For some time I read a lot of posts about very shiny and horribly expensive, brand-new Ovation guitars in this Forum. Some of you called it "guitar porn", which seems a good description...

today I want to take up the cudgels for another kind of Ovations: all these old, used guitars that have seen many winters, accidents and songs and still are so wonderful and beloved by their owners.

I´ve had quite a lot of all kinds of Ovation guitars, some of them very rare and precious and -really illustriuos. But time after time when I bought and sold them a very few turned out to be some kind of very special. To be exact, it were 2.

I have kept a 1980 1119 custom legend (acoustic only) guitar. it had bad problems with the top (I mentioned it in the bottom feeding luthiery guild forum before), it has finish cracks, nicks, scratches...and plays like a dream. It´s a very lightweight Ovation (2035 grams), has perfect intonation, a good neck-angle and a wonderful bright sound with fundamental basses and crisp heights and a perfect neck with incredibly low playable action. Only if you look very vlose at the top wood you can see the extremely fine graining of the wood, less than 1mm growth-rings almost over the whole surface.

The nr.2 is a 1978´s 1658 custom legend 12 string guitar. When I got it it was just a bonus when I made a swap with another guitar. There was a mismatched neckreset, a broken trussrod, lots of bad looking finish cracks, a badly worn fretboard and the rosette in pieces (thank *** ALL pieces).Bruises and scratches.BUT...a CUSTOM LEGEND 12FRET!!!!

I did all I could to restore this poor guitar, re-assembled the rosette, and gave the guitar to my luthier who finally had the guitar for months in his workshop. He transformed the set neck into a bolt-on neck, repaired the broken fretboard, re-fretted the guitar and repaired the  trussrod and , and.....I removed the (broken)electronics and the pickup  and build a spare bridge of ebony and brass to make it an only acoustic guitar, too.

Now it´s good payable again and this guitar is a TONE monster. Great dynamics, a real ringing and singing 12string sound that you would not expect from an old cannon like this.

On both guitarsI left the scratches and the nicks as they were.In my eyes these old guitars may show what they have gone through, just like myself.

What about you? Are there any more of these not so showroom-suitable guitars? Or am I the only one who loves these old ladies?