Heritage HFT 445

Features:Spruce top, mahogany neck, back and sides, rosewood fretboard w/ dot inlays, square-shoulder body, Grover nickel deluxe tuners, satin finish, pure acoustic--no electronics or pickups, came w/ non-original "Tweed style" HSC, scale=24.75, cream-colored binding, rosette around soundhole, mfg. in Kalamazoo, Michigan in 1988, front strap piece has been added to upper bout, nitrocelluose finish

Superb sounding instrument. Sustain is amazing. Very rich but balanced--does not "muddy up" when strummed hard, suitable for picking or finger-picking. Like my Gibson Howard Roberts or my G & L Legacy, it sounds so good that it makes me want to pick it up and play, which I think is the ultimate accolade for an instrument.

I am giving this a 7 because the instrument has one ding in the soundboard where it looks like it might have been dropped. This is cosmetic and I knew about before buying it and had seen JPeg pictures of it. The sellers were completely up-front about it. Tim Bascomb and the others at Morgan Music were a pleasure to deal with--they are a credit to EBay. I had talked to them prior to buying and thought they were real straight shooters. Normally I always insist on an escrow payment when buying ebay items. This time I did not--and it worked out fine. Too bad everyone is not like the Morgan Music people!
This guitar has aged beautifully and the white binding has aged to a lovely cream-colored. I am not a vintage freak but there is truth to the notion that a good acoustic improves with age.

Seems very solidly built. Has withstood 14 years so far. If properly humidified to avoid cracks, this should last a lifetime. Heritage, which is the old Gibson people building guitars out of the old Gibson Kalamazoo plant, has stopped making acoustic flattops to concentrate solely on archtops and electrics. This is too bad but probably accounts for the extremely high quality/price ratio of this guitar. There are not many Heritage acoustics out there in the marketplace but they are definitely worth looking at as a serious sleeper value.

Not applicable as bought used but see above comments under "fit & finish".

Been playing about 6 years. Play mostly jazz, some blues, some rock. I have a neighbor of mine who has demonstrated the beauty of acoustic guitar to me, all in all I classify myself as a semi-serious hobbyist. Have owned Gibson Gospel acoustic, and a Gibson CL-20 acoustic( similar to what they now call the Songbird model), several electrics (a Les Paul, American Standard Fender Strat, G & L Legacy Strat, Gibson Howard Roberts Fusion electric archtop, Gibson 347 electric archtop, Hamer tele). This guitar is billed as Heritage's version of a J-45 which I had had my eye on for some time. My buying philosophy is to look for quality 2d-hand instruments and the Fender Strat is the only new instrument I've owned. I don't care esp. about appearance and am turned off by the guitar collector/fetishist mentality. It feels a little more substantial than a Gibson J-45 and has a little richer tone but still very balanced overall. It has square shoulders unlike the J-45 which is slope shouldered.
This guitar is richer sounding than the Gibson CL-20 and Gospel which were both fine instruments--but both of them tended to "muddy up" when pushed hard. I've been looking at J-100's, J-200's, Martins, Taylors and Guilds recently. With any instrument, there is a lot of variability in quality. I will typically go into a guitar showroom and try 20 guitars and like 2 or 3. Often, there is no strong correlation between price and my evaluation. Taylors,I think, are incredibly overpriced and tinny-sounding to boot--though they certainly play easily. Martins can be great esp. the smaller bodied OO and OOO sizes, but again the trick is to find the particular one that sounds good. Guilds can be very nice with a more balanced sound that Gibsons typically have and are well worth looking at. I think the J-45 is the best acoustic Gibson makes because its tone is so balanced as well as being rich. All in all, I am incredibly pleased and this guitar is a "keeper". My keeper list consists of: jazzbox--Howard Roberts Fusion; strat style--G & L Legacy; tele-style--1994 Hamer tele; jazz amp--ROland Jazz Chorus 77; rock amp--Sundown Artist 150 (a Boogie clone that was hand built by Dennis Kager, former chief amp tech at Ampeg).

96 or 97 USA made in Kalamzoo at the old Gibson plant, Dreadnought acoustic. HFT = Heritage Flat Top. All solid wood mahogany a bit slope shouldered like a Gibson J45 but not as drooped. I think the 25 1/2 neck is maple, rosewood fretboard, dot markers, Grover tuners, medium jumbo frets. Thick cream colored body binding- looks like cheap plastic- has the worlds thickest pickguard at about 3/16" thick- weird but I like it. This one is antique sunburst finished with a sort of chestnut color for the sides and back. Gloss finish. The store gave me a gigbag with it. I was looking for a workhorse guitar- not a fancy rosewood one with tons of inlays and neck binding etc.- and this fills the bill perfectly.

This guitar has a real sonic personality. The 5th and 6th strings sound like a beautiful grand piano when finger picked, tremendous power and sustain. The rest of the strings do not display the power of the bass strings- expected I guess given string sizes, mahogany dreadnought body etc. but it is more true of this guitar than many mahogany dreadnoughts I have owned. The result is a guitar that works great for simple fingerpicking and strumming but loses detail as it gets muddy when you try to do a lot. I use it to acompany a churchgroup and it has the power to do it but the job there is to establish key and beat, not get fancy and make it into a solo performance. If I want to do lots of hammers and pull offs and slides I will use my Tacoma and amplify it.

This is the only Heritage acoustic flat top I ever saw and I bet they don't make many, but I owned a jazzbox of theirs and loved it so I really wanted this guitar- and I watched it sit in the store for 2+ years on display for $1100...$999 while it got a few nicks from being doodled on. Finally they sold it to me for $875 if I recall correctly. When I brought it home and cleaned it and looked closely I was amazed the color variations between the neck and body as if they were really from 2 different guitars. The neck has a grayish hue to it and the body is really brown. The back had finish checking all over it and the top has a bit of a rise and dip forming around the bridge from string tension already but...it seems to be getting better all by itself during the summer so maybe it was dry. The frets are pretty flat topped compared to most as if they filed them and didn't round them over afterwards.The action is just right in spite of how much everytthing has "moved". Over all it seems like they took the peices lying around the guitar shop and put together one last dreadnought and shipped it to my local music store. It certainly doesn't look mass produced- to be kind.

Yeah it will take live playing. I wonder if it will take bad weather without warping but time will tell. Grover tuners are excellent. The top finish is fine, the back may all fall off given the cracks in it and if it does I'll refinish it. Only 1 strap button as usual. Interior bracing is 5/16 not scalloped and strong. I think it will last but it won't look new.

No first hand experience. I have heard good things from others.

I started playing in '64, stopped in 73, started again in 94 and I have had a long list of guitars- Martin(2), Gibson(1), Guild(1), Heritage(3), Tacoma(4), Fender(2), Schecter(1), Alvarez(1) and others I have forgotten- thankfully. If it were stolen I don't think I could find another so I would look for something else- Maybe a Martin D18 would be close. I love the tone- for simple strummed chords and arpeggios it sings like few I have ever heard. I dislike the lack of subtlety- it looses pull offs in the ringing sustain of the chords but I guess you can't have one without the other. I wish they used better binding material on all of their guitars. I think the tan plastic is cheesy looking and all 3 of my Heritages have it- boo. I bought it because I suspected Heritage could make a good thing happen with a dreadnought and they did. It is not a real well rounded instrument- but I own several so I don't care. If I saw another model- like a parlor guitar I would strongly consider it too. They aren't Martins or Gibsons or Taylors but they are very good, never ordinary, and that is worth a lot to me.