Joined: August 2003 Posts: 888
Location: Louisville, OH 44641 | Hey guys...I need your solidbody expertise. I have a Preacher that I enjoy playing. However, the pickup switch has me stumped. With the switch in the bridge position, the bridge pickup works. When the switch is in the neck position, the neck pickup works. However, when the switch is in the center position, neither work. I've always felt the switch was broken but a friend is telling me that's normal for Preachers.
Can anyone shed some light on whether or not my friend is a moron. Thanks.
Jim |
Joined: December 2001 Posts: 7211
Location: The Great Pacific Northwest | I think in many ways, especially on the solidbodies, Ovation was too forward-thinking for thier own good.
Frets, electronics, bridges, pickups, neck style, all of it. I think had Ovation never done a solidbody, and then decided to do them today, or maybe 10 years ago, they would have really been successful in that arena. In the 80's if it looks like a Les Paul, you put DiMarzio's in it, if it looked like a strat, you put Duncans in it. And of course other than some folks like Carvin, everyone and their uncle was OEM'n Dimarzio's or Duncans. Today, there are many custom pickup companies making special winding pickups for all sorts of guitars, in all sorts of shapes and sizes. Most stick to the standard single or double size, which may have been Ovations single biggest mistake. If they made the same pickups as in the Viper, Preacher, and UKII's but on a standard platform, things I'm sure would have been different. Unfortunatly, making a pickup cover "just for show" isn't very Connecticut Yankee, and would have been a waste of plastic, so in that day it wasn't going to happen.
Anyway, back to my point. If you watch not MTV so much, but shows like Carson Daily, and Conan, and Letterman when they have bands... There is still a lot of the Fender and Gibson name, but many many many other names, more than ever before, are popping up on headstocks.
You can't re-create history, well not easily, but I truly believe that if they released the UKII's and Breadwinners, and Preachers in more recent years, like maybe 1990 instead of 1980, the general solidbody landscape would have been a little different. A re-release would not be good as the idea's are no longer innovative. They would be seen as copies of those who copied them originally. |