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Location: NJ | it all depends on what your definition of "is" is. |
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Location: SoCal | I know. And you are not a crook.
Do you have any pickups? Now I'm really curious and I'd bet you're grinning like a Cheshire cat! |
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Location: NJ | I have not now nor ever been a member of the communist party. |
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Location: SoCal | And you are still not answering the question. Don't make me come out there and feed you bad beer until you talk!
Let me just say this about that... |
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Location: Nova Scotia, Canada | Another thing I forgot to mention. I saw an old Viper in a used guitar store in Halifax over the weekend and couldn't get over how heavy it was! It may have been just this particular sample but I'm guessing it weighed a good 40% more than my Bluebird 6.
Wayne |
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Location: SoCal | wood vs. polyurethane. |
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Location: The Great Pacific Northwest | I have on occasion seen the Breadwinner style pickups on eBay. Actually picked up one or two complete (although they needed work) pickguard assemblies... The Preacher humbuckers I think most of us can do without. Viper pickups are useful, but as CWK2 pointed out, you need to hit them with a meter to know which ones you have. What I'd love to find is a stash of the UKII pickups. That would be useful. |
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Location: Scotland | Wayne, I've come accross a couple of Vipers with maple bodies, they weighed a ton, had poor acoustic tone & sounded uninspiring plugged in, this may have been what you saw. The spec on the Viper states Alder bodies with maple necks, but I've seen mahogany-necked Vipers also, so who knows?
Paul |
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Location: NJ | To the best of my recollection I cannot recall Mr. Speaker. |
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Location: SoCal | You're not gonna say, are you Al? |
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Location: NJ | I will neither confirm nor deny the allegations |
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Location: SoCal | Al, you are an evil person. I hereby give up trying to get an answer out of you. Your talents are wasted here. You should be in Washington, ducking questions with the best of them. My hat's off to the best! And if I ever get to the east coast, the beer's on me.
Paul |
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Location: 6 String Ranch | The Vipers were started with an alder body. The quality of the wood was so bad that most of them were used for solid colors. We switched to maple pretty early on. I don't remember mahogony necks on Vipers. |
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Location: SoCal | I'm the first to admit that I don't know my woods (expensive plywoods vs. the cheap stuff). But my Viper looks like mahogany. It could just be the stain. Were any made from mahogany? |
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Location: SoCal | With bidding ending at $1252 (from one of our own), the Bluebird on eBay didn't hit the reserve and sell.
This begs the question of what the open market price for these rare guitars actually is. |
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Location: NJ | paul
celebrity owned instruments are always subjective in price. what complicates this issue is that it is also a custom one of 12 made guitar. I personally have been going back and forth on this one. ultimately as my departed dad would say unless someone pays for it then it is worthless. |
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Location: SoCal | Ultimately Al, in a free market, that's the bottom line. This guitar, in the market in which it was placed, was worth just over $1200.
I've got a house that has a market value which is about 2 1/2 times what I think it's worth. Who's to say?
So, tell me, do you have any Ovation humbucking pickups that you might part with? |
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Location: 6 String Ranch | There were a few that had mahogony bodies but I don't think there were any mahogony necks. Some of the alder bodies had dark brown stain on them, just to confuse the issue |
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Location: SoCal | I have no idea if mine in alder or mahogany. I can't tell one type of wood from another. It comes from trees right? |
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Location: Shelton, Washington, USA | no, Paul, environmentalists come from trees..... wood comes from mills..... |
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Location: Scotland | This just showed up on Ebay. Later Schaller bridge Viper with a mahogany neck, body looks like it could be mahogany or possibly ash or alder with a stain.
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=875235086
On a slightly diffent note, just about every Deacon & Preacher I've seen or owned has had the body made from a single piece of very high quality mahogany. You just don't get that on production guitars these days, unless you're prepared to spend thousands. Just shows what exceptional value those old Ovation solids actually are.
Paul
[ May 23, 2002: Message edited by: Paul Templeman ] |
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Location: SoCal | I gotta find somebody who knows wood who can tell me what the body of my Viper is.
By the by, I'm in the process of putting the preacher deluxe neck (that I bought from Miles) onto the Viper. I'll let everybody know how that goes. |
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Location: The Great Pacific Northwest | I think I need that wood lesson too. I looked at my collection and I see in the database I labled three of my vipers maple, natural, or curly maple. I have both bridge styles of "light wood" Viper and also the Viper III which is just a georgeous piece of lumber. |
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Location: 6 String Ranch | Paul T
That sure looks like a maple Viper. Maple neck with an ebony f/b, that was done near the end of production. Probably was plain maple and they gave it a little light stain.
Vipers started out alder and switched to maple. As a rule that's it. I did have a natural mahogony one made and there were a couple out of foam and there could be other one offs.
Now the guitar somebody should unearth is Jimmy Mesinna's Deacon, natural spruce body, maple neck and f/b and a walnut pickguard. |
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Location: puerto vallarta, mexico | hola amigos,
stealing some computer time again---
i have 3 vipers. two have beautiful dark stained wood and are very heavy. both have maplenecks and fbs. very cool guitars at a fraction of what any decent solid body would bring. there are some very good instruments ovation made that are perhaps one of the best bangs for the buck i have run across. my other viper is really one of my coolest and most prized instruments, thanks to cwkII. it is a brownbird 12 string with fantastic action and neck and is major unique. the bird even has a red breast!!! it will be "rockin robin" from now on amongst my growing guitar family. i an a serious ukII afficionado and ''rr'' fit right in.
i also have broken into the adamas world thanks again to bill. the sound is absolutly amazing. when my wife first saw one of them she said ''is that a guitar you can play, or does it have to stay locked up?''. she has commented on the sound every time i pick one up since. one is s/n 862 and is a brown beauty and the other is a blue ss 12 string that was the prototype for the ss ca adamas 12. blows away any acoustic 12 i have ever played even unplugged. thanks for bringing my small working collection up a few notches bill.
my old brown balladeer going to be pissed off when i get home!!!!! really honey, they are just friends. |
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Glen Campbell Bluebird
