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Location: Australia | Well I've have it for about a week now so here's my take on it. The closest cousin I own is one of those Lennon Legends so I used that by way of comparison.
With all my O's having deep bowls, the first thing that struck me was how shallow it was. To me it's in between shallow and mid depth. The guitar was also light and very comfortable to play standing or sitting.
The quality of construction is good with a creamy tight grained spruce top, ebony f'board, nice fretwork. I was able to tweek the truss rod and touch up the nut slots a little to give me as near to a perfect playing action as you can get.
As for tone, it sounds different to any of my other O's. Comparing it to the Legend, it has less of that throaty deep bowl bottom end but it has a warmth and a clarity that the Legend doesn't. The best word to describe the tone of this guitar is sweet.
I really think that the old cloth bowls are a factor here. The same warm mids can also be heard in my 77'GC 12 string.
It kid of reminds me of a mahogany b&s OM guitar. It has an airy quality to the tone which makes it a #1 choice as a fingerpicker. It also a full rich tone when strummed that doesn't fall apart when you hit it hard. It's also quite loud which is suprising given the shallower bowl.
Anyone who says that all O's sound the same plugged in is wrong. I went through the excercise of plugging all mine into my AER Compact 60 to test this point and I was suprised that the character of each guitar was present in the plugged in tone.
These new 2 knob preamps are excellent. A very natural tone when set flat, simple with an uncluttered look. I'm a total convert.
This is a guitar which is basically built the way Ovations used to be with the classic Ovation look that I love.
I must once again thank the Ovation Adoption Agency for making this guitar avaliable. |
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Location: SoCal | Amen. I agree on all points.... |
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Location: Earth·SolarSystem·LocalInterstellarCloud·Local Bub | This is new, qualitative info. |
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Location: SoCal | One thing that is interesting about this guitar is that because it has a shallow bowl, it does feel smaller than my other O's and A's.... |
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Location: Australia | You right, it does feel smaller.
BTW, Moody thanks for entertaining my GC questions over the last few months.
Same goes for Goober and Dave W.
Anyway, I'll try and get a couple of nice pics posted. |
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Location: SoCal | My pleasure. BTW, while the OFC slothead is easily the finest guitar I own, the GC RI lives on a stand here in my office. It gets picked up and played everyday. It's that good..... |
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Posts: 1900
| Nice review. I remember having a Campbell artist many years ago. We can thank Mr. Campbell for the shallow bowls, as he is said to have requested it for more 'cut' when he was flat-picking. |
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Posts: 863
Location: Central Florida | Originally posted by Steve:
Nice review. I remember having a Campbell artist many years ago. We can thank Mr. Campbell for the shallow bowls, as he is said to have requested it for more 'cut' when he was flat-picking. What's interesting, though, is while Ovation credits him for suggesting the concept that became the artist/shallow bowl, Campbell has consistantly used deep bowls throughout most of his career. He more or less ditched his own signature model not long after his TV show left the air. |
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Location: SoCal | If Glen had had a GC Artist model that sounded this good, he might not have walked away from them. Instead, in 1974 he got an A braced Legend that he used until 1976 when he got a slothead. He played Adamii until 1982 when he went with the Elite configuration (1537 prototype then 87 C). He stayed with those until the late 90's or early 2000's when he went to the Viper.
Jeff's right. From about 1974 thru about 2001, he played deep bowl Legends, Adamii, or Elites.
But the 1627 that he played in the early 70's is not nearly as good a guitar as the reissues. |
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Location: Phoenix AZ | So Paul, is it coincidence that your guitar collection mimics what GC played (Artist, gc12, Slothead, 1537, 87C, ...) ??? Please don't tell me for halloween you dress up as the rhinestone cowboy.
Dave |
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Location: SoCal | Oddly, the GC RI, GC12, and 87C just fell into my lap. The 1537 is a direct influence. The slothead is more a result of playing the "currently missing" Clifford's and your 47 of 47.... |
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| I saw Mr. Campbell in concert about 5 years ago. All I remember was he used a blue 12-string Kramer solid-body to play William Tell...the rest is a blur... |
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Location: Central Florida | Originally posted by moody, p.i.:
If Glen had had a GC Artist model that sounded this good, he might not have walked away from them... But the 1627 that he played in the early 70's is not nearly as good a guitar as the reissues. Absolutely true, and I wasn't meaning to imply that they're the same. Until recently, I had a mid-depth Custom Legend that I suspect was very similar in tone to the GC reissues. I've also owned a few VT braced GCs from the 70s, and, FWIW, their acoustic tone couldn't hold a candle to my mid-depth, A braced CL.
I was merely attempting to point out the irony that Ovation created the artist bowl for Glen--at his request--yet he didn't stay with them for very long. |
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Posts: 15677
Location: SoCal | Well, it wasn't a very good guitar, acoustically, IMHO. But Glen made money off of every GC Artist sold. Then they gave him the A braced Legend and from what we know, he loved that guitar and played it until he went to Adamii.
He must have loved it because from the pics I've seen, it was acoustic only. And Glen was the artist who pushed for the a/e.... |
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Location: Phoenix AZ | I would suspect that VERY few acoustic guitar players are seen playing in public with what they really consider to be their favorite sounding acoustic guitar.
I had this (very brief) discussion with Steve Howe of YES on one of the few occasions that I was able to meet him. He was signing a copy of his guitar book for me. I commented something like "No disrespect intended, but with all the wonderful guitars in your collection, I wouldn't be using the 'average' ones that you do on stage." He just looked at me and said, "Yes you would."
You know what, I guess I would.
Dave |
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1627 Glen Campbell Reissue Review