Official Luthiers Forum!

Here's the news.... good or bad.
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/ ... 3-13-47-17

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"Act your age, not your shoe size" - Prince

Of course I feel badly for the good folks who will lose jobs as a result of this but I won't miss Ov*tion one bit (anyway they will still be produced in Asia).

From the article: "Ovations made in New Hartford have been praised for their craftsmanship and tone."

Obviously.... no one interviewed guitar repair folks here.... Ov*tions are often turned away from our shop as a matter of course and typically because once they reach a certain age all manner of stuff goes wrong. This in and of itself would not be the major issue but the fact that Ov*tions were never built with serviceability in mind being one of the very worst offenders they are not serviceable mostly assembled with copious amounts of vibration dampening epoxy....

Sure they can be repaired but many shops won't even try because you have to throw away the "fixed price" pricing and go hourly, perhaps weekly to fix the dang things....

More woes for Fender, the parent company, and likely a contributor to Fender's current financial woes since they acquired Ov*tion in 2007 in the early days of the great recession, a time when musical instrument purchases went south.

Watch though, the ceasing of US manufacture of these things will likely make them an instant ebay hit so that the next unsuspecting Keith Partridge fan can "win" one on ebay and then once they take delivery and fully understand what a piece of crap they just purchased commit suicide in the garage....

Can you tell that I'm not a fan.....

One forum that I participate on that is repair centric even the word "Ov*tion" is considered foul language....

I never liked them either. Horrible sound, total PITA to work on.

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"Act your age, not your shoe size" - Prince

I guess canoeists will have to start packing an extra paddle instead of their' campfire Ovations.

Alex

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"Indecision is the key to flexibility" .... Bumper sticker

An Ovation player once left his guitar in the back seat of his unlocked car with the windows down in a sketchy neighborhood while he went into a store. When he came out there were three more Ovations in his back seat.

Now THAT'S funny !!!! Thanks James

Sorry to see another American factory closing down and moving overseas. From canoe paddles to Chinese junk - still keeping the nautical theme.

People blame illegal immigration for lack of jobs, but it's more about companies shipping jobs out of America. But then again foreigners are easy targets because they have no representation.

I don't typically see ovations in my shop, probably because most people know they are not serviceable and so they know it will cost more to fix them than to buy a new one.

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Cat-gut strings are made from kitten guts, stretched out to near breaking point and then hardened with grue saliva. As a result these give a feeling of Pain and anguish whenever played, and often end up playing themselves backwards as part of satanic rituals.

Typhoon Guitars
http://www.typhoon-guitars.com

After years without seeing an Ovation, 2 months ago I had two show up in the same week
The first was a 40 year old American build which was serviceable if not inspiring,
The second was a brand new Chinese build where the strap button had pushed in when attempting to install a strap. The bowl was paper thin at that point, not impressive.

A friend of mine used to refer to them as "Tupperware" guitars. He always asked me if they made them in salad bowl sizes.

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"Act your age, not your shoe size" - Prince

A banjo player?

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The name catgut is confusing. There are two explanations for the mix up.

Catgut is an abbreviation of the word cattle gut. Gut strings are made from sheep or goat intestines, in the past even from horse, mule or donkey intestines.

Otherwise it could be from the word kitgut or kitstring. Kit meant fiddle, not kitten.

It's not good news at all. 46 people out of a job who will have a real hard time getting back into the work force. But I tend to agree with the aforementioned comments especially the serviceability. One of my guitar shops (that I did repairs for) years ago was an Ovation dealer. I played one with a carbon fiber top. That one was the best sounding Ovation I ever played, it actually sounded good. But none the less it kept slipping off my lap!

A drummer, actually.

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"Act your age, not your shoe size" - Prince

As someone who just lost my job, with 30 other people due to the Larrivee closure, I can identify with their plight. Half of our people had been there for 15 years or more, one guy for 27. Not a lot of people looking to hire older people with specialized skill sets. Bummer.

So how hard is it for all of them to get together and start a new company?

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Cat-gut strings are made from kitten guts, stretched out to near breaking point and then hardened with grue saliva. As a result these give a feeling of Pain and anguish whenever played, and often end up playing themselves backwards as part of satanic rituals.

Typhoon Guitars
http://www.typhoon-guitars.com

How hard is it to get your toe into an already saturated factory guitar market, and make money at the same time? Pretty difficult I would think.

Alex

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"Indecision is the key to flexibility" .... Bumper sticker

It would probably take a lot of money upfront and my guess is that they would not be able to produce the same guitars. I could be wrong. It's not a bad idea though.

Guitar companies aren't the only ones that have to worry about closing up and moving to third world countries... virtually every major manufacturing is done offshore now. For one thing nobody wants a factory next door, companies wants to open a factory and people protest against it. Then there is the insane amount of environmental regulations.

You realize in the US it seems like the laws favor big businesses because it's set up in such a way that small businesses must put up a huge amount of capital, that only big businesses can only make a return on it. The biggest mistake in history is the consumer mentality started in the 50's.

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Cat-gut strings are made from kitten guts, stretched out to near breaking point and then hardened with grue saliva. As a result these give a feeling of Pain and anguish whenever played, and often end up playing themselves backwards as part of satanic rituals.

Typhoon Guitars
http://www.typhoon-guitars.com

Well, if the current owners couldn't make a go of it with their vast history of marketing guitars, how would a bunch of folks specialized in glueing bridges and pounding frets fare?

These ex-Gibson guys did it: http://www.heritageguitar.com/history.html

I can't think of any others though...

Sad news for the employees in Connecticut.
Sad news that they'll still build Ovations overseas.
Very depressing story

Sounds like a cause for a standing Ovation , cause ya cant sit with one of them !


Hmmmmmmmmm wonder if that where the term " Standing ovation " came from ?

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The Shallower the depth of the stream , The Louder the Babble !
The Taking Of Offense Is the Life Course Of The Stupid One !
Wanna Leave a Better Planet for our Kids? How about Working on BETTER KIDS for our Planet !
Forgiveness is the ability to accept an apology that you will probably NEVER GET
The truth will set you free , But FIRST, it will probably Piss you Off !
Creativity is allowing yourself to make Mistakes, Art is knowing which ones to Keep !
The Saddest thing anyone can do , is push a Loyal Person to the point that they Dont Care Anymore
Never met a STRONG person who had an EASY past !
http://wiksnwudwerks.blogspot.com/
http://www.facebook.com/groups/GatewayA ... rAssembly/

Very few if any guitars are made with 50,000,000 year old materials, save the Ovation. Not even ancient Kauri comes close. Good news is, more oil for our cars.

I'm getting the feeling that we're critiqueing the joinery of the deck chairs on the Titanic.....it might do us some good to realize what this closing reflects:
-Guitar sales in general are down. Look around you, the greying and paunchy baby boomers (myself included) are not buying guitars like they used to. Nor will the interest of young people ever rise to previous levels.
-It's very hard to produce guitars in the U.S. and be profitable doing so (I guess this doesn't affect any of us here right?)
-Ovation, historically an extremely popular brand, and owned by a larger parent company, became non-viable as a U.S. operation in the current climate.

OK, back to the Ovation bashing.

I actually like Ovations. While I realize they have some issues, they also had a unique sound, and for a long time they had the best electrified sound. It's pretty easy to criticize anything outside the norm, but if people (and companies) don't ever stick their necks out, no progress is made.