The Tale of an Heritage 575 Custom Guitar - Part II
The Instrument Arrives Back
Well, no one is more surprised than me. Frankly I thought I had bought one of those 'Friday afternoon' guitars that would never play properly. After all, two experts had already had their hands on it and failed to set it up. I had all but given up on this fine looking, but impossible to play, Heritage 575 Custom.
In reality there are only a certain number of things you can do to a guitar to get its intonation and set-up exactly right. And guess what? It looks like Guitar Heaven in Wallingford did just about all of them. I had left the guitar in their custody and had given them carte blanche to do whatever was needed.
Here is a list of the work they did:
- Supply and fit new nut
- Set-up with supplied strings (see below)
- Clean fingerboard (well it wasn't that bad)
- Polish frets
- Set truss rod
- Check and adjust string height (action taken up)
- Adjust bridge for intonation (bit of a fiddle to sort this one)
- Adjust pickup heights for balance
Years of experience used and little bit of magic added.
Before this had all been done, Paul Cleverley had already adjusted the machine heads. At the same time he recommended that 11 gauge flat wound strings would be the order of the day for this guitar.
When I arrived at Guitar Heaven to pick up the Heritage, Paul took it out of its case and just played the harmonics across the twelfth fret. Straight away I could hear the difference. There was a clarity and level of sustain that I had never experienced from this instrument before. He then played it for a while and it finally sounded like a valuable guitar of quality. I soon changed that by playing it myself - but I was happy.
I'm hoping that this will not be the last you hear about my re-born star guitar. It is my ambition to get a really good guitarist to use it at a gig in Reading at some point over the coming months. It is going to have to be someone I really trust though as I don't want to go back to owning an expensive ornament.
So, thanks to Guitar Heaven - they achieved what I thought was impossible. If you've got a guitar that needs surgery I recommend you go and have a word with them.
>>> catch up on the latest news about this Heritage H 575
by Kevin Harrington
2 April 2004
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