About Ovation Guitars

Ovation guitars first captured the interest of professional musicians who wanted an acoustic guitar with greater projection on stage. The most visible of these guitarists in the late '60s was Glen Campbell. Every week Glen and his Ovation were welcomed into millions of homes around the country, as America tuned into "The Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour."

During this close association with ovation, Glen asked for an instrument with a built-in pickup so that he could come out from behind a microphone when he played. There had been a number of attempts to make a pick-up for the acoustic guitar, but each attempt had flaws. Glen's guitar-playing friend, Jerry Reed had a classical guitar with an under-saddle pickup that didn't sound half bad. The concept of the pickup was right - piezo crystals under the bridge saddle - but it was made for a nylon string guitar and suffered from tonal and string imbalance problems, accentuated when used on a steel string.

Ovation engineers studied this guitar and then set about creating a new pickup of their own. Up until then, playing acoustic on stage either meant standing in front of a microphone, using a magnetic pickup mounted in the soundhole, or using a stick-on "bug" on the soundboard. None of these worked very well particularly if there were drums or electric instruments in the band. The engineers saw that a successful pickup would have to have the right balance sensing top vibration and string vibration. Getting the balance right would give the best acoustic tone and the greatest volume.

Their solution became part of the first professionally accepted acoustic/electric guitar ever made. That pickup is still in use today on the acoustic/electric Ovations. The sound is well balanced, the output is very high and the saddle is properly shaped for accurate intonation. Piezo pickups have a very high impedance, which means that the sound can change over long cable runs. In order to prevent this, Ovation designed a "buffered" preamp that lowered the impedance, preserved the tone and controlled the output. This was the beginning of the acoustic/electric guitar.

Bill Kaman recalls, "Our first preamp was a very clean design. It had two contour filters to enhance the "acousticness" of the sound, and combined with bringing the impedance into the right range, the guitar sounded very rich and full. The first preamps were volume only. Later we added a tone control to the circuit as well as offering a stereo preamp.

"In the beginning only about 15% of the guitars we built had pickups. Ten years later, 90% of our guitars were acoustic/electric. The truly amazing thing is that it also took about 10 years before any of our competition began to offer acoustic/electric models as standard in their line."

While the Ovation pickup has remained the same, the electronics have kept pace with the players' needs and sound reinforcement technology. Over the past 25 years, Ovation has maintained its leadership as the dominant acoustic electric guitar in the world.

Their latest innovation is the Ovation iDea Acoustic-Electric Guitar, the world's first acoustic-electric guitar with a built-in MP3 recorder. Inspiration can come at any time. With the iDea Guitar, you can capture it every time. The Ovation iDea can store over 100 minutes of MP3 sound and you can download and manage your iDea music files on your computer. Playback through the built-in headphone jack or plug-in to your favorite amp. The possibilities are as endless as your creativity.

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