends"?