Hello!

First, let me introduce myself. As my handle says, I'm Dan Savage. That's me in the avatar. I've been playing the guitar since I got my first one (Yamaha FG-26) for my 16th birthday in 1975. These days, I mostly play fingerstyle, strumming and some flat-picking.

I haven't really played for the last 10-15 years and I recently got back into playing. I bought my first Ovation guitar. I've known about them since the 1970s. I've always had a hankering for one, but never acted on the urge until recently.

I love the sound, playability and the looks of the guitar. What I didn't like was how the guitar splayed away from me the first time I tried to use it with a strap. I like to practice standing up and I just couldn't get a 'grip' on the guitar with my right arm. Every time I tried to pull the guitar into my body, it wanted to 'squirt' out from beneath my arm.

I thought about how to fix it and came to the conclusion that I needed to do something to 'flatten' out the round back.

I found a product called the 'Standing Ovation' on eBay, but I didn't like having to keep track of an additional piece of equipment.

I thought about it some more and realized the problem could be solved by moving the strap button from the upper bass bout to somewhere else.

On my other guitars, I've mounted the button on the treble side of the neck heel. But, I really didn't want to drill into the heel on the Ovation.

So, I mounted the strap button on the side of the cut-away, as seen in the pics below.

Now, the guitar stays put and doesn't splay away and I'm very happy with how it feels while I'm standing and playing.

I was careful to make sure the strap button screw was sunk into the neck block and not the neck, itself.

Strap pic #1
Strap pic #2
Strap pic #3
Strap pic #4
Strap pic #5

 (Mods: I intend to stick around, so please activate my full posting privledges. Please also move this thread to the General Posting topic, if you think it's appropriate)

This is the Celebrity, GC24D-WRY.

Nope. I haven't really done anything to it. It comes, or rather, came from the factory with the block fretboard inlays.

It caught my eye when I went to the local music store to buy some strings and a capo.

I call it my un-Ovation-Ovation because of the simple abalone rosette and block fretboard inlays and deep wine red color applied to the flame maple front. The green in the abalone contrasts nicely with the red front. I really like how the gold tuners and amber buttons are coordinated with the head stock.

When I sat down to play it, I really liked the thin bound neck and how the maple front sounds. Very different from spruce. I also like that the fretboard binding hides the ends of the frets which makes it really nice to play.

If I could have changed anything it would have been to stain the bridge the same color as the fretboard. The pic below shows it as a rosewood color, but as you can see from the pic you posted, mine is as dark as ebony. It would have been nice to have the bridge match. I would have also liked to have seen them use abalone instead of MOP for the bridge screw covers.

Other than that, I'm really happy with it.

Dan

Thanks, Damon.

One of my main concerns was how stable the guitar would be hands-off. As it turns out, it's a very secure place to have the strap button mounted.

In the pic below, the guitar is shown hanging naturally in the strap. My right arm isn't in playing position on the lower bout. I can move all around and bow forward and the strap doesn't ever come close to peeling off the button, even when the face of the guitar is straight down, parallel to the ground.

The other nice thing about this particular spot is that the hole I drilled would be easy to hide, should I ever want to move the strap button back to the stock location. Why, I don't know, but one can never be sure what's going to happen in the future.

Thanks again.

Dan