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Joined:
October 2003
Posts: 134
Location: Lakewood, Ohio | I bought a Celebrity Deluxe (deep bowl)with a gorgeous Flamed Red Sycamore Top, which was exclusive to Guitar Center. Notwithstanding the Celebrity/Korean made issues, is the Sycamore top unique, most Ovations have Spruce or composit. I think Sycamore is a variety of maple, but Im no arborist. |
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Joined:
February 2002
Posts: 5750
Location: Scotland | There is a species known as "sycamore maple", which may be related to maple, I'm not sure. Either way as it's a hardwood sycamore is not a traditional top material, but as the celebs use ply tops the sycamore will be used for it's aesthetic rather than tonal qualities |
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Joined:
February 2002
Posts: 1817
Location: Minden, Nebraska | Ovation offered the EA-68 Viper with a Vintage Sycamore top in 1997. I have only seen one of these, and it the color and wood figuring are unlike any other I have seen. Tne number made must have been quite small. I cannot recall any other Ovations with Sycamore tops. |
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Joined:
May 2002
Posts: 3005
Location: Las Cruces, NM | Sycamore is a resinous tree that, I think, is native to Australia. Sometime prior to WWII it became, like the modern emu fad, farmed on a large scale. Sycamore Canyon in San Diego just across 395 from Miramar Naval Air Field (home of the Top Whatever competition) had rows and rows of sycamore trees that were planted by the Scripps family to harvest turpentine. This 1000+ acre forest was eye boggling in the 60's because as you drove through it you suddenly began to realize that these trees were in rows like garden plants even though they were old growth trees like you had seen (or I had seen) in forests of Ohio and PA. It was a tree farm, and Scripps Ranch was built in the middle of those trees and burned to the ground a week or two ago. The sycamore wood has a very strange wavy grain structure and is generally used for sculptures like seawood art, as a guitar top, I am sure it is a veneer as it has absolutely no acoustic value, only visual. By the way, the sycamore trees survived the fire as the encroaching homes were reduced to cinders, I look forward to revisiting that artificial forest someday and seeing those majestic trees that outlived the Scripps family waving their mottled boughs in false humility, they know they are king.
Bailey
Bailey |
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Joined:
September 2003
Posts: 9301
Location: south east Michigan | The same guitar caught my eye. It was gon a couple days later.
Since my next guitar is going to be one I can take out of the house, I wonder if I should have picked up on it.
Brad
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Sycamore Tops
