[Ovation Guitar Serial Number 11
Joseph Zyiuahndy
I was somewhat surprised back in the Eighties to see you playing an Ovation "Classical" onstage. It seems many "guitar purists" and luthiers tend to look down on Ovations for a variety of real and imagined reasons.I like Ovations for a number of reasons: they seem to be well-built and well-tempered, they are very well behaved through a PA/monitor system, and you can set up the action to be very fast. The only "bad" thing I can say is that they don't have that deep, "woody" Martin/Guild/Taylor sound.I can only assume you have to be careful about appearing to endorse a certain manufacturer in this forum, but can you tell us what it was you liked and disliked about the Ovation?Thanks again Pat...hope you have (or had) a great holiday!
hi dave,i am always kind of amazed when i hear people put down ovations as well - to me they are more than good instruments. they have a very particular sound, are generally very well intonated (i find this often to be a problem, even on very expensive handmade instruments), and they are virtually indestructable. i always have one laying around the house just to try things on - and if i can get it to sound good on there, it usually translates well to whatever axe it ends up on in the end.
The Ovation Guitar Company is a manufacturer of string instruments. Ovation primarily manufactures steel-string acoustic guitars (both 6 and 12-string versions) and nylon-string guitars, often with pickups for electric amplification.[5] In 2015, it became a subsidiary of Drum Workshop after being acquired from KMCMusicorp.[6]
The company's Ovation and Adamas guitars are known for their round backs, which gives them a recognizable shape. The latter are also well known for the use of carbon fiber tops (instead of the typically wood tops for acoustic guitars). Apart from guitars, the company currently produces acoustic basses, mandolins and ukuleles.[3]
The Kaman Corporation soon diversified, branching into nuclear weapons testing, commercial helicopter flight, development and testing of chemicals, and helicopter bearings production. In the early 1960s, however, financial problems from the failure of its commercial flight division forced it to expand into new markets, such as entertainment and leisure. Charles Kaman, still an avid guitar player, became interested in making guitars.[7][11]
In 2008, KMCMusicorp (and with that the Ovation brand) was sold to the Fender Musical Instruments Corporation.[12] In 2014, Fender announced that they were closing the Ovation guitar factory in New Hartford, Connecticut, leaving all production of Ovation guitars overseas.[13] Before that announcement, Fender established a U.S. production of various acoustic guitars in the New Hartford factory. Alongside Ovation and Adamas guitars, which were produced there for decades, Fender started a U.S. production of other Fender-owned brands in that factory, as is known, Guild (Guild Guitar Company) and Fender Acoustic Custom Shop.[14]
Shortly after closing the New Hartford factory on April 30, 2014, it was announced that the Ovation brand had been sold to the company Drum Workshop, alongside a few other previously Fender-owned brands. The announcement was made on January 7, 2015. In addition to the Ovation brand, Drum Workshop also opened a smaller New Hartford factory near the old facility and reinstated the previously ceased U.S. production of Ovation and Adamas guitars.[15]
In 2022, the German-based GEWA company acquired the brand and assets of Ovation and Adamas from Drum Workshop and moved production to a smaller shop in New Hartford, Connecticut. In January 2024, Ovation and Adamas guitars were displayed at the NAMM Show in Anaheim, CA as part of the larger GEWA family of brands.
Charles Kaman put a team of employees to work to invent a new guitar in 1964.[7][16] For the project, Kaman chose a small team of aerospace engineers and technicians, several of whom were woodworking hobbyists as well. One of these was Charles McDonough, who created the Ovation Adamas model.[history 1] Kaman founded Ovation Instruments, and in 1965 its engineers and luthiers (guitar makers) worked to improve acoustic guitars by changing their conventional materials. The R&D team spent months building and testing prototype instruments. Their first prototype had a conventional "dreadnought" body, with parallel front and back perpendicular to the sides. The innovation was the use of a thinner, synthetic back, because of its foreseen acoustic properties. Unfortunately, the seam joining the sides to the thin back was prone to breakage. To avoid the problem of a structurally unstable seam, the engineers proposed a synthetic back with a parabolic shape. By mid-1966, according to Ovation, they realized that the parabolic shape produced a desirable tone with greater volume than the conventional dreadnought.[17]
Once the engineers had settled on a parabolic shape, they turned their attention to developing a substance that could be molded into this bowl-like shape. Using their knowledge of high-tech aerospace composites, they developed Lyrachord, a patented material comprising interwoven layers of glass filament and bonding resin.
The first Ovation guitar made its debut in November 1966. Its Lyrachord body gave the instrument, according to the company, unprecedented projection and ringing sustain.[history 2] Compared to modern Ovation Guitars, the initial instruments had a shiny bowl that was used again, for example, in the Balladeer 40th anniversary re-issue.
Upon completion, the first Ovation guitar was called the "Josh White Model,"[model 5][model 6] which White played at the Hotel America (Hartford, Connecticut), November 14, 1966; at the same show, the Balladeers played Balladeer models.[2] The show was witnessed by "300 representatives of the press and the music industry"[1]
The Ovation Roundback Balladeer first caught national attention in 1968 when Glen Campbell hosted a variety show called The Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour on CBS, and in the following year, 1969, he became one of Ovation's first endorsers.[7]
Ovation guitars and amplifiers, together with musical instruments distributed by another Kaman company, Coast Wholesale Musical Co., were featured on The Partridge Family musical sitcom TV series.[19]
Ovation guitar design reflects its founder's engineering training and development of Kaman helicopters. Ovation guitars replace the instrument's conventional back and sides with composite synthetic bowls. Kaman felt there were structural weaknesses in the orthogonal joining of the sides, and that a composite material could provide a smooth body. Ovation claims the parabolic bowls dramatically reduce feedback, allowing greater amplification. Improved synthetics techniques from helicopter engineering control vibrations in the bowl. Ovation developed a thin neck, striving for the feel of an electric guitar's neck, but with additional strength from layers of mahogany and maple reinforced by a steel rod in an aluminum channel.[5] The composite materials and thin necks reduced weight.
For its soundboards, Ovation uses Sitka spruce, a wood that Kaman engineers used in helicopter blades. In the 1970s, Ovation developed thinner soundboards with carbon-based composites laminating a thin layer of birch in its Adamas model. The Adamas model dispersed the sound-hole of the traditional soundboard among 22 small sound holes in the upper chamber of the guitar, which Ovation says yields greater volume and further reduces feedback during amplification (pioneered in the Adamas model in 1977).[5] Although the area of the multiple sound holes is equal to the area of a single-soundhole, the altered position allows a new style of guitar bracing (e.g. Adamas Bracing). The design strengthens the soundboard, reducing the traditional design's bracing and hence weight. In the 1980s, Ovation introduced shallow-bowl guitars to appeal to electric guitarists.
Ovations reached the height of their popularity in the 1980s, where they were often seen during live performances by touring artists, such as Rush's Alex Lifeson or Paul Simon in The Concert in Central Park. Ovation guitars' synthetic bowl-shaped back and early use (1971) of pre-amplifiers, onboard equalization and piezo pickups were particularly attractive to live acoustic musicians who constantly battled feedback problems from the high volumes needed in live venues.[citation needed]
When he became one of Ovation Guitars' first endorsers, Glen Campbell suggested reducing the weight of the guitar, which he had discovered caused back strain.[20] After that, Ovation reduced the weight of several models and pioneered "super-shallow" guitar bodies.
While it was produced, Ovation's super-shallow 1867 Legend was the recommended guitar in Robert Fripp's Guitar Craft.[21][22] Tamm (1990) wrote that the acoustic 1867 Legend has "a gently rounded super-shallow body design that may be about as close to the shape and depth of an electric guitar as is possible without an intolerable loss of tone quality. Fripp liked the way the Ovation 1867 fitted against his body, which made it possible for him to assume the right-arm picking position he had developed using electric guitars over the years; on deeper-bodied guitars, the Frippian arm position is impossible without uncomfortable contortions."[21]
The Adamas name mainly stands for guitars with a carbon fiber top, although there are exceptions (one is the Adamas 2081WT - WT stands for woodtop). Until the closure of the New Hartford, Connecticut factory in June 2014, all Adamas models were produced in the U.S.[24] LX does not only stand for U.S. made. Originally LX indicated an Ovation guitar that included new features not available on previous models.
Back in 2007 Ovation explained on its website that new features included the new OP-Preamp, an advanced neck system (lightweight dual-action truss rod, carbon fiber stabilizers), a patented pickup (made of 6 elements), inlaid epaulets, scalloped bracing, and a new hard composite Lyrachord GS body.[model 8] Back then, there was no AX model line. The first AX models appeared on the Ovation-website in 2010. Based on the website's history, the LX features were introduced in 2004.
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