Official Luthiers Forum!

Hello luthiers and repairers!
I was recently at a garage sale, and found a 1988 Ovation guitar for 20$. Not wanting to pass up such a great offer, I quickly purchased the guitar in it's current condition. The neck is in near perfect condition, save a small chip on the headstock and a crack here or there, but it still has original brass tuners and a beautiful mother of pearl inlay. Unfortunately that's where the beauty ends. When I first bought the guitar, the face was covered in stickers and had a horrible crack that was almost repaired by an epoxy, same with the bridge. The face was also painted black as well as part of the inside, making any model numbers nearly impossible to read. The back is not that great either, with what appears to be paint drip and several holes for what I believe are the remnants of an electronics kit seeing as the gain potentiometer is still intact. Now here's my question: What should I do? The neck is beautiful, but nowhere have I found how to construct a body like Ovation, in order to restore the guitar to what I believe was it's former glory. Any and all ideas would be great. Thanks!

P.S. I'm sorta new at this thing and on a very tight budget, so that may be a factor in what I do.

I've always wanted to make a set of speaker cabinets out of a pair of ovation guitars, you're half way there

I don't have any advice that you'd actually want however.

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Jim Watts
http://jameswattsguitars.com

This guy would dig it:



Seriously though first welcome to the OLF!

FYI Ovations have been kind of sort of the butt of jokes from some of us even though this is probably less than deserved... I don't know if it is the non-wood bodies that offend some purists or the idea that the Ovation guitar was born from the ashes of defense contracts for helicopters ending as a result of the end of the Vietnam war. In any event some here have been known to refer to Ovations as O*ations not spelling out the entire word as if it was a swear word or something. Who would do such an ignorant thing anyway....

Really seriously though we see lots of new members who joined because they have some wood of one sort or another and were inspired to try their hand at guitar building as a great way to use the wood that they have and prize. You have an ovation neck that needs a body. As mentioned no plans that I am aware of for how to make an O*ation (sorry, old habit... ) exist but if it were me and I saw value and utility in something but it was incomplete I might start looking for another guitar such as yours only hopefully with a better body and consider either cannibalizing both to make one or perhaps looking for a complete Ovation in better shape.

Something that makes Ovations poor candidates for any servicing or repair was the use of epoxy which can be more difficult, but not impossible, to reverse which is important for serviceability.

Welcome aboard!

Actually, this could be the ideal 'victim' guitar for your repair impulses. You likely won't get much criticism about 'ruining a lovely vintage guitar' on this one.

As Filippo suggested, some pictures would help.

Is the guitar playable in its present condition? (aside from the looks, what needs to be done?)

Cheers
John

One of the issues that I have and a friend of mine also has with victim guitars is that if they are not constructed in a conventional manner with say a real dovetail neck joint what is the value in learning how to saw off a cheap import doweled neck. Granted destroying the thing can be great fun... but you learn nothing about working on a conventional dovetail in the process. Same is true for any other unique and non-standard approach that is only found on cheap guitars - the value of the learning does not translate well if you are learning something that you will never have to do again.

That's why I like Claymores....

I have an Ovation that was purchased at the Rock Shop in Springfield, MO in 1981 by a friend of mine. I bought it from him the next year when he needed funds for a honeymoon. It's a deep bowl design and plays awesome and sounds decent as well. Oddly enough, I still ahven't finished my first build for my girls and they started a guitar club at my fifth grader's elementary school so I strung it last night with light strings so she can take it to school for the classes till I have the 000 complete. The 000 is a little big for her and the Ovation is way too big! That's a good excuse for me to build her a 00!

I've wondered about using the plastic body for testing different bracing ideas on a soundboard. If you could glue a thin paper "gasket" between the top your testing and the plastic body and string her up, it would be neat for a beginner like me to play with difernt variables like top thickness, cross-grain stiffness, various depths of scalloping on the X brace legs, larger and smaller bridge plates or different thickness of bridge plates, change the splay of the X brace angle etc. and see the impact on the tone of the guitar. "Maybe" the hard plastic back would be "neutral" in it's influence on tone since it likely doesn't vibrate so wouldn't couple with the top. For instance, I would love to make a fairly standard, early 30's style Martin bracing and then gradually trim down the peaks at the lower end of the X brace legs till there was no peak left just to see how/if the tone of the guitar changed (I can't visualize how those peaks affect tone).

Maybe I could make a trap door on the back of the plastic bowl that could be opened up to shave braces!

That's all the ideas I have.

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Formerly known as Adaboy.......

Well, I meant replacing the whole top with a test top........so the test top wouldn't have epoxy on the braces. I think Ovation uses some kind of twist on fan bracing so it likely wouldn't be the type bracing I would be interested in testing.

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Formerly known as Adaboy.......

I went sailing last Sunday and one thing you always want to remember when you go sailing is to throw a paddle in the boat

Well since you posted we know that you made it back... In addition to a paddle or PLO (Paddle like object (AND NO intent to be political)) <=== note nested loop... a tow rope is always a good thing to have...

Jefferson! First of all Ovations are very hard to work on! The bowl back makes this very hard, vis-a-vis, the POQ (Preeminent Ovation question)...how do you hold it!

There's also the point of what your working with!
Namely a plywood soundboard! Crap sounding no matter what you do!! The glues used in plywood are reasonably soft and don't transfer vibration very well giving an Ovation that wet cardboard box type of thump when played! Horrible bracing schemes! Some kind of cross between an A-brace, H-brace and fan brace depending on what year and make you really have.

Depending on the guitar, the bridge can be all over the place, making proper intonation impossible without resetting the bridge or re-cutting the saddle slot. I had an Ovation with almost an 1/8 inch misplaced bridge, surely 3/32. Fret board can be off very much also! The tolerance on these guitars is all over the place. It's as if whoever made these guitars didn't have a very good idea of how to set up a guitar in the first place then take some very unsound guitar manufacturing processes to really guild the fertilizer instead of any lilies!

I called the Ovation company about the glues used in the guitar because of rumors of a toxic glue that when heated will kill you, your dog and anything else in a 100 foot radius...not true! Everything is epoxy! Even the finish!

The neck is glued in on the cheaper models in a weird mortise and tenon that's very sloppy because it's jigged when glued to set neck angle and general orientation.

There are literally 10's of thousands of Ovations made with many different setups but the ones Ive worked on are setup pretty much as I just said.

Some have a standard kerfing arrangement some have a plastic lip molded right to the back bowl. Considering how old your guitar is, it's probably wood kerfed. The crack you mentioned is common, I've seen a lot of them. Generally from the purfing at the lower bout sound board seam running up sometimes to the bridge.

Ovation can sound pretty good if plugged in! but just for around the house playing...not very good.

As for what to do? ... if it was me, I'd clean it up, repair the crack such as it can be steam it and turn around and sell it. You got a good deal at $20.00 they can go on ebay for $80.00 or more.

Most Luthiers don't have a lot of experience working on them because they're not worth much and they're not fun to work on.

I hope this helps. I was on a very tight budget for a long time and was pretty much grateful for even having an Ovation but there's better ways to go. If you have pix of what specifically need to be repaired we can help if you plan to continue.

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Billy Dean Thomas
Covina, CA

"Multi famam, conscientiam, pauci verentur."
(Many fear their reputation, few their conscience)

Halloween is coming! My son is looking for a Ninja Turtle costume.

Mike

Ovation guitars and gonorrhea, proof that getting the clap is not always a desirable thing.

They do make great toboggans though.

Cheers

Kim

As often as we like Filippo



More than one way to skin a billby



Cheers

Kim

In America, a toboggan can be something you put on ur head (as well as a sled). But there is something amusing about hitting 45mph on an alpine slope riding an Ovation. To the OP, hope ur taking this ribbing well.

Indeed, hope it is taken as intended, all in good fun

Cheers

Kim

Having seen Ovation take a beating before in this forum and with good reason based upon the context of repair-ability, I , as an owner of not one but two, feel obligated to defend the brand. I won't waste too much effort, however. I will point out that my Custom Legend and 1994 Anniversary both have solid tops, not plywood. If your $20 version is a laminate top you should spend less of your resources in repair. As has been mentioned, pictures would help us help you. It is hard to determine the condition by your description. Another tip for all Ovation repair questions would be to phrase your question in a way as to not bait the bashing. Seriously, "What to do with this Ovation?" is just too tempting for even well-meaning OLFers.

Danny R. Little

I've got less repair experience than just about everyone on this forum, and yet I still managed to have a friend ask me to take a look at his Ovation, because the action was screwed up.

Well, after having the guitar in my house for a week, playing it a few times to confirm that the plastic made the guitar sound just like I expected it would, staring at it, hemming and hawing, and just generally getting a sick feeling in my stomach, I sent it back, begging off that I wasn't qualified (true) and that I didn't want to further damage it (not entirely true)

Some Ovations have a little port hole you can open to get your hand in there and do your dirty work. Thats a big plus. The best sounding Ovation I ever played was one made from a carbon fiber top. I was really surprised that this hunk of plasticized epoxy could produce a nice warm sound but it did.

I've always just said, like many others, Ovations are fine for the stage. IMO if you put a peizo in beautifully made guitar you may as well just play an Ovation

Use it to test the banjo mute.