Here is a contender for best jazz guitar we have seen in a while and – spoilers – it is priced accordingly. It is the Core Collection H-575 and it is the latest release from the Heritage Guitars Custom Shop.
Fully hollowbodied, with a Florentine cutaway that’s sharp, aquiline and cuts a familiar silhouette, this is a guitar that looks worth blowing the bonus on. Available in Original Sunburst and Antique Natural, both given a lick of gloss nitrocellulose and complemented nicely by a multi-ply tortoiseshell pickguard – a design motif repeated on the truss rod cover – these are premium electric guitars from nose to tail.
Heritage Guitars has used premium curly maple for the body, and this, allied to the gloss finish, gives the tops of these a luxurious three-dimensional quality. Necks are mahogany, glued to the body and shaped into a ‘50s C profile.
The rosewood fingerboards are bound, inlaid with small blocks, and belying the influence behind the guitar (yes, the H-575 owes much to the ES-175) the ‘board’s radius is 12”.
This, and the 24.75” scale length, will offer familiar dimensions to the player. Those frets should feel nice and slinky, too, with Heritage using Jescar medium-jumbo fretwire. There are 20 frets in total.
A pair of 225 Classic Archtop humbuckers are fitted in the neck and bridge positions. These electric guitar pickups are exclusive to the Heritage Custom Shop and are voiced for warmth and clarity – two qualities you want in a jazzbox.
The “225” in their designation will ring a bell for long-time fans of the Heritage brand. It was on 225 Parsons Street, Kalamazoo, Michigan, where Heritage opened its first factory in 1985.
These pickups are controlled by the time-honoured dual volume, dual tone setup, with a three-way toggle selecting your pickups. Under the hood there are 500k CTS pots, Orange Drop capacitors, while Switchcraft provides the industry standard toggle switch and 1/4” output.
The hardware is exquisite, too. We have got Custom Shop tuners on the headstock to keep things stable, and there is an adjustable rosewood bridge with a full-contact base, and a trapeze tailpiece that promises a solid platform for letting those notes ring out.
Other neat details include that headstock, which might be from a relatively new brand in guitar years but looks like it was from a more civilised era – when you could drink a couple of martinis after lunch and get back to the office whenever.
And as you would expect from a high-end instrument that is priced a cool $5,999 (you might need a couple of martinis to steady the hand when paying for one), the H-575 ships in a hardshell guitar case. The Core Collection H-575 is available to order now. Check out the demo video above for an idea of how they sound. And head on over to Heritage Guitars for more details.
