Ovation Guitar Company

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The Ovation Guitar Company, a holding of Kaman Music Corporation, is a guitar manufacturing company based in Bloomfield, Connecticut, USA. Ovation primarily manufactures acoustic guitars.

Ovation guitars are differentiated by their composite synthetic bowl, rather than the traditional wooden back and sides of the modern acoustic guitar as produced by luthiers starting in the late 18th century. Ovation has also produced solid body electric guitars. A lower-priced version of the bowl-back Ovation design, known as the Applause Guitar, has also been produced.

Developed starting in 1966 and introduced as the 'Balladeer' in February, 1967, Ovation has sought to bring modern materials and construction techniques to guitar building.

[edit] Innovations

Charles Kaman gained extensive knowledge of composite plastics as an engineer designing rotor blades for helicopters, working with Igor Sikorsky. He reasoned that the negative effects of vibration in wooden rotors were in fact a positive in acoustic instruments that required controlled resonance to produce pleasing musical tone. As a guitarist as well as an aerospace engineer, he developed the round-backed composite-body Ovation guitar as a way to produce uniquely modern instruments.

The extensive number of models, many of which are collectible by virtue of their obscurity, are still mainly distinguished by one or two characteristics: the aforementioned synthetic bowl and early use (1971) of preamps, onboard equalization and piezo pickups. Such features made Ovations particularly attractive to live acoustic musicians who constantly battled feedback problems from the high volumes needed in live venues.

In 1972, Ovation introduced one of the first production solidbody electric guitars with active electronics, the Breadwinner (the 1963 Burns TR2 had active circuitry, but did not receive widespread attention or sales). The odd but ergonomic shape of this guitar and its deluxe model, the Deacon along with the FET preamplifier made this a popular studio guitar with numerous artists including Steve Marriott of the Small Faces. The model failed to gain widespread popularity, however, and production of the Breadwinner/Deacon line ceased in 1980.

Other Ovation innovations include composite tops and multiple offset sound holes on guitar tops, pioneered in the Adamas model in 1977.