On eBay there was an old Ovation Folkore guitar for sale, for a reasonable price. I always was curious about these guitars and I am not afraid of smaller repairs with Ovation guitars, if needed.
I did not know how old the guitar was, as far as I knew these were built between 1972 and 1982. The case was in bad shape with some cracks ouside, so...
..what I did not expect was an absolutely flawless guitar (only little fretwear, no wonder after all these years). The serial nr. said it was built in 1977.

Watch the factory-built-in counter-bearings for the machine axles, these are not in use on many guitars today.Makes tuning easier.

I wondered how these 12-fret x-braced guitars might sound. This one sounds like no other Ovation I ever had. Imagine a custom legend with a strong mid-boost, it´s a bell-like tone with impressive basses (I use Thomastik strings like on all vintage guitars) and with a really incredible low action. The neck is straight, it´s a set neck guitar, the neck angle is still perfect and the old preamp works perfectly.

Now I wanted to know what bracings made this surprising sound, the 1614 guitar was not even equipped with the highest grade spruce top, but it sounds so wonderful:

What you see is not the picture of an ols attic, it´s the inner bracing of a goos sounding guitar. Unbelievable, if you compare this to other guitars which cost 610 USD-in 1977!! no wonder that I found no nails in it;-), this is another proof for the fact that the Ovation people choose whatever they wanted to make a guitar, with stunning results.

I believe that this is going to become one of my favourites.

Agree...these are great guitars. It would be interesting to see what the original JW looked like in this area. Here is a pic of what they did with the 40th

(40th.jpg)

40th.jpg (31KB - 1 downloads)

I loved the old folklores so much (especially the burst finish ones  ) that I eventually had them build a custom one for me.

Congrats!

(And send pictures to me...hint, hint.)

Of course the drill was a little wild on this guitar, too. The hole for the cables was big enough for two, reached until the area under the 6th string.

Like always, I took a little piece of spruce anf filed it to fit in the redundant drill hole:

Instead of clamps I used a piece of wood to fix it (remember Arumako: DRY RUNS!!)

The brace inside was not affected too much, but the pin fixed it at the same time.

No big deal.

Astounding that Folklore sounds so good given how crude/primitive her X-bracing is.