Heritage Eagle, all mahogany - any experience ?

[gitman]

Has anyone ever sampled this particular model Eagle ? I‘m curious re the acoustic sound, the response and sustain of an all-solid-mahogany archtop …

[skykomishone]

Mine is mahogany neck, back, and sides, spruce top. It has a woody warm sound, good sustain, and well built. Not sure why the picture wants to flip over to landscape.
Regarding acoustic sound, this one has a built in pickup and more of a Wesmo style, and no acoustic match for my other 17" intended acoustic archtops with floaters. Although it still sounds good unplugged.
Hope that helps.

[ThatRhythmMan]

I sold one several years ago. My notes show that it had an overall good acoustic tone. Not as loud as most spruce tops nor as much dynamic range. Overall it was very respectable as an acoustic.

[gitman]

My flattop/steelstring guitar is a Santa Cruz 000-1929 12-fret model , Richard Hoover's take on the all-mahogany Martin guitars from the 20's and 30's . I chose this one because it has a beautifully balanced tone, warm and charming, with a strong fundamental and just the right amount of sparkly overtones. Re sustain, volume and response (to pick and fingers) it lacks nothing compared to the usual spruce-mahogany/rosewood models of the same size. The good people at Santa Cruz Guitar Company know how to work their woods so this is not surprising - it makes me wonder though why this Heritage Eagle seems to be the only commercially available archtop that has a mahogany top when it's widely known and accepted that this choice of wood is a perfectly good alternative to the various types of spruce we see all around .....
Here is a video with the wonderful Kevin Seddiki where he plays this 000-1929 model- I bought mine right after seeing/hearing him .....

Kevin SEDDIKI/ 0001929 SANTA CRUZ- Un Artiste, Une Guitare. on Vimeo

[st.bede]

I have an Ibanez Prestige 205, which is a much different guitar then the one you are asking about. (One main difference is that it is a semi). It has a mahogany top. (I know there is an endless debate about wood and tone). I have found it to sound a bit warmer and richer (in the midrange) then other semi guitars with different tops. It does not sound muffed but the overtones tend to not pop as much. At first I thought it was a little dark, but once I heard what was happening, I was able to get it to sound perfect with enough cut. I have ended up preferring it over other choices. It looks really cool also. Not sure if this is helpful, but you never know.

[Klatu]

I've got an all mahogany model, one with mahogany everything except a spruce top, and a Golden Eagle with L5 specs. My observation is that the differences between them have more to do with the individual models than with the woods involved in their production.

Traditional descriptions of the tonal qualities of mahogany would lead one to believe that the mahogany guitar is the warmest of the three, and the way people talk about maple would lead one to believe that the Golden Eagle with maple back and sides would be the brightest of the three. In fact, the brightest of the three is the all mahogany model, but isn't an ice pick guitar by any means.

If you have the opportunity to pick one up, I highly recommend any of the Eagle models (btw all mine have the floating pickups).

[frankhond]

I have an all mahogany Eagle. It has really opened up with Thomastik 13s. Installed a KA 12 pole floating humbucker. It’s loud acoustically with some complexity but I keep the action low and play plugged in most of the time, so the acoustic sound blends with the amp. Sounds great that way. Also sounds fantastic running direct into my laptop with a neve simulation plugin. I would guess it would work well as an all acoustic jazz guitar if one set the action higher but never used it that way.

[frankhond]

I have an all mahogany Eagle. It has really opened up with Thomastik 13s. Installed a KA 12 pole floating humbucker. It’s loud acoustically with some complexity but I keep the action low and play plugged in most of the time, so the acoustic sound blends with the amp. Sounds great that way. Also sounds fantastic running direct into my laptop with a neve simulation plugin. I would guess it would work well as an all acoustic jazz guitar if one set the action higher but never used it that way.

Actually I can do better, but this requires a bit of a backstory.

Where I live, there are zero quality carved archtops in the shops. There are lots of "vintage" Hofner, Levin and other nondescript brands that all sound dull, dark or thuddy. I once briefly tested an all mahogany Gibson L-something 16 inch - it had a particular "built in reverb" that I never heard anywhere else, but otherwise sounded like a banjo. None of these moved me in any way, except away.

I have tested some Eastmans 8xx-series which are very different. Mainly they start out bright and responsive, but "thud out" when pushed. Feeling inside the F-holes, the top is very thin with little thickening in the middle. In comparison, both the Eagle and my 575 start thin at the edge and gets noticeably thicker towards the center. The Eagle is X-braced with overall thinner top than the 575, the latter shooting for an ES175 feel, with parallel braces and a fairly substantial top. None of these guitars "thuds out" no matter how hard I pick.

I had a teacher who plays a vintage Epiphone of some kind, probably a Broadway. It has a very loud, dry acoustic tone, which I don't particularly like, but when he plugs in and lets the electric and acoustic tones mix in the room, it sounds fantastic. I can get a similar effect with the Eagle.

For me, it's very difficult to make an informed judgement about the acoustic properties of an archtop, not only because of the above, but as a player I don't hear what the guitar actually sounds like. Another guitarist once tried my 575, and standing a few meters in front of him I was shocked how loud it was, very different from how it sounds to me as a player.

When GASsing I was looking at Elferink archtops, there are lots of youtube clips with good players, both acoustically and plugged in. But I have discovered that I can record similar sounds with my Eagle, especially when plugging it directly to the laptop, applying some vintage mixing board and/or clean Fender amp plugin, maybe mixing in some acoustic tone from a microphone.

So what I can say about the Eagle. It never thuds out, responds very well to different pick sizes and shapes, pick attack and pick/finger combinations. The more I experiment the more good sounds I find. I don't enjoy playing it purely acoustically at home the way I enjoy my Lowden. It feels like I need to stand 3 meters in front of myself playing. But I very much enjoy to plug it into my Fender clone amp on low volume, and let the sounds mix.

[Fal Tarlow]

Fresh meat..

https://youtu.be/47pmfyFYcMc

[frankhond]

Fresh meat..

https://youtu.be/47pmfyFYcMc

Oh that's beautiful! I have total GAS now... oh wait, that's my guitar :-D

He has several videos with that Eagle, here is one where you hear more acoustic sound

[Jimmy blue note]

As a builder I consider mahogany the wood between softer woods like spruce and harder woods like maple. In the neck and body it had a warmth that's well known as an antidote to the hard attack response of maple.
As a top wood, I consider it the sonic middle ground between the melodic response of tunable spruce (and cedar) and the great punchy woody response of an amplified light range laminate or maple.
It's actually my favourite top wood to put a full sized humbucker into because it doesn't have the grain line tendency to split along the grain, and though there's a HUGE range in hardness among mahogany types (Filipino woods I avoid, Honduras I seek out, Cuban I had good luck with, African was so hard I'm not even sure it's a real mahogany) it is a warm wood on the sustain and defined yet solidly clear on the attack.
It is an open grain wood so it requires a lot of filling of pores and it's not as vidually spectacular as a curly maple in my opinion, but I'm building a new 15" archtop this year and I'm going to use a mahogany top on it (maple sides and back, mahogany/maple neck).
From a luthier's point, it needs an arching pattern lower than the tubular arch I use on a spruce top and higher than the flat back arch I use on a maple back. If you're a builder.

Guild and Martin made flattops with all mahogany and they're known for their projection, warmth and durability. Made initially as a "poor man's" niche below choice spruce tops, they have become sought after because of their musical character and rugged resistance to seasonal changes and stress traumas that plague soft wood tops.
They're not a 'classic' construction in the traditional sense and so they're not prestigious to a collector but to a player, they can do things no other wood can do if you seek that.

They look and sound different. I love 'em.

[Hammertone]

You have access to real Swietenia mahogani? One of my archtops has a Cuban mahogany back, which came from a piece of old furniture.

[Gitfiddler]

Back when Heritage built Eagles, they used Honduran Mahogany for its construction.

[gitman]

What's not to like ?! Thanks for posting this !

[george330td]

Hi, my guitar with some changes thru the years : Kent Armstrong 12 pole, Benedetto tail piece and fingers rest, Schaller tuner with ebony buttons, sound so good with round wound 012 strings and she looks good too I think.

[frankhond]

Hi, my guitar with some changes thru the years : Kent Armstrong 12 pole, Benedetto tail piece and fingers rest, Schaller tuner with ebony buttons, sound so good with round wound 012 strings and she looks good too I think.

That looks great! I have been thinking to install Benedetto pickguard too, that was some serious inspiration.

[73Fender]

And, to add another variable, some Eagles came with floating pickups and some with top mounted pickups. I remember almost buying one some years ago from a member here on another forum, for $1,300. Someone else bought it and it was crushed or something in transit. FWIW.

[Doctor Jeff]

Mine is mahogany neck, back, and sides, spruce top. It has a woody warm sound, good sustain, and well built. Not sure why the picture wants to flip over to landscape.
Regarding acoustic sound, this one has a built in pickup and more of a Wesmo style, and no acoustic match for my other 17" intended acoustic archtops with floaters. Although it still sounds good unplugged.
Hope that helps.

FIFY.



Beautiful guitar, and lovely burst.

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