Mystery Guitar Game - Tales from the Closet

houseisland

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Me and the mystery guitar, a long time ago.

PgRCyHu.jpg


What is it?
 

Walter Broes

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The bodies on those guitars were German made, so I'd guess Höfner..? Pic's way too small for me to see if/how you modified it.
 

SFIV1967

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What model? And how is the one in the pic modified from stock? And who actually made the body and neck?
Ovation Thunderhead with Vibrato in red?
Not so much to see on your picture what's modified, I just wonder what the light area between the bridge and vibrato is.
Body looks like a Höfner 4572-II.
Neck would have been made by Ovation I guess as it had the Ovation headstock? (I know that there was talk on the internet about Framus doing the necks, but there was also talk they never got the deal and so some of those prototype or so necks ended up on Framus guitars).
Ralf
 
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houseisland

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The bodies on those guitars were German made, so I'd guess Höfner..?

Good guess and probably right. My asking about the neck and body was kind of a trick question because there doesn't seem to be any definitive documentation about this. I have read that the bodies and necks were made by Framus in Germany. I have read that the bodies were made by Hofner and that the necks were made by Ovation or unknown, but the necks are like nothing else I have ever played or seen - very unusual. Apart from the headstock they are not at all like any Ovation I have ever held.

ref: http://www.euroguitars.co.uk/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=961 This reinforces Ralf's pointing to the Hofner 4572-II.


Ovation Thunderhead with Vibrato in red?

Almost bang on. Ovation Thunderhead Deluxe (vibrato unit and thin gold plating that wears off or corrodes through). And not the cherry/red, but the more uncommon brown/walnut.

Pic's way too small for me to see if/how you modified it.

Not so much to see on your picture what's modified,

No fun in making it too easy.

It is quite common for these guitars to have the bridges moved, sometimes in a horrifically incompetent fashion and sometimes with very bad structural results. The top is not braced and there are supports that come up under the bridge from two struts that run the length of the body. Move the bridge off these supports and ...... Anyway, I let a luthier talk me into installing a different bridge in a different position to resolve intonation problems that the guitar had - this was good, bad and (as it turns out) probably unnecessary. Good: the original bridge was crappy; the luthier installed a large maple block, nicely carved to fit between the top and the struts under the new position for the new bridge; this did not change the guitar in ways that you might expect; it merely intensified characteristics that it already had. Bad: any collectors value the instrument might have had has been destroyed. Unnecessary: as it turns out, there is a neck angle adjustment screw hidden under the plastic plate that covers the neck screws on the back of the body, and the "bridge placement" issues could have been resolved by adjusting this screw. So my Thunderhead Deluxe has a much larger and heavier chrome bridge installed on top of a maple block inserted into the body. Also good is that it has more sustain and less susceptibility to feedback now.

I just wonder what the light area between the bridge and vibrato is.

Are you familiar with the early works of the Norwegian guitarist, Terje Rypdal, from the period when he used a Rickenbacker with a vibrato unit? He used to do a lot of really wild, experimental things on the wrong side of the Rickenbacker's bridge. Well .... the Thunderhead was given to rather wild experimental musical things because the length of strings between the bridge and the vibrato unit was given to sympathetic resonance - nice if you wanted to use it to play "outside" free kind of stuff but sometimes problematic if you were playing straight kind of stuff - so I kept a large piece of foam rubber under the strings there - it was easily removed and replaced as needed.

Neck would have been made by Ovation I guess as it had the Ovation headstock? (I know that there was talk on the internet about Framus doing the necks, but there was also talk they never got the deal and so some of those prototype or so necks ended up on Framus guitars).
Ralf

The neck does have an Ovation headstock, but it is one of the craziest necks I have ever seen. It is quite wide, which gives it versatility - easy to hold complex chord forms, easy for finger picking, lots of room for wild extreme vibrato. And it is so so so very thin in depth. It is almost like no neck. It stays in tune and keeps an appropriate camber, but the neck is very sensitive; you can do subtle full chord vibrato with it (quite different from using the vibrato unit); and if you can control feedback, you can do very interesting radical outside/Adrian Belew kind of stuff using the neck, vibrato unit, and strings between the bridge and the vibrato unit. I have never seen another Ovation neck like this one.

The pickups are reputed to be large single coil DeArmonds. The are very nice.

The wiring harness is also interesting. The toggle switch has three positions: Off/Standby (quite useful actually, more so than you would think); Pickups in phase; and Pickups out of phase. The pots are Master Volume, Neck Tone, Bridge Tone, and Pickup Blend. I am told that this configuration is identical to a Gibson TD-400, although I have never seen a Gibson TD-400. This all is a lot of fun. The out of phase setting can get you very cool Nigel Rogers, Prince (a al Kiss), Jame Blood Ulmer, John McLaughlin (Fender Mustang - Miles Davis On The Corner) sounds. I could go on and on.

Over all it is a strange guitar. It could have been a truly GREAT guitar with better construction and attention to detail, but ..... good components and base materials .... many corners cut in construction - an old story - not a story unique to Ovation, sadly.

Mine languishes in its case at the back of closet somewhere - hence, the Tales from the Closet title above. It has problems, which I won't bore you with here. I do love it in a perverse sort of way. I should get it working again.
 
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houseisland

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ahh its not Guild, so who cares! kidding!!

Shame! Shame! Shame! My Ovation is a Guild cousin (cousin-in-law, step-cousin-in-law or something) now through corporate marriages, isn't it? And if I am not mistaken, your darling Guilds are now being built where my Ovation might have been assembled. Is this any way to treat family?

:laughing:
 

SFIV1967

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And if I am not mistaken, your darling Guilds are now being built where my Ovation might have been assembled.
Well, no longer, as both Ovation and Guild were shut down by FMIC and the New Hartford factory closed. Ovation is done and Guild was sold to Cordoba Music Group and production will re-start in early 2015 in Oxnard/CA.

Over all it is a strange guitar. It could have been a truly GREAT guitar with better construction and attention to detail, but ..... good components and base materials .... many corners cut in construction - an old story - not a story unique to Ovation, sadly.
I liked the quote on that euroguitars.co.uk page regarding the Hofner body: "they come from "the confused years" for Hofner, when they decided to copy ugly Japanese copies of American guitars instead of copying American guitars."

Ralf
 
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houseisland

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I liked the quote on that euroguitars.co.uk page regarding the Hofner body: "hey come from "the confused years" for Hofner, when they decided to copy ugly Japanese copies of American guitars instead of copying American guitars."

Ralf

Yes. I had a small chuckle. A very perceptive comment.

:wink-new:
 

houseisland

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OK. This seems to have run its course. Does anyone else have a mystery guitar they would like to share or do I have dig into another closet or crawl under a spare bed somewhere? If you do have one, don't make it impossibly obscure, but it should be challenging enough that it will give these smart European guys a run for their money, eh?
 

houseisland

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Nothing prior to his first ECM vinyl. Oughta go pull out Rypdal/Vitous/DeJohnette and put it on the turntable this weekend. Thanks for the reminder.

I love how the threads here wander on/off topic in an organic sort of way. Most welcome. As you probably know, Rypdal started out as a Hank Marvin clone (Cliff Richards and the Shadows) in a group called the Vanguards (I think) - fairly popular in Scandinavia. Next he morphed into a Hendrix clone in a band called Dream (I think) - a copy of one of this band's records was found in Hendrix's record collection, I think. Then he went to see Kubrik's film 2001 stoned on acid (or so the story goes) and was never the same again - not because of the film or the acid but because of the György Ligeti music. Things got decidedly weird or interesting, depending upon your tastes, after this point. He started to study with George Russell (Lydian Chromatic stuff), Krzysztof Penderecki (orchestration, I think) and a Norwegian micro-tonal composer (whose name I do not remember). I have a record somewhere with him, early days in his weird/interesting phase, on stage with The Art Ensemble of Chicago - it doesn't really gel to my mind but it is interesting. I have seen him only twice, once in 1976 with the Odyssey band and once a year or two ago performing Crime Scene with Palle Mikkleborg and the Bergen Big Band. Very impressive both times. I went groupie on the second occasion and got him to sign my copy of Waves. My all time favorite recording is If Mountains Could Sing - a veritable BEAST of an album - play it LOUD on a really good stereo. I used puzzle over some of the "profound" sounding Norwegian titles until a cousin in Bergen pointed out that they were more prosaic than profound, unless you take a William Carlos Williams approach to the prosaic - Topplue, Votter & Skjerf (toque/watch cap, mittens, and scarf) - Den Forste Sne (the first snow). ;^)
 

Walter Broes

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OK. This seems to have run its course. Does anyone else have a mystery guitar they would like to share or do I have dig into another closet or crawl under a spare bed somewhere? If you do have one, don't make it impossibly obscure, but it should be challenging enough that it will give these smart European guys a run for their money, eh?
Ha! Don't forget the guy who wrote the book commonly referred to as "the Bible" on these pages is from Breda, the Netherlands. I know my guitar history and geeky facts pretty well if I may say so, but if there's ONE guy I'd never ever challenge, it's Hans! (and his knowledge goes a lot further than Guilds!) :)
 

houseisland

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Hmmm... not having thought about the Ovation for a long time before this thread, I decided to do some Googling.

Asking price of $1,299 - http://www.gbase.com/gear/ovation-thunderhead-deluxe-1969-red

Asking price of $999 - http://www.ebay.ca/itm/1969-Ovation...ge-Hollowbody-w-Gibson-335-Case-/121207228554

Asking price of $899 - http://www.jlaforums.com/viewtopic.php?t=182427047

I could get this working. I still have the original bridge. Hmmmm..... I could almost buy another Guild..... The was a nice red Bluesbird, very pretty, on CL here a couple of months back for $1000, nice except that it had been "hot rodded" and now has non-Guild pickups - don't think it sold, though - I have watched it come and go for over a year with the price dropping from $1500 - always pops back - same pics. Hmmm....
 

Zelja

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OK. This seems to have run its course. Does anyone else have a mystery guitar they would like to share or do I have dig into another closet or crawl under a spare bed somewhere? If you do have one, don't make it impossibly obscure, but it should be challenging enough that it will give these smart European guys a run for their money, eh?

Here's one. Clue:- not Asian.

ZeljaMysteryGuitar_zpsa8301c27.jpg
 

Zelja

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You're good Hans, but not totally correct! It is a Shergold but a Modulator.

I have got 3 modules, including one like this:

shergold-modulator-4-118147.jpg
 
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