Re: Heritage Guitars - What's Your Opinion
OK, first some history.
To put it into perspective, when in 1984 Gibson abandoned Kalamazoo in favor of Nashville, the workers that had been building
Gibson guitars all these years (some of them for up to 25 years at the time) and weren't willing to move away from their homes just decided to keep doing what they were doing all along. Bought the oldest of the 5 Gibson factories and basically continued from where Gibson left.
So basically a 1985 Heritage was built by the very same people, using the very same tooling in the very same factory as a 1983 Gibson.
Difference is, as Heritage they couldn't use certain Gibson-specific OEM hardware and so they used some alternate suppliers like Schaller.
Another difference is that they've stayed pretty much the same company since then building pretty much the same product as then.
My favorite guitar store carries them and I have tried several from various years. I am basically a Strat guy but I was very, VERY impressed with pretty much all of the ones that I tried and even GASed for a couple of them.
Now, to the pros and cons of it.
- The BEST Les Paul that Gibson ISN'T building/will never again build.
- All-around insanely great quality but still very much human feeling, they don't have that PRS-clean feeling. Personally I like that, others don't.
- They DON'T feel like Gibsons, even though they are built as close to the originals as possible there ARE differences, both due to legal reasons as well as their builder's personal preferences. I would not go as far as calling them alien though like some have suggested.
- VERY consistent guitars, if you like one of them you'll like pretty much ALL of them. Not that they're all identical like Carvins but the difference between them is the expected one between one piece of wood to the next.
- BUTT-UGLY headstock. No matter how much I want to like it, I just can't. It wouldn't stop me from liking the guitar though, especially with those KILLER tops most of 'em have.
- Like most boutique builders, pretty bad resale value, if you're buying you're either buying to keep or are already buying used so as to get a great guitar at an even greater price (let the other guy take the hit on resale value).
- Did I mention guitars whose quality puts most if not almost all (save for the CS ones) Gibsons to shame?
In the end the choice falls to the individual depending on their personal tastes and their priorities.
A Heritage guitar isn't for someone who's worried about the resale value unless HE's buying used. It's also NOT for someone that wants a Gibson on the cheap.
It IS however for someone that wants a Gibson-type guitar of amazing quality without having to scour the globe to find it just so that it has the "correct" headstock.
Lemons are very rare on Heritages.
