In Which The Author Returns To Kalamazoo And Sees Many Interesting Things

I was in western Michigan yesterday for the Lotus Evora 400 press day at Gingerman. My return route took me right through Kalamazoo. Danger Girl, who was accompanying me for the trip, had never seen the Heritage Guitars operation in the old Gibson plant, so I told her we'd stop through and check it out. I'm no longer involved with the Heritage Owners Club and I'm in the middle of selling-down my Heritage collection, but I'd heard that Heritage had new ownership and I thought it would be worthwhile to see if they were up to anything interesting.

Rendall Wall, the Heritage stalwart who continues to work for the company at the age of seventy-four, happened to be walking by when DG and I showed up at the front desk. "Ren" isn't known for babysitting Heritage fans, but Danger Girl is about twenty years younger and much better-looking than the average Internet guitar-forum doofus. So we got our tour --- and once Ren found out that both he and DG had flown Cessna 172s for a few decades, the tour became remarkably comprehensive and interesting.

The new owners of Heritage are putting $12 million into the facility. The old basement operation is being shut down and guitar production will be moved into a series of large, clean, open-air rooms on the ground floor. "I supervised twenty-four fret-filers over there, thirty-two years ago," Ren noted, pointing down a hall to another massive open space.

We were then taken up to the finishing shop, which is being expanded as well and which looks like it's had maybe fifty years' worth of grime scrubbed out of it in the past few months. Interestingly, there were dozens of Eighties-era pointy-headstock Heritage superstrats sitting around in various degrees of disrepair. I also noticed what looked like perhaps fifteen mahogany bodies for the 1987 Heritage "Stat" sitting on a rack. I don't know if anybody wants a new Stat --- they weren't popular when they were new and they have no following today --- but the company clearly has the materials to make it happen.

I have my doubts about the ability of a revitalized Heritage Guitars, Inc. to compete in the marketplace. The six-string business is shrinking rapidly in this country; as things stand now, Heritage relies on the business of Japanese collectors to keep the doors open, and those doors are rarely open five full days a week. The model mix of what's being sold is almost entirely hollowbodies and 335-pattern guitars; in other words, the current Heritage owner base is older than dirt. This is a problem that every musical-instrument company is facing, but it's exacerbated for Heritage because the whole idea of owning a Heritage is that it's made in the same way, in the same place, by many of the same people, as a 1959 Gibson Les Paul.

Still, Ren's enthusiasm for the new operation was catching. I might have to order something from the rejuvenated company once they're all the way back on their feet. As long as the pear-shaped Svengali who pulls the strings at the Heritage Owners' Club is permitted to continue with his repugnant antics, I won't be adding myself back to the ranks of Heritage fans --- but I could be easily persuaded to return to the ranks of Heritage customers.