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!