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"New Heritage Headstock"


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I'll probably get my walking papers for this but couldn't help myself when I read it. I was searching The Goofy Place for Hamers for sale when I stumbled on a thread about new headstock design on Heritage guitars.

PLEASE REMEMBER I read it on TGP and present it here only because of the sensitive nature (and hilarity) of the subject.

member DGAS said "The Heritage headstock always struck me as an experiment to see if someone could take the awful Hamer headstock and make it worse.

"the Hamer is boring and out of proportion. So let's make it longer and thinner and even more aesthetically offensive. Yes, just like that...""

 

 

 

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An appropriately named TGP "member" because I Don't Give A Shit about his opinion.

There are better headstocks out there, but Hamer's made sense to me when someone described it as a snake's head viewed from above.

 

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Well, he's not wrong.

As for a new Heritage headstock, the world needs that like it needs...

Ok, I'll be honest with you.
I was trying to think of something more useless than a Heritage-designed anything, but I stumped myself.

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Wanna make a Heritage headstock look better? Compare it to a Seagull headstock. As much as I love those acoustics, that head is absolutely the pits.

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Why does no one love the snake head style?

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What exactly did they change about the design that makes it "better" anyway? They all still have the weak area around the nut / truss rod nut.

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32 minutes ago, Jeff R said:

Wanna make a Heritage headstock look better? Compare it to a Seagull headstock. As much as I love those acoustics, that head is absolutely the pits.

Yep. I love playing my little Seagull parlor jumbo, but the headstock is fugly and looks incomplete. Still, my eyes can more easily tolerate the narrower ugly headstocks than the gaudy, wide headstocks you see on some guitars.

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5 minutes ago, fractal said:

Am I the only one that doesn't see/think of the headstock when I play?

No, but that has nothing to do with the headstock's impact on the aesthetics of the guitar.

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1 hour ago, Biz Prof said:

Yep. I love playing my little Seagull parlor jumbo, but the headstock is fugly and looks incomplete. Still, my eyes can more easily tolerate the narrower ugly headstocks than the gaudy, wide headstocks you see on some guitars.

Watching the John Denver doc on PBS I noticed Guild made him a couple of jumbo 12vers (beautiful, BTW) that had H-U-G-E headstocks, even bigger than an Artist Award. Telegraph that branding to the back rows, yup.

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5 minutes ago, RobB said:

Watching the John Denver doc on PBS I noticed Guild made him a couple of jumbo 12vers (beautiful, BTW) that had H-U-G-E headstocks, even bigger than an Artist Award. Telegraph that branding to the back rows, yup.

Not a 12'er, but made for John Denver, and sheesh....it's yuge.

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Fuck him. I love the Hamer headstocks and think the Heritage headstock has always been ugly. 
 

Rickenbacker headstocks are cool and Shishkov’s are the best.

I was on the Heritage Forum years ago and they all waxed poetic about how more useful and utilitarian Heritage was over Hamer. They railed against the Hamer headstock (Even more so than I just did against theirs)  and against the Hamer finishing process. Too pretty for them. It was hilarious.

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I don't care.  I've played a number of Heritage guitars over the years, and not a single one was worth a damn.   I joined an established band back in the '90s, and the guitarist - a very fine player and teacher - played Carvins and Heritages.  I brought him a Hamer Sunburst and a Newport just so he could see what an actual guitar was.  He promptly sold the shitful guitars he had been playing for a decade and bought a Gibson 335 and Hamer Special FM.  I saw him at a wedding years later (he is in a "career" event band and does quite well), and we caught up.  He was sporting a '70s Ibanez George Benson and a newer CS Strat for the gig.  Towards the end he said "do you remember when I used to play those shitty Heritage guitars?"   I reminded him he also played Carvins, and we both chuckled and shuddered in no particular order.

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3 minutes ago, cmatthes said:

I don't care.  I've played a number of Heritage guitars over the years, and not a single one was worth a damn.   I joined an established band back in the '90s, and the guitarist - a very fine player and teacher - played Carvins and Heritages.  I brought him a Hamer Sunburst and a Newport just so he could see what an actual guitar was.  He promptly sold the shitful guitars he had been playing for a decade and bought a Gibson 335 and Hamer Special FM.  I saw him at a wedding years later (he is in a "career" event band and does quite well), and we caught up.  He was sporting a '70s Ibanez George Benson and a newer CS Strat for the gig.  Towards the end he said "do you remember when I used to play those shitty Heritage guitars?"   I reminded him he also played Carvins, and we both chuckled and shuddered in no particular order.

The special FM is an underrated guitar and quite possibly the best kept secret in the tone/playability/bang for the buck world..

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Two that came to mind:

preview.jpgmain-qimg-6bb6b2d621ddca0ac2c41a4521823fde.jpg

 

The John 5 Tele and Deans. The good thing is there's enough lumber there to do a re-shape into something....less. The John 5 was designed by a canoeist and the Dean headstock needs it's own headstock to make a 3/4-size Flying V.

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Actually, the "John 5 Tele" uses the same style/shape headstock as the old MIJ "Vista Series" Squier Venus XII (the Venus models were supposedly endorsed by Courtney Love!), except it has six less tuners...but plenty of room there if you did want to turn it into a 12-string.  I had one of these 12vers in black several years ago, they weren't a bad 12-string, they even had Seymour Duncan "split" pickups that looked a lot like the Fender XII pickups of the 1960's...but I didn't care for the fact that the body was basswood, plus the width of the body shape required a Jazzmaster-width case:

http://theonesthatgotaway.blogspot.com/2008/03/squier-venus-12-string.html

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On 10/15/2020 at 12:27 PM, tbonesullivan said:

Why does no one love the snake head style?

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What exactly did they change about the design that makes it "better" anyway? They all still have the weak area around the nut / truss rod nut.

Hmmm...I’m thinking that’s the camel toe headstock.

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On 10/15/2020 at 11:27 AM, tbonesullivan said:

Why does no one love the snake head style?

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What exactly did they change about the design that makes it "better" anyway? They all still have the weak area around the nut / truss rod nut.

I'm surprised that, at some point, Henry J. didn't try to have Gibson sue Hamer for some kind of trademark infringement over the headstock...even though, like the Explorer guitar design, it was way too late to go after Hamer for something they'd already used for years.

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8 hours ago, crunchee said:

I'm surprised that, at some point, Henry J. didn't try to have Gibson sue Hamer for some kind of trademark infringement over the headstock...even though, like the Explorer guitar design, it was way too late to go after Hamer for something they'd already used for years.

I don't think they even use it anymore, and it may not be on their trademark application where they pretty much claim just about all the classic headstock designs, including many that were in use before Gibson even existed.

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Just now, Jakeboy said:

...and then there’s the Fender droopy end 12 string headstock...I call it the “reservoir tip”...

 

image.jpeg

Ribbed for her pleasure. :P

 

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