Hi OFC! The busy busy summer has swung into an even busier Autumn and all my projects are on hold! Still, feeling fortunate and blessed to learn from sandshark's interesting '75 Pacemaker project. Dan's double 1717 & 1111 Projects remind me of the '85 MotoGP Season when Freddie Spencer won both the 250cc & 500cc Motorcycle Road Racing World Championship! Exciting stuff!

Anyway, my son has gone off to college and he chose to take his 1861-5 with him in case he needs to plug-in. So I have access to my 1117-4 again. Ever since you all helped me with the bridge repair, my son has been happily plucking away at the beautiful and huge sounding O. It's been awhile, so I tuned her up, and was surprised to hear a very slight buzz. I checked everything out, but no loose rosettes, bridge saddle shims, binding, purfling, nothing. Couldn't find anything significant until I felt under the soundboard, and just next to the rosette on the bass side this is what I found...

What in the world is that? The bracing pattern is the standard 1117-4 VT-11 bracing pattern, but the paint makes it seem like this was done at the factory. I wonder if this was a factory refurb of some kind? Maybe the density of the sound board in this area was especially light. In either case, this beautiful O was a gift (had to force my son's friend who gave it to us to accept $75 bucks for it!); so I'm not complaining, but the block (dare I say "brace") is loose, and I'm pretty sure this is the reason for the very slight but noticeable buzz.

If this is the factory condition, I would bet the folks at the Mother Ship determined these additional "braces" were necessary to maintain structural integrity or provide acoustic balance. The process that follows would be to simply re-glue the "braces" and secure them to eliminate the buzz.

However, if these "braces" were installed later, they would have to be robbing the guitar of some amount of bass response. In this case, I'd rather remove the blocks. I guess I could remove them anyway and insert a thinner veneer sheet to provide structural/acoustic integrity if that is a necessity. After all there are many incredible 1117-4s out there without these extra blocks.

I'm kind of at a loss on this one...truth is I can't tell for sure if this is factory, aftermarket luthier, or just a hack job? Definitely in need of some BFLG assistance! HELP!

Far be it from me to know anything particular about guitar bracing patterns and installations, but I am thinking that perhaps the additional blocks were installed to prevent buzzing.  In other words, maybe the buzz will intensify if they are removed.. but I'd still try it.  You could always re-install them with fresh glue to make them solid and tight again if it sounds worse without them.

Thanks for all the insight everybody! Sure do appreciate the BFLG input! Removed the extra "bracing" and found what the problem was...

Arumako... from what you and Dan have agreed about the consistent black factory paint coverage as you found it, I also agree that it stands to reason it happened during birth. So I'm picturing someone at the mother ship decades ago who had to put that patch on there, and at the end of the day they probably felt that they had somewhat cheated their craftsmanship on that one, though saved the company some money by keeping the production profit alive on their bench that day, and maybe even mumbled something about it to a co-worker over beers after work, figuring something deep in the bowl like that would never... ever... be noticed by anyone, and eventually moved on to talk about sports scores and order a sandwich. End of story. But no. Forty-three years later came you :-)

LOL! You've got quite an imagination Love O Fair! It would be cool to find out what was really happening at the factory at that time. The guitar was either sold as a refurb, or this may have been a temporary counter-measure that was applied for a limited production run. When fine luthiers like the guys at the Mother Ship are under "production schedule pressure" building hundreds of guitars in a week, they probably had to resort to something like this more often than they cared too. I found an interesting thread on the OFC about a 1117-4 owned by longtime OFCer "standing" at this link...

http://ovationfanclub.com/megabbs/forums/thread-view.asp?tid=31368&mid=418917

The links for the pictures are gone, but in the 2nd paragraph after the 3rd photo link marker he says, "Any guess what the extra bracing inside might be for? If it was to support a soundboard crack repair, there is NO visible repair on the top, nor inside, other than the extra bracing." I have a feeling, his 1117 probably had a similar quick fix done on it.

I wonder how many 1117s actually have this fix applied to it? The need for this particular quick fix may have been a reason for discontinuing the VT-11 bracing altogether. Who knows? It's amazing that after 43 years this 1117-4 is still strong and sounds majestic - even with that extra bracing (excluding the buzz, that is). The following photo shows the actual position of the bracing from an outter "sound board" perspective. Look at the size of that thing! At 4.5" x 0.5" x 0.375", it's actually one of the most significant and massive braces used on this guitar. It's designed with a slot to secure the cross brace...the cross brace will not budge. Copious amounts of adhesive further ensures rigidity. The design is probably not only structural, but also acoustic (per tpa's suggestion). Very interesting stuff...

Kinda looking forward to replacing the cross brace with some nice Canadian Birch stock that I cut from some unused hockey sticks. If my estimation is correct, the bass response should improve just a bit and exactly to my liking! Cool!

I had an 1117 with bracing different than any other I'd seen documented. It was a "Deluxe Balladeer", prior to them coming up with the name 'Legend'. It was VT style for sure, but different. I called it "VT-9".

You just never know what you'll find under the hood on these. 

It now lives with Riccardo in Italy.

(DSCN0338rbg.jpg)

(Ovation-VT-9.jpg)

DSCN0338rbg.jpg (75KB - 0 downloads)

Ovation-VT-9.jpg (13KB - 0 downloads)

None of those old photos would show much, but here's the image I posted back then indicating the extra bracing (in red):

I still have the guitar, and still play it. I never did determine what that extra bracing was for, nor when it was added. 

It's interesting that we both have '73 1117's and both of those guitars appear to have very similar "bonus" bracing. That makes me suspect it was intentional and not some kind of one-off or Friday afternoon repair patch (plus, if that was the case, such a guitar would almost certainly have been marked as a second.)

The action at the 12th fret on mine has been just a tiny bit higher than I'd prefer since the day I bought it. The truss rod has been tightened as far as it will go, the shims have been removed and the saddle shaved down as far as possible. You can't do a standard neck-reset on those old ones, so, the only solution would be a bowl-bend. I wasn't inclined to try doing a bowl-bend back then, so I decided to wait to see if it got any worse. It never did, I've kept it tuned to concert pitch and hanging on the wall almost constantly (when I havent been playing it) for these last (7?) years, and the neck hasn't moved any further (and it still sounds fantastic.) So, I have no plans to bother attempting anything drastic unless things change.

(Going back to read that old thread, I couldn't help but get choked-up reading comments from our old friend Dobro… RIP Greg.)

As I'm sure you know, older hockey sticks were made from birch, maple, aspen or some laminate combination of all of the above. Some are a fusion of fiberglass and wood or carbon fiber and wood. In either case, there's some good hardwood content in most older hockey sticks.

So I cut them and shape them into guitar braces. Usually, I use repurposed hockey-stick bracing (as you've called them) where structural integrity is of primary importance. The nice thing about hardwood bracing is that you can get a lot of structural strength with a very small footprint. For example, Most Asian made ovations have reinforcement laminated wood blocks under the sound board by the neck joint like this...

When removed from the guitar they look like this (the two laminated blocks on the outter right and left). The black stick is a portion of a solid birch hockey stick.

The two pieces in the middle are the braces made from the hockey stick. Notice how much smaller the birch braces are. They are also very strong, adhere well with adhesives and can be shaped in detail to fit specific spaces. It's an oversimplified statement; but basically, the smaller the braces the more the sound board can be freed to resonate. I've rebuilt a classical guitar that uses old hockey stick bracing and the braces are very small, but the top is strong and resonates well. I don't think there are any major advantages in doing this; except for me, it spares me the expense of buying and shipping expensive brace stock from overseas all the way to Japan.

Anyway, I sure hope this clears up the confusion. Thanks for commenting, and I pray things are headed in a better direction forya this summer!

Lol! Thanks Al! As long as she doesn't board a plane to search for her Canadian roots, I think I'll be okay!

However, it's interesting that Mr. Kaman didn't settle for X-bracing after all the different patterns attempted on production guitars upto that point (Damon67's "VT-9" Deluxe Balladeer earlier in the thread is really interesting). It only hit me recently how significant an engineering feat the A-brace is. I may be wrong, but a chronological review of Ovation bracing patterns suggests that the A-brace became the standard on which the Quintad bracing for the Adamas and the Elites were developed. I just can't say enough about the Quintad bracing on my 1678 and 1868 - incredibly responsive and durable. Can I hear a, "Bye, bye cross-bracing!" from anybody? It's also interesting that peripheral patterns like the K-5 (that seem theoretically sound) were done away with. Really interesting stuff!

I am quite conviced about the advatages of any non-croos-bracing. The sound and durability of Adamas or Elite guitars proof it. That´s why I some years ago choose a bracing like this when I decided to have a custom 12string guitar built for me from my favourite luthier Ernie Rissmann. He built a short-scale 12fret cutaway guitar with a deep body and a spanish body size, with offset soundholes. The bracing is even thinner than that of Ovation 12string guitars and has only one (curved!) transversal brace instead of 2 straight ones. The result is such a powerful guitar that I later had a nylonstring and a 6-string made with the same features. These 3 guitars can easily outplay any other of my guitars.
Here are pics of the 12 string braces, the Nylonstring and the 6-steelstring:

The Ovation A braced guitar have a wonderful sound, though, but the bracing pattern has a weak spot: there is no complete brace through the whole lenght of the top, and the metal reinforcements on that point are too soft and not very elegant..my parlor 12 string guitar´s top almost broke down in the middle, this would not have happened if there woud habe been 2 supending long braces instead. The Gibson Mark bracing of the 70´s  had the same problem, great sounding but the tops tended to move too much. I had one...Besides that continuosly fixed long brace surely will perform better than a 3-piece patchwork. See above.
And you can play much lighter strings on a guitar with fan bracing than with X-bracing, with same results. But..does the fan bracing only make sense when you do not use a center soundhole? Did anyone try to make a dreadnought-body guitar with a stronger fan bracing?? Why not, the center-soundhole CL sound great...

Hi DetlefMichel! It's always very cool to get your take on things here at the OFC. Thanks for sharing pictures of your Rissman guitars! Just fabulous. I don't think you've ever uploaded any videos of those! Would love to hear them all, but especially that nylon stringer! If you get a chance, please upload a video or two! I'm already subscribed to your channel so even if you don't post it here, I'll definitely see it.

I'm no engineer, so I need to be careful about over simplification of complex acoustic constructions, but I'm in total agreement with you about unnecessary cross-bracings under the bridge area. In reality, the bridge itself acts like a short cross-brace anyway; and the simplicity of the Quintad design is just so elegant.

Now see, that's just it. My 1612 rebuilt by Dan Savage has a K-5 bracing pattern that does exactly what you say. Long braces along the length of the guitar on both sides of the sound hole like this (pre-rebuild photo);

You'd think this would work better than an A-brace, but the K-5 was short-lived and eventually discontinued. My 1612 is completely torrefied, and the closest thing to a deep bowl A-braced guitar I have is my 97C (which I do love), but it's a 12-Fretter. One of my 1861s and my 5986 is A-braced, but they're both SSBs and are not comparable. However, when comparing just the bracing patterns (a lot of subtle differences, but...), the A-brace has a bit of a "tighter waist" where the lower cross-brace meets the lateral braces;

Seems like that would allow the top to resonate just a bit more. All 7 of the lateral braces on the A-brace extend close to the butt end of the guitar whereas only 5 out of the 7 lateral braces extend down toward the butt end on the K-5. Frankly, even if I had a directly comparable guitar, I get the feeling, I wouldn't be able to tell an A-braced guitar from a K-5 braced guitar, but with the sensitivity of the equipment that Mr. Kaman was using, these little physical geometric differences could have looked massive? The Quintad bracing is every bit as interesting...

The area on the bass side of the guitar is a little more restricted and the braces fan out a little bit more than an A-brace, but the all lateral bracing construction must contribute to a more unified movement of the soundboard which would enable the top to "pump-oout" more resonance so to speak. Anyway, thanks for chimming in with your insights and please share some sound bites of those beautiful Rissman guitars when you have time!