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Bad drilled holes under Ovation pickups

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DetlefMichel
Posted 2016-05-20 6:11 AM (#525396)
Subject: Bad drilled holes under Ovation pickups



Joined:
May 2011
Posts: 751

Location: Muenster/Germany

 


My newest vintage Ovation: a wonderful 1982 legend 12string tobacco sunburst, almost perfect for it´s age, but:Several of my Ovation guitars show badly made holes for the cables under the pickup. It may be only an annoyance, but somehow I feel that it cannot be good if the bridge has bad physical contact with the top. So I decided to cure this with a special "shim".

 

Sometimes it´s even worse than this

Sitka spruce

 

Little patience and be precise

I glue it in, exactly 1.6mm(2 shims)

Now the pickup has more contact surface. Finally use a small file to make a little space for the black pin.

That´s it. On some of my Ovations the holes were so big that even the low E string had no wood under it. I don´t know if this makes a remarkable improvement of sound, but it makes me feel better;-)

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2wheeldrummer
Posted 2016-05-20 6:20 PM (#525409 - in reply to #525396)
Subject: Re: Bad drilled holes under Ovation pickups



Joined:
February 2014
Posts: 699

Location: moline,illinois		Nice find I love the sunbursts,is that a 1656?
What wood did you use for your shim,I've always wondered if getting custom shims made from rosewood or some other tone-wood would enhance the sound of my O's
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DetlefMichel
Posted 2016-05-21 9:00 AM (#525419 - in reply to #525396)
Subject: Re: Bad drilled holes under Ovation pickups



Joined:
May 2011
Posts: 751

Location: Muenster/Germany		Yes, it´s a 1656, tobacco burst, perfectly matches the 1619 from the same year of production. It´s fun to compare the sound of the 1656 and the 1759, 2 different guitars with nearly the same appearance.
I made many experiments with different tonewoods for Ovation-shims and It may be an illusion but precise one-piece shims appear to omprove the dynamics of the acoustic guitars. For these here "surgery" shims I use the top-wood (I have a piece of original Ovation sika spruce which I cut in pieces) because I glue them on the top. Fot removable shims I use different hardwoods, the best was a piece of an old folding rule! No idea what wood this was. For Adamas I use ebony.
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DanSavage
Posted 2016-05-21 3:05 PM (#525425 - in reply to #525396)
Subject: Re: Bad drilled holes under Ovation pickups



Joined:
June 2012
Posts: 2303

Location: Lake Forest, CA		Nice job.

What kind of glue did you use?

When I re-topped Jay's shiny bowl I made shims from a piece of rosewood. I don't know if they make the guitar sound better, but they definitely looked cool.
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arumako
Posted 2016-05-22 11:11 AM (#525439 - in reply to #525396)
Subject: Re: Bad drilled holes under Ovation pickups



Joined:
October 2012
Posts: 1018

Location: Yokohama, Japan		Nice work DetlefMichel! My 1868 had the same problem so I just filled the holes up with black casting resin and re-drilled the holes cleanly. I like your method better though. Using wood to repair wood just seems like a better choice...and as Dan asks, "What kind of glue did you use?"
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DetlefMichel
Posted 2016-05-23 3:41 AM (#525451 - in reply to #525396)
Subject: Re: Bad drilled holes under Ovation pickups



Joined:
May 2011
Posts: 751

Location: Muenster/Germany		Because the repair shim is not intended to be removed I use simple wood-glue (Ponal).
And usually I don´t file the holes to squares but in this case the drilling holes were too irregular.
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Mark in Boise
Posted 2016-05-23 11:08 AM (#525457 - in reply to #525396)
Subject: Re: Bad drilled holes under Ovation pickups


Joined:
March 2005
Posts: 12750

Location: Boise, Idaho		My Folklore had the hole drilled through the brace, which cracked. I just used wood glue to fix it and it's been fine for years.
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