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Joined:
December 2009
Posts: 686
Location: Route 66, just east of the Cadillac Ranch | I have a question that might be best answered by one of you that worked at the Ovation Factory.
1) Typically, what gauge strings did Ovation ship on acoustics in the early days, i.e. light, medium, heavy?
2) At some point was a decision made to change the gauge of strings? If so, about what year did that occur and what gauge strings did you move to?
I was visiting with a luthier today and he is of the opinion that guitar companies as a whole made a change to lighter strings to improve playability at the expense of sound because it sold more guitars. He asked if this held true for Ovation. I don’t have a clue and am hoping that one of you do.
Thanks,
Nick | |
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Joined:
March 2005
Posts: 2793
Location: Atlanta, GA. | It would seem to me that changing to lighter strings to improve playability may hold true only with a guitar of lesser quality that is hard to play to begin with.
Can't imagine that theory would apply to USA Ovations.
Then again, what do I know? | |
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Joined:
February 2002
Posts: 5750
Location: Scotland | Originally posted by Nick B.:
I was visiting with a luthier today and he is of the opinion that guitar companies as a whole made a change to lighter strings to improve playability at the expense of sound because it sold more guitars. He asked if this held true for Ovation. I don’t have a clue and am hoping that one of you do.
Thanks,
Nick [/QB] This is absolute nonsense. Sophisticated string options started to become available in the early 60's and evolved from there, mostly due to the Ernie Ball company, and later Vinci, D'Addario and a few others all of whom contributed to progesses in manufacturing techniques, gauge choices, materials, QC etc. There is no specific point in history where a whole bunch of manufacturers went "let's string 'em light, that'll suck 'em in" Playability and tone (or deficiencies in either) is down to much more than just string guage, and if you are dealing with an alleged luthier who doesn't get that, then I personally would be going elsewhere. | |
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Joined:
December 2009
Posts: 686
Location: Route 66, just east of the Cadillac Ranch | Paul makes a pretty good case and I won't attempt to defend the person's reasoning (as I'm confident I would loose this argument).
Colin/Paul,
Thank you both for your responses. | |
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Joined:
October 2005
Posts: 4081
Location: Utah | Originally posted by Nick B.:
I have a question that might be best answered by one of you that worked at the Ovation Factory.
1) Typically, what gauge strings did Ovation ship on acoustics in the early days, i.e. light, medium, heavy?
2) At some point was a decision made to change the gauge of strings? If so, about what year did that occur and what gauge strings did you move to?
I was visiting with a luthier today and he is of the opinion that guitar companies as a whole made a change to lighter strings to improve playability at the expense of sound because it sold more guitars. Then Guitar Center heard about this "Playability" conspiracy and set about to undermine it. They made sure to age all strings on display guitars so they are dead and corroded to the touch. Truss rods were loosened a half turn to raise the action, too. /sarcasm (sorry, still working on the coffee this morning) | |
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Ovation's string history