Ovation 1778 LX Elite BCB

Black Cherry Burst color, Mid-depth body
- AA grade solid Sitka spruce top
- Scalloped LX bracing
- Gloss 5-piece mahogany/maple neck
- Bound ebony fingerboard
- Gold Tuners
- Tusq nut
- Ebony bridge
- Original Patented Pickup
- OP-Pro preamp w/chromatic tuner
- Straplok strap buttons
- New type LX medium bowl.

It's a beauty to look at with it's gold-colored tuners and bronze-colored Elixir strings.

I have put Elixir light (0.12-0.53) strings on this guitar and the sound is very, very nice. Also unplugged. Rich, just the amount of bass en brightness I want it to have. And they last quite long although their coating is coming off, especially the D-string is causing some "dandruff" but it still sounds OK so why change them? These strings do feel a little like "oiled" but one gets used to that.

Now comes the (very) bad part! When I bought it the strings had action set to be played with tonnes of pressure. After two weeks I brought it back to the dealer as I could maybe play for maximum 20 minutes on it and feel all muscles in my underarm. The dealer removed some of he plastic adjustmentplates underneath the nut. OK, the action was lowered and OK for the time being.
Then the weather changed and the strings started buzzing, especially near the body it was unplayable. Back to the dealer and they put some of the plates back under the bridge. OK for that period but then around summer the things reversed again. I was so fed up (!) with this guitar that I wanted to send it back to the factory. It can't be true that a guitar needs adjustments like this every season.

I took it to my luthier (not the shop I bought it because they would probably only do the same adjustments they did earlier) to have an experts-report made of it to accompany my findings. He told me he had seen similar problems with Ovations and probably could make it work with some adjustments. He oiled the fingerboard with lemon-oil (to make it less sensitive to moisture as the ebony fingerboards ARE the most sensitive fingerboards in this respect), he aligned the neck to the best setting possible and after that found some of the frets (around the point of where the neck is attached to the body)not to the right height and he filed the too high frets to not stand out anymore. He also replaced the plastic fill-up plates underneath the nut with balsa-wood. This would give it a better sound.

I can not say this has solved my problems with this guitar completely but it can be used now. It still has some buzzes from time to time and one really wonders why a guitar of 1.500 EURO's has these kind of problems. It looks to me that "the cheaper the guitar, the less sensitive it is to weatherchanges".

Maybe this Ovation is an exception but it was a GREAT dissappointment to me. Eversince my youth I loved the Elite-model and always wanted to own one. Once I could afford one, I would not buy it again and probably sell it the next time I get annoyed by it again.

It looks like it can last but .... (see above).
The problem with the round bowl is that it can't be payed sitting down unless you have something between your leg and the body to keep it straight. Otherwie it will turn itself face-upwards. There is a somewhat "rougher" part on the lower side of the bowl to prevent it from tilting but that doesn't do it's job on your jeans.

Played standing up with a strap around your shoulders it will strangely do the same, turn itself face upwards. There is little to do about it.

I think some rubber on the right places could help but that might effect it's sound.

Mails to Ovation don't help. I did nog get any answers, not even to bring it back to the shop.
The dealer only knows one trick to adjust problems and did not support me in trying to replace this speciment by another one to see if that was better.

A DRAG!

I have about 15 guitars of which a dreadnought Ibanez model 752. This is my baby! Fitted with fosphor-bronze coated strings of d'Addario it sounds very nice. This one also has no problems with weatherchanges, it stays upright while be played sitting or standing and it has been loyal to me for about 30 years now during composing, playing inside and outside. As a kind of "honour to it" it was recently fitted with bone nut and bone bridge, hand-made. The action was set to best possible and it was also cleaned and polished with car-polish. Now it sounds and plays even better than it ever did before. Please keep in mind that this is a guitar that costed me about EURO 100 when I bought it.

The Ovation is taken from it's case from time to time. I love the sound of it (!) but after a while (anything from one hour to a couple of weeks) I put it back in it's case, annoyed by the round shape and it's difficulties to play it aswell as some buzzes.