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Location: Seattle | Originally posted by TheEliteist:
Six years ago I bought a new 1868 Elite. It was in impeccable shape. Perfect! a 10 out of 10.
Last week, I received a new 1858 Elite drop shipped from the factory. It came with a nasty scratch on the back of the bowl, and glue on one of the epaulets.
If quality control says or means any thing, it does not look good for Ovation. It appears to me they are slipping. Of course, this is an isolated incident.
O' and not to mention cheapening of the product its self. My first Elite was made with a AAA top, and this last one with AA.
It looks like the way of things to come. I just hope they can stay in business.
Dale
So I'm waiting for one of you guys to explain to this gentleman that the reason his new Ovation is clearly inferior to his 6 year old Ovation...is marketing.
Tough Love,
Sonny |
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Location: NJ | as I understand current company policy prohibits employees to post on the message board on company time.
but I do know that they read us. that you can be sure of.
Just wanted to mention that many of you have sounded off about acoustic only ovations. I picked up a few acoustic only Adamas guitars meant for the export market. Not one person in the US has asked about them but I have had several requestions from europe and asia regarding those guitars.
So that brings us back to
Q "why build shallow bowl guitars?"
A Demand and they sell |
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Location: SoCal | Al:
That's an interesting comment about acoustic only Adamii. There was a time in my life when I saw no need for an acoustic electric, as I never intended to play in front of people.
Times change and now all my Ovations (except my 68 Deluxe Balladeer) are acoustic electrics. I probably wouldn't buy one that I couldn't plug in.
But that's not an exclusive thought to Ovations. Any guitar I buy, I want to be able to plug in.
But I also want it to sound good when it's not plugged in. Which means I want a deep body (ok, I could live with a mid depth bowl) and a great acoustic sound. Don't want it to sound like a Snailor or a Martinez or any of those. I've played enough Ovations to know that when Ovation puts it's mind to it, they can make a great acoustic sound -- thru the soundholes, not the amp. |
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Location: Scotland | And this is where it all falls apart. The factors that make an acoustic guitar inspiring and fun to play unplugged are exactly the factors which make it a nightmare to amplify. No single guitar will do both jobs well. The more I have to deal with noisy audiences and fuck-witted, deaf, so-called "sound engineers" who wouldn't know what an acoustic guitar is supposed to sound like if they were fucked in the ass with one, the more I feel like ordering 2 or 3 Vipers. Or retiring. |
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Location: puerto vallarta, mexico | i played my adamas deep 6 string the other night at the club when i broke the high g on my ss adamas 12, two tunes into the night. i sent someone home to get me another guitar (i only live a short block fron the club) while i limped along kinda like driving a dually (12s are great in that regard). it was the first time i had gigged all night(4-45 min sets) with the 7 1/8 deep bowl. it was battle of the bulges, and man, did the old harley syndrome in the right shoulder start getting to me. you can't jusy lay it on the couch and take a cold pacifico break in the middle of a set. comfort at a gig is a point for ss that wins with me. they are as comfortable as an acoustic can get. i currently have only 2 ss guitars and love em both. the other is an 83 collectors series.
having said that i just bought a 6768 elite to gig with. we'll see------- |
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Location: Parkersburg, WV | Ovation has always had a history of being a company that has chosen to innovate as opposed to imitate. The original roundbacks were nice sounding guitars but there have always been nice sounding guitars. I feel what put them on the map was creating a workable acoustic/electric. When they came out in the '70s, everyone who owned an acoustic/only felt like they had "half a guitar". Later on they gave us the Adamas/Elites, a unique original design in its own right.
I guess my point is that there may not be any more great original contributions to the acoustic guitar, from Ovation or anyone else. What can they do? Improved electronics? Exotic woods? Fancier inlays or accents? I personally can't think of anything the company can do to achieve that "I got to have one of those" status like they did with the first acoustic/electrics. They may have to settle for being a company that will produce a variety of guitars at various prices and hope they can survive with all the others.
Patsbro |
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Location: Scotland | Absolutely. Original contributions to acoustic guitar design?.......Antonio Torres, Herman Hauser, CF Martin, Orville Gibson, Lloyd Loar, maybe the Larsons, The Dopyera Brothers, Charlie Kaman..... I'm struggling now. I can't think of anything significant since |
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Location: SoCal | Les Paul? Leo Fender? |
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Location: Parkersburg, WV | Paul T.
On second thought, maybe your "Custom" Folklore will be the design that will change things around!
Patsbro |
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Location: Scotland | Moody, both, though mostly Leo, contributed to the development of solidbodies, not acoustics.
Pats, that's a design "tweak" rather than an original. It's on the way, mid July according to the UK distributor |
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Location: SoCal | Ah, yeah. |
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Location: Waterloo, IL | What about that new Rainsong that came out? The all graphite wonder that looks like a normal guitar made of graphite? Two grand will put one in your lap. Innovation or alteration?
Chuck |
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Location: Scotland | Original? innovative? Maybe. Or maybe not....Rainsong, CA, Emerald (which are embarrasing) Chrysalis and the rest are following Charlie's lead with Carbon Fibre which he started with the Adamas in the mid 70's, and unlike the Adamas none are currently widely known or established in the global marketplace, so we'll see. By the way, the new Rainsmog is made offshore & has a carbon top with laminated mahogany back & sides. The ones I tried at NAMM were OK |
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Location: The Great Pacific Northwest | I think whilst everyone is trying to make their point (and I'm about to do the same) some of the original and side commentary of this thread I think needs to be addressed.
- Although the folks at the Factory don't post much (we have seen some of them here) they do read. At least TWO guitars were released based on the commentary ON THIS BOARD. I am curious to how many have of us actually puchased those. And before anyone asks, I HAVE and Elite T and an MOB and a 2001 Collectors. I thought the special Foklore is an outstanding guitar because it doesn't have any controls. Perfect for gigging, but I don't need one, but if I was gigging I would try to find one, no question, no matter the price.
- Many Many Many folks asked for a deep bowl Acoustic Only guitars to be in the USA. Al has stated a few times that he has them, and he is getting inquires from Europe and Asia.
- The opinions on the imports run deep, varied and wide, but they are one of the best selling guitars on the market.. Ovation or otherwise.
- If Ovation built a guitar, maybe the Q, and it sounded the way it should for a high-end guitar, how many people here would pay $8000.00 for it?
It's all nice that we have our dream guitars we;d like to see, but this thread is/was about the future. I think you will be very VERY suprised that if you look at all the Ovation guitars this group of 1500 people have owned and especially bought, you will see Ovation marketing may be right on the money. They are making guitars that people buy and enjoy. I think they can make even better guitars, that of course would be more expensive, but, using this group of 1500 avid fans as the baseline, I'm not so sure anyone would buy them at this point... and if they aren't going to be bought, played and enjoyed.... why make them?
just my 3 cents. |
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| “The times they are a-changin”. God I love this song! The words are as timeless today as they were in 1964 when Bob Dylan put them to vinyl and released them on an album by the same name. Within a year of this historic album, two obscure artists named Oliver Andrews and Charlie Kaman released an album called ‘The Tails of Ranger Andy.’ It was a compilation of Aesop’s Fables put to music for children. But, unlike Dylan’s album, this one would be lost in obscurity. Yet Dylan’s music and the fables of Aesop are alive and well today and serve to guide and remind us of the universal truths that continue to shape our destinies.
To know the future of Ovation is to know the future of the modern guitar. History has shown that the success of an instrument manufacture is directly related to its contribution to innovations in instruments it produces. Today, virtually all the guitar companies trace their success back to this idea that the company was born of innovation and technology where bottoms up management ruled. When the innovation stopped, the company survives on a top down management style as it struggles to avoid irrelevance and another innovative idea comes along.
With a good sense of history and some inductive reasoning, seeing future innovations in the guitar may not be as difficult as it sounds as somewhere another Charley Kaman squints to see that future as it races towards us all.
So what is the future of the modern guitar? I think I have an answer that may be worth betting on but it’s past my bedtime so I’ll save it for a later posting. However, for those that would like to think ahead on this, a hint. The next generation of guitar will have ten vicissitudes as its heart. It will be full of unexpected and surprising changes, mutations or permutations that will change the guitar, as we know it today in a profound and exciting way. Between the time Dylan and Charley recorded their albums, the Baldwin Music Company opened a plant to build pianos in Arkansas. After 35 years that plant closed and if you understand the fundamental reason behind that closure you will began to see the pattern of fortuitous events that is likely leading us to the heart of the next generation of guitar.
Mike |
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Location: NJ | Baldwin was bought by Gibson after they could not buy the Samick factory in Korea. I believe that Baldwin was part of the Samick company at the time.
Gibson has a bad history of buying companies, some that seem to be competitors some that are not and after milking them dry closing them up.
Tobias, baldwin, trace eliott, steinberger, oberheim, optacode (sp) and I may have missed a couple. This is primarily done IMHO to get the r & D from the company and use it on their main product brands Givsung and Eptihorn.
flender on the other hand has aquired Jackson/Charvel. Gretsch, Benedetto, Guild, traveler guitar (may not be the name of the company) x factor (again may not be the name of the company and Sunn the only one that did not really do well was xfactor and sunn. rumor is they recently bought swr which may help to improve the quality of what I feel is currently a very shoddy product with a decent name. The early swr stuff was great and the early stuff they made for groove tubes was also great!
These buyouts seems to be a way to keep companies alive and a way to kill competition. it all depends on the goal of the parent company. Make a lot of money buy a company let it go under write it off and make more money on your bottom line or buy out a company nurture it it and make even more money. It can go either way. |
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Location: puerto vallarta, mexico | miles, i was interested in the guitars released being influenced by this board. since i am out of the loop re seeing advertising, please fill me in. also i am not sure what the special controless folklore is. are these new releases being advertised? |
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Location: NJ | The Elite T - an affordable, US-made A/E guitar.
The Folklore Deluxe - a deep (mid?), slotted head A/E with an endpin jack and no controls. Only 50 made. TonyPD (lucky bastard!) won one on the Tour. |
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| Al, you’re starting to get to the root of it. But why would a 140-year-old world leader in the Piano business ever let itself get bought out? Did it know something others didn’t? Could it have foreseen its future and the perfect storm that was brewing? A storm that had started in the 1930’s fueled by a man named Ben Meissner.
‘Amen and amen’, said Danny DeVito in the Movie Other Peoples Money. I say amen because what I’ve been hearing sounds more like a prayer for a dying company.
If you listen to the people that that look up the ticker symbol KAMNA every day you may also hear a prayer along with a lot of cussing. If you had bought ten thousand shires of Kaman one year ago you would be about fifty thousand in the read today. And I suspect you wouldn’t care if Kaman built guitars, Helicopters or buggy whips.
You bought Kaman to make money! Their was a time we all needed buggy whips and I’m sure that the last buggy whip company built the best dam buggy whip every made. It survived to the end by buying out the completion or producing a better buggy whip than its competitors giving it a bigger and bigger share of a smaller and smaller market as Henry F. was tinkering in his garage and another perfect storm was brewing.
Although the whole music division of Kaman is only 16% of the company it was the only part of the company that was a blood donor last year to help stop the bleeding from the aerospace, helicopter divisions. And what was the biggest contributor to its music business? Not Ovation. Kaman ‘acquired’ Latin Percussion, Inc., a leading global distributor of Latin hand percussion instruments.
So as not to loose sight of my statement that to know the future of Ovation is to know the future of the modern guitar, one could ask if there was a perfect storm brewing for it also? Have some seen the future and are thinking of selling out or is another Charlie Kaman about to make a stand and build a new hi-Tec ship that can whether a pending storm to immerge on the other side as the guitar of tomorrow?
More later,
Mike |
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Location: Las Cruces, NM | Well
Up steps the Line 6 Variax that intimates that one guitar can be every vintage guitar that you have lusted for, combined with an amp with modeling that can be every amp that was lusted for. All that is lacking is the talent of a Glen C, a Chet, a Doc Watson, a Django, a Charley Christian, a Van Zandt, a Willie, a Roy Clark, a Buck Owens and Don Rich, etc.. No instrument, no matter how great it sounds, can replace talent. It is likely that one of Russ's students, playing a cheap mexican guitar, may lead us to the next guitar that we HAVE TO HAVE to be a star.
Bailey (the talent is in the picker, not the guitar) |
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Location: puerto vallarta, mexico | bailey, maybe not the one who's $20 guitar i fixed with a sheetrock screw a couple of weeks ago (waste of a good screw). |
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Location: Las Cruces, NM | Russ
You never know, some are totally unable to play, some will eclipse their teacher. When you find yourself playing rythym to some spectacular picking, you know you've seen the future. When they also show all kinds of frailties, like too much dope and too much drinking, you know you've seen the present.
I have the article on Sotol in my hand and this is what it says;
" After the leaves are chopped off, the remaining heads or pinas of the sotol plant are baked in an earthen oven sealed with lava rock and palm leaves"
To me that gaurantees that this will replace tequela as the drink of the pueblo.
Viva La Mexico
Bailey |
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Location: NJ | Much like any other item for sale, the us/world economy, trend, popularity, etc all play a part on what makes a manufacturer popular.
You can take a trend and kill it by either buying out a company or directly competing with it.
In the 80's flendor almost went under because they refused to mess with the strat. As soon as they realized that the only way to survive was to import strats and to add many models to their strat line they became a force in the market place again. Why buy a kramer/anderson/mighty mite/schector/hamer/jackson/ibeenhad/etc etc etc when you can get a flendor how you want it.
The role of the imports in Ovations opens up the product line in the price range of students and semi pros who cannot afford the usa instrument.
What has been discussed adnauseum here is the need for a high end product. A product that everyone aspires to own. pms draguns are highly sought after and cost a fortune. why? a lot of ugly inlay mystique and marketing. How many do they make a year? probably not many but who cares it is a catalog item. To say you will build whatever the customer wants is one thing but to actually put something in the line and say yes folks this is the top of the line, it gets no better than this, this is the one you sell your wife, kids and soul for, is important in positiong of the product as a high end product worthy of aspiration.
As a kid I would look at the flendor catalogs and dream of owning a jaguar. NOt because I liked the sound or how it played but because it was put up as their top of the line solidbody. The same went for the archtops. No one ever told me that they were crap. But that did not matter. they were in the catalog, the local stores did not have them so they had to be good....make that great. |
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Location: NJ | ibeenhad. LOL!! :D |
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Location: Las Cruces, NM | Al
50 years of guitar music was played on the "flendor" in the solid body world, you didn't even mention the Ovation solid bodies that many of us feel would challange, and beat the "flendors". |
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the future of Ovation.....
