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Joined:
May 2011
Posts: 755
Location: Muenster/Germany | 
My newest vintage Ovation: a wonderful 1982 legend 12string tobacco sunburst, almost perfect for it´s age, but:Several of my Ovation guitars show badly made holes for the cables under the pickup. It may be only an annoyance, but somehow I feel that it cannot be good if the bridge has bad physical contact with the top. So I decided to cure this with a special "shim".
Sometimes it´s even worse than this 
Sitka spruce 
Little patience and be precise 
I glue it in, exactly 1.6mm(2 shims) 
Now the pickup has more contact surface. Finally use a small file to make a little space for the black pin. 
That´s it. On some of my Ovations the holes were so big that even the low E string had no wood under it. I don´t know if this makes a remarkable improvement of sound, but it makes me feel better;-) |
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Joined:
February 2014
Posts: 704
Location: moline,illinois | Nice find I love the sunbursts,is that a 1656?
What wood did you use for your shim,I've always wondered if getting custom shims made from rosewood or some other tone-wood would enhance the sound of my O's |
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Joined:
May 2011
Posts: 755
Location: Muenster/Germany | Yes, it´s a 1656, tobacco burst, perfectly matches the 1619 from the same year of production. It´s fun to compare the sound of the 1656 and the 1759, 2 different guitars with nearly the same appearance.
I made many experiments with different tonewoods for Ovation-shims and It may be an illusion but precise one-piece shims appear to omprove the dynamics of the acoustic guitars. For these here "surgery" shims I use the top-wood (I have a piece of original Ovation sika spruce which I cut in pieces) because I glue them on the top. Fot removable shims I use different hardwoods, the best was a piece of an old folding rule! No idea what wood this was. For Adamas I use ebony. |
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Joined:
June 2012
Posts: 2316
Location: Pueblo West, CO | Nice job.
What kind of glue did you use?
When I re-topped Jay's shiny bowl I made shims from a piece of rosewood. I don't know if they make the guitar sound better, but they definitely looked cool. |
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Joined:
October 2012
Posts: 1034
Location: Yokohama, Japan | Nice work DetlefMichel! My 1868 had the same problem so I just filled the holes up with black casting resin and re-drilled the holes cleanly. I like your method better though. Using wood to repair wood just seems like a better choice...and as Dan asks, "What kind of glue did you use?" |
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Joined:
May 2011
Posts: 755
Location: Muenster/Germany | Because the repair shim is not intended to be removed I use simple wood-glue (Ponal).
And usually I don´t file the holes to squares but in this case the drilling holes were too irregular. |
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Joined:
March 2005
Posts: 12755
Location: Boise, Idaho | My Folklore had the hole drilled through the brace, which cracked. I just used wood glue to fix it and it's been fine for years. |
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Bad drilled holes under Ovation pickups