Heritage 576

[patrickmac]

Hello people,

I have a Heritage 576 built in 1990 and now discontinued.  I love the guitar, It's like a thinner 575 with a center block.  There's only a few of these around and I'm trying to find out why it was discontinued or any other info about the model.  Thanks for any input.

[TalismanRich]

I've seen a couple of  576s.  My best guess is that most jazz players are more looking for the full hollow sound that you get from the 575, Eagle, etc.   The rock crowd goes  more for the thinner semihollow style.  So it becomes a bit of an "in-between" style.   Its a bit like the 525,  which is hollow but also laminate and a bit thinner than the 575.   That doesn't mean it's not a great guitar (it is.... I've got one), but it's a different sound from the 575.

As for why it was discontinued,  up until a couple of years ago, you could probably order a new one, since they still had all of the forms.    Since they have pruned the line to the most requested models,  something had to go.   They made a lot of different archtops, just look at some of the old catalogs.   Sales of the H150 and 535 lines vs the archtops were probably 10-1.  

You can get the basic spec from this catalog from 1989.     Heritage Catalog 89

[patrickmac]

Thank you.  I knew somebody would have some information on this.  Much appreciated.

[MartyGrass]

The H-576 followed the H-575.  They are similar in some ways, mostly dimensions.  The 576 though is a more versatile instrument, if you'll accept that term.  It is feedback resistant due to the laminated top and back plus the floating center block.  The sustain is greater.

I've owned several of these over the years.  They are wonderful instruments.

It appears they were discontinued due to several factors.  Heritage introduced the Prospect and the Kenny Burrell Groovemaster.  These also had floating center blocks, the latter being very close in overall design to the 576.  The Prospect had 22 frets.  The 530 also competed with the 576 is the 16" body but is shallower.  The Roy Clark also crowded the space of a single cutaway with a floating block.

If you built guitars and had artists' models, you'd not want to cut into their sales unnecessarily.