The Gibson workers who stayed.

Heritage Guitars exists because Gibson left Kalamazoo. Guitars had been made in Gibson’s factory on Parsons Street, on the city’s North Side, since 1917, and in 1984 the company moved its headquarters and manufacturing to Nashville, Tennessee, the Kalamazoo Gazette reported in 2007. Some of its workers stayed behind. In the spring of 1985, the company says, “several Kalamazoo guitar luthiers” bought space in the old factory “along with its original guitar-making equipment,” and showed their first guitar at the NAMM show that year.

The founders named by the company and by Wikipedia are Jim Deurloo, Marv Lamb and J.P. Moats, all former Gibson employees; Wikipedia adds two more former Gibson men, Bill Paige and Mike Korpak, as participants. In an interview recorded by the NAMM Oral History programme in 2005, Lamb said he joined Gibson in Kalamazoo in 1958 and met Deurloo a year later. Deurloo, interviewed the same day, pointed to a bench in the building: “that was my first workbench,” he said. “That is why the name ‘heritage’ was the perfect name of our company.” In 2005 all three were still working owners; on the day of the interview, NAMM notes, Lamb was covered in sawdust from a new lot of guitars. Lane Zastrow, Gibson’s former executive vice-president, stayed with the group and later served as Heritage’s president, according to NAMM.

Early advertising, Wikipedia says, told readers that Heritage made guitars on Parsons Street without mentioning Gibson by name. The first range included acoustic guitars, basses, mandolins and a banjo; it was later narrowed to electric guitars.

Hollow bodies, archtops and a Les Paul cousin.

Heritage built its name on the kinds of guitars its founders had made at Gibson. According to Wikipedia, citing Nick Freeth and Charles Alexander’s book The Electric Guitar (1999), the solid-body H-150 is modelled on the Les Paul Standard, the hollow H-575 resembles Gibson’s ES-175 and the semi-hollow H-535 reinterprets the ES-335, and Heritage’s full-body semi-acoustics have solid wood tops. Later designs included the chambered Millennium models. Heritage made its instruments in far smaller numbers than Gibson had, Wikipedia says, citing Tony Bacon.

Jazz players gave the brand credibility. In 1989, Wikipedia says, the guitarist Johnny Smith moved his endorsement from Gibson to Heritage, which began making a Heritage Johnny Smith model; Smith later moved again, to Guild. Wikipedia lists Henry Johnson from 1985 and David Becker from 1988 among early endorsers, along with Roy Clark and Kenny Burrell, who played a Heritage Super KB hollow body. The Testament guitarist Alex Skolnick had a signature H-150 before moving to ESP in 2013, it adds.

The business stayed small. In November 2007 the Kalamazoo Gazette reported that Heritage had reopened after closing for about three and a half months while its owners looked for a buyer. A local lawyer, Vince Margol, had bought out Bill Paige to become co-owner and managing partner, and the three founders stayed on. The company then employed about 20 people, built only to order and was a year behind on orders, Deurloo told the paper.

Design and documentation.

The seven brands in this guide are American electric-guitar names outside the Fender and Gibson pair, though several trace back to one or the other. Music Man began in 1971, formed by the former Fender men Forrest White and Tom Walker with Leo Fender as a silent partner, English Wikipedia says; Ernie Ball bought it in 1984, and the company says it has made instruments in San Luis Obispo, California, ever since. G&L was the company Leo Fender set up with George Fullerton in Fullerton, California; Guitar World reported in November 2025 that its closure had been confirmed.

Heritage was founded in Kalamazoo, Michigan, in 1985 by former Gibson employees who stayed when Gibson moved to Nashville, and remains there. Kramer, founded in Neptune, New Jersey, in 1976, has belonged to Gibson since 1997, Wikipedia says.

Dean, started by Dean Zelinsky in Chicago, has been owned since 1997 by Armadillo Enterprises of Tampa, Florida, which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in June 2026, Guitar.com reported. Reverend, founded by Joe Naylor in the Detroit area in 1997, now gives an address in Toledo, Ohio. B.C. Rich grew from Bernardo Chavez Rico’s family shop in Los Angeles and now lists an address in Orlando, Florida; its owner since 2019 is not named in the sources we checked.

Where guitars are made varies even within one brand: B.C. Rich’s own product pages list the United States, Korea and Indonesia.

This guide sets out what can be checked about each brand — who founded it, who owns it, and what it says about where its products are made — and marks clearly what rests only on the company’s own word.

New owners, a lawsuit and a made-in-China line.

The founders sold in April 2016 to a partnership including Archie Leach and Jeff Nicholson, co-owners of PlazaCorp Realty Advisors, the property firm that owned the factory building, MLive reported in 2018. In September 2017 Heritage announced a partnership with BandLab Technologies of Singapore to sell the brand worldwide, and, according to Wikipedia, citing MLive, a partnership with Rolling Stone to turn the factory campus into a destination with a live venue, an instrument store, a recording studio and rehearsal space; we could not confirm what was built. Gibson later said BandLab took a majority stake that year; the BBC, in October 2020, described Heritage as one of BandLab’s US-based guitar makers. In February 2018 MLive reported that ten workers had been let go and four more had quit in protest, with former staff saying managers were bringing in CNC machines; the company said it was emphasising “quality over quantity,” and BandLab’s chief executive, Meng Ru Kuok, said the goal was “to return Heritage to a place of stability and sustainability.”

Relations with Gibson were tested. In early 2020 Heritage filed a complaint against Gibson; Gibson replied that the two had signed a confidential agreement in 1991 and that Heritage’s new guitars did not adhere to it. In January 2023 Gearnews reported that both sides had dropped their legal action in an undisclosed settlement.

Today the website, run by Vista Musical Instruments LLC of Kalamazoo, sells a Custom Shop range and a Standard II collection, which it says are built at the Parsons Street factory, and calls its guitars “American-made.” The Ascent line, announced in March 2025 from $195, is made in China, Guitar World reported. In 2025 Heritage marked its 40th anniversary with Custom Shop editions.

For a design guide, Heritage shows how a place can work as a brand: its name, its address and its catalogue all point back to one building. Compare Gibson, the company it grew out of, and Guild, where Johnny Smith later took his endorsement. For this guide we use sunburst amber, cherry and walnut brown with a serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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