In 1984 The Gibson Guitar Company, which had been located in Kalamazoo, Michigan since the turn of the 20th century, moved all of its production to Nashville, Tennessee under new ownership. What was left was a group of highly skilled, experienced, and dedicated guitar builders who did not wish to relocate after generations in the Kalamazoo area. A partnership between three former employees sprung up, they bought the original Gibson Building (built in 1917), most of their equipment, and hired a large number of the original workers. In 1985 these men, who many would contend were the REAL Gibson Co. debuted a few models at the National Association of Music Merchants (NAMM) show, and the rest is history.

The Heritage Guitar Company likes to boast that over 90% of a Heritage guitar is hand built. In the factory, you’ll find the experienced luthiers hand carving tops and necks, hand bending sides, and hand fitting all joints. With their numerous years of practice, they create some very fantastic solid body electrics, semi-hollow body, and archtop guitars that rival some of the finest ever made. We’ve been incredibly excited by all of their models, especially their archtop guitars. When you’ve got one in your hands, and see the fine craftsmanship and excellent materials you’ll realize there is no comparison to most guitars at even twice the money. It’s almost incomprehensible how an American company can produce instruments of this caliber for such a great price. In many cases if you compare the Heritage models to similar guitars from a different company, you’ll find the Heritage features nicer hardware (like Schaller tailpieces, pickups), higher grade wood, nicer inlay (real Mother of Pearl), and the difference of being built by a scaled-down company - not to mention a scaled-down price tag.

Heritage Guitars is a rare company, making new instruments that are very popular with a lot of collectors of “vintage” guitars - people who favor some of the nice guitars of years past. The main reason for this is simple: because these are the guys who built many of those guitars. This is a shining example (like many of the other brands we carry) of a real American company building a relatively small amount of guitars with pride, dedication, and commitment to quality. The level of the hardware alone is amazingly nice. Stock electronics are high quality Schaller pick-ups, but they also offer Seymour Duncans, and HRW – pick-ups wound in house by Rendall Wall (extremely nice).

With models ranging from lightweight to traditional “Les Paul” body styles, semi-hollow bodies like their 535 style guitar, to all carved archtops like the 575 or their Sweet 16, Eagle and Golden Eagle, as well as some of their own original designs, a player in any style could find a perfect match in their catalog. A guitar of this level is a sound investment, not to mention being quite a piece of work, and again we are proud to offer these fine instruments, and believe you will be amazed at the quality as well as value.

The quality of any instrument does not stop with the maker. We inspect each one and will adjust them to your liking at no extra charge. We have many models in stock at nationally competitive prices, including a wide array of the carved archtops, as well as solid body electrics. We would also be happy to help you with any custom special order.

Website: http://www.heritageguitar.com