kbp810

Agreed Now... I do wish "Heritage" continued success and growth. I know they are making great guitars, expanding the name recognition, and doing what they feel they need to do to thrive in today's market... but that doesn't mean I have to accept that it's the same company with the same story that I fell in love with so many years ago. I used to have to often explain my Heritages to people; but I could do so with pride. Now that conversation becomes a little more drawn out; add in these cheap bolt-on reasonable facsimiles for "Heritages", and that conversation now starts to become quite pedantic. If they had only put "Ascent" or even "Heritage Ascent" on the headstock... something to differentiate it from the main brand... I feel like that would have been a little better. But since they didn't, it does, to me, feel like it dilutes the brand as a whole. Then again, it's not like my opinion means much to anyone, and I'm certainly not the target consumer for these. So I guess I just typed all that out simply to hear myself think out loud.

Video reminds me of the time I had the pleasure of working on this -

Nice pair!

There are common known issues on these amps with certain excessive heat generating components being mounted too closely to the main board (especially the two grid leak resistors; and this board did look toasty in that area); but for the most part here, I believe the issue was having the soldering iron too hot and/or holding too long in one spot, while replacing the caps and reflowing solder joints. Ultimately damaging the traces and solder pads, and then chasing their tales trying to repair them.

It was a hot mess inside; some toasted components and lots of scorched traces. Some of the previously repaired traces popped right off the board with little to no pressure. On some components, the solder pad was detached and floating freely, barely making contact with the original trace (could push on the component from the other side and see the pad move freely up/down), and likely intermittently detaching from vibrations during play. No telling how many intermittent and/or future issues were laying in wait. I could see what the repair shop was going for, and this is always a risky and delicate task; but in this case the benefits of preventative maintenance did not really outweigh the risk. These are just some of the damaged areas -

Betcha that has some real tasty tone!

Not that my opinion matters; but wish they would have at least put “Heritage Ascent” on the headstock, or something more than just an extra trc screw to differentiate it. They could have launched a cheaper variant of the brand, without cheapening the brand.