The great Heritage H-150 weight relief experiment

PunkKitty

PunkKitty

Horny bag of electric meat
I've been experimenting with making my Heritage H-150 lighter. It started off at 9.5 pounds. I did the following so far:
- Removed the PAFs that I had in it and installed a set of Lace Alumitones with CTS pots including 2 push/pull pots to allow coil splitting.
- Changed the tuners to Sperzel Sound Lock tuners.

The combination brought the guitar down to 8.4 pounds. That's what it weighed after I installed the Alumitones. Surprisingly, installing the Sperzels didn't seem to matter. Each Sperzel is about 1.5 ounces lighter than a Grover. So I expected this to bring the guitar down to about 8 pounds. It didn't. But it's still noticeably lighter than my 9 pound Gibson Les Paul. Maybe my scale was off the other night. Who knows?

Things I learned:
- I really like the Alumitones. They are really versatile.
- Installing Sperzel tuners is a major PITA. They use a strange locking process that relies on a series of bends. Stringing is very simple. You put the string end into the little hole at the base of the tuner and push it out of the back of the tuner. Then just tighten the tuner. We'll see how stable these are. I have to repair one of the Sperzel holes I drilled since it is off center a bit.
- The Heritage H-150 comes with what appears to be a Pinnacle zinc locking tailpiece. The bridge is a Pinnacle aluminum bridge. I'm not sure if this is the titanium saddle model or not. Either way, I ordered a locking aluminum tailpiece.

Excuse the messy bench, but here are some pics.
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Drill the wiring routes out. Remove the pickguard, screws, and brace. Remove material from the stop tail piece or buy a less expensive one from like Musicily and remove it from that and keep the original in good condition. Do the same on the piece where you intonate the strings. Grind/dremal all the material away you can from each little piece. Get plastic replacement tuner knobs.
 
DinoMikeSr said:
Drill the wiring routes out. Remove the pickguard, screws, and brace. Remove material from the stop tail piece or buy a less expensive one from like Musicily and remove it from that and keep the original in good condition. Do the same on the piece where you intonate the strings. Grind/dremal all the material away you can from each little piece. Get plastic replacement tuner knobs.
Click to expand...
Not sure I want to go that far.
 
I would love to see a full head to tail shot with the deathbuckers installed. Tone comes first and I am being a little superficial but those things are a little off in terms of the traditional visual aesthetics I am accustomed to. I just want to see how they balance with the entire composition along with the Heritage headstock which itself screws with my concept of traditional visual aesthetics. I have been thinking about them for a while and you have me wanting to try them but I have an OCD based in the visual and these definitely tweak on that a bit. I should probably just order a random body from the Warmoth screamin deals to toss them in. Those things never look like anything traditional, lol.
 
I looked up some previous posts. The guitar was 9.5 pounds when I got it. So a drop to 8.4 pounds isn't bad. Like I said, the lighting in my house is pretty bad. To be safe, I have a 5 pound lead weight in the basement that I can check the scale with.
 
I played the guitar for 90 minutes today at practice. I was standing the whole time with it hanging on my shoulder. No pain. No fatigue. This is a wonderful instrument. I like the Alumitones, but they didn't work well for distortion with my ZT Lunchbox. A pedal will solve that. I'm not sure if I like the Sperzel tuners. They seem very touchy. But it might have been the new strings.

I have more experimenting to do. This time, I'm going to use flat humbuckers in my 9 pound Les Paul. Well, on the LP. These are slightly larger than regular pickups. I don't know what kind of magnets they are using. My guess is neodymium. But the price is right. I have some extra pickup rings. I'll tape them to the top of some plastic humbucker covers. I'm wondering if I can get a more traditional tone in a lightweight LP type of guitar.
 
If you're happy I'm happy!

I hate to admit it, but I'd never even consider the Alumitones just based on the visual aesthetics. Not awful, but just too weird for me.

Then again, as to weight, I own a T-60 (at about what you've got the Heritage down to) and (way worse) a T-40 bass, so weight isn't so much an issue for me.
 
It's funny, but I don't notice it as much when I play bass. Maybe it's the weight distribution.

As for the flat pickups, they don't weigh much less than a standard humbucker, so it's not worth the headache. I plan to use them on a bass.
 
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