Trouble at Heritage?

[skyboltone]

This is kind of scary. What have you all heard recently?

http://www.edromanguitars.com/guitar/home_her.htm

Thanks in advance for the reply

Dan

[908ssp]

Don't believe anything you read on the Ed Roman site the man is a notorious lier. My understanding which is only hearsay is heritage was going to sue Roman for counterfeiting their guitars and this is Roman's revenge after he agreed to stop the counterfeiting.

[rfgordon]

I concur with the assessment of Ed Roman, and it's from personal experience. Back in 2000 I special-ordered a Rickenbacker 750 with trem-bar thru Ed "I'm the greatest Rick dealer in the world" Roman. So the guy's got my deposit and I'm waiting--and waiting--and waiting. At three months I start calling and getting excuses. Finally, the wait had grown to 9 months. When Ed and his ignorant minions wouldn't give me a decent phone number for Rick, I called 411 in California.

I got a production guy on the phone, and he said that the way they work is that they set up the whole plant for one model, then make a large number of them. Then they move to another model, and so on. They weren't scheduled to make any more 750s until 2002! The guy was really nice, and said that they'd actually call me and let me pick finishes and such. Well, I needed a guitar, not a unicorn. I'll leave the never-ending quests to others.

So I call Ed, and the Rick production process is all news to him. (Some expert dealer, right?) So I wanted my deposit back, but he wouldn't do it. So I ended up getting a Heritage Les Paul--only it turned out to be really a poor one, in terms of fit and finish, and it weighed 11.5 pounds--a real backbreaker. They are NOT to be trusted. Ed Roman is a first class knob.

I've been to the new store in Vegas, and it's got tons of cool guitars, no question about that. However, the times I've been in there they had no truly high quality amps to play them thru. Madison amps? Come on! They're great for budget rockers, but get real. And the sales people are all jerks--they live in fear that Ed will find out they were actually nice or polite or helpful. If Ed has THE guitar you just can't live without, OK, but don't, under any circumstances, buy from him sight unseen.

If the place ever catches fire, save the guitars. Ed and the staff aren't much value added.

[kev01]

I will talk to a friend of mine about Heritage, he was a rep for them for several years. I know the last namm show I was at two years ago that Heritage has lost many of their long time employees due to retirement.
The best archtop man is gone and the old neck man I was told also was leaving. This info is a few years old but I will try to get an update.

[Funkalicousgroove]

I've had 2 Heritages and they've both been fantastic, I still have my H555 (Es 355) with lindy fralins in it and it screams. I wanted a custom pickguard for it, so I drew it up and faxed it to them and had it in 2 weeks. This is all news to me!