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March 14, 2009

Some Confusion About Ovation USA Manufacturing

There seems to be a bit of confusion about the Ovation factory in Connecticut and what guitars are going to be made in USA now and what guitars will be made in Asia.  Ovation has long been one of our best lines and one of my personal favorites.   Fender bought Kaman in Early Jan of 2008 or at least they closed the deal then.  In the progression of 2008 Fender did an accessment of the sales and numbers and such and then decided to "Fenderize" the company.  Some say that is the big "F" word in the industry.  They decided to stop making any guitar under a $2000 retail price in the USA.  This means that anything below the Legend and Elite such as all Balladeer and Elite Standard and Special models would no longer be made in the USA. 

 They moved it all to a Korean Manufacturer last fall and now those guitars have a designation of AX or TX(Textured Models) and they are Korean.  All LX guitars and Adamas guitars are still made in USA.  That pretty much means anything that was made in the USA with gold hardware is still made in USA along with Adamas and anything without is somewhere else.  However, there are few Celebrity and Celebrity Deluxe guitars that have gold hardware too, but they have never been made in USA.  The USA factory in Connecticut is still making Legend and Elite guitars and Custom Legend and Custom Elite and Adamas guitars along with the Hybrid Electrics.  Also, Fender has moved the Guild USA Acoustic plant to the Connecticut Ovation Plant and they are now being made in New England again. This transition all happened in the second half of 2008 and is all up and running now.  I have not seen any of the Connecticut built Guild guitars as of this writing. However, I have not noticed any change in the quality of the Ovation line during all this.  They all seem to be as good as ever.

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February 27, 2009

Guitars with Soul

I have had an interesting experience this week with some of my vintage guitars that I have never had before.  I take over 10,000 pictures of guitars every year to post them on the internet and we try to do the best we can to accurately show all sides and vantage points to our customers so they will know what they are getting.  We have a neighbor a few stores up Main Street from us which is Larry Nance Photography Studio.  I have really admired some of his portraits because not only did they have interesting humans in them, but some of them have Harley bikes and old classic cars in them.  He is a Route 66 Highway buff because our stores are on the old Mother Road.  I have a 1964 ½ Mustang convertible that I have had since I was a kid and my Harley Roadking is actually on display here in the guitar store and I ride it every time the weather gets about 70 degrees.    Well, Larry came in this week and asked if we wanted to collaborate on some artistic photos of some of the really cool old stuff so we could make them available to our customers if they wanted them.  I thought it was a great idea and we set a time and I took a couple of my most valued possessions and went up to his loft studio a few doors up the street.  His building is five years older than ours, which makes it about 106 now and it has some really nice architecture.  I took my 1951 Fender NoCaster and a 1950 Fender Tweed Deluxe Amp.  He did some really cool shots of these with an old antique barn type door he has in his studio.  He had a tweed piece of luggage made by the same people who made the tweed for the amp and he incorporated it really nicely into the picture. 

I also took one of my old 1957, 00018 Martins.  He really did some nice shots of it with different plant arrangements and a horse saddle and even an American Flag.  He actually has an antique phone booth in his studio and did one shot of the suitcase and the guitar in the phone booth which made it look like some guy in 1959 had stopped at the bus station to call his girlfriend one more time before he left on the road.  Don’t get me wrong, I know how to take pictures of guitars and probably very few people alive have snapped more good photographs of quality guitars than I have over the last 40 years.  However, Larry Nance is an ARTIST.  The guy is good!  I couldn’t believe the emotion and the feeling he captured with the lighting and angles he used.  My photography makes people want to buy the guitar, his photography makes people want to buy pictures. 

 

It made me feel about my pictures kind of like when listening to someone who plays a good ballad and plays all the right chords and sings all the right notes while they are reading it out of a songbook, and then his pictures were like listening to someone with a broken heart sing that same ballad through their pain and really giving their soul to the song.   You know what I mean! The music art is best when the soul is involved.  I saw some pictures of my guitars today that really brought out the soul of the instrument.  When I look at my pictures of guitars I think, wow, what a nice flame maple top, or gee, that is a sweet looking inlay.  When I look at Larry’s pictures of my guitars I think, “what if it could talk,” or “what was the last song it played?” or  “does it miss it’s last owner.”  I know they don’t miss us, but they sure do hear more about us from our heart than almost anyone in our lives. 

Anyway, this was a really cool experience.  He is going to produce some really cool art from those two guitars and if it goes well we will do some of the other old pieces I have.

Have a great weekend and put some soul into that song.

Bro Bobby

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February 25, 2009

Acoustic Guitars VS Electric Guitars

Wow! What a day.  We have recently gotten an order of 100 G&L Electric Guitars and Basses in from California.  We are in the process of getting all the photographs done and all the listings up. It is a big job.  With G&L USA Guitars each one is different.  They are all custom made to specs and can have a host of options such as Birdseye Maple Neck and Body Binding, or Double Body Binding and a myriad of different neck sizes and shapes and feels.  When we take pictures and write an ad to list on the OklahomaVintageGuitar.com site for a G&L USA piece it is for one piece and one piece only.  When we do an ad for a tuner or an AMP the same listing might be able to sell hundreds of items that are all alike but G&L guitars are so unique that each one only gets one sale and one sale only.  While this is a big job it is also a great deal of fun.  With 100 new pieces coming in the door all in boxes, it is like Christmas for about 3 days while we open all of them and get them photographed and ready to sell.  Each one has such a different personality it is fun to hold and play each one as it first comes out of its case.

Anyone who really knows me knows I am a strange duck when it comes to my guitar collection.  I am really really into both acoustic guitars and electric guitars.  However, when it comes to vintage verses new pieces my tastes run quite different.  I grew up in the 50s and 60s and started playing in 1966 at the age of 10.  I really loved the old Fender electric guitars of the era and those were the first serious guitars in my life and in my collection.  I have a pile of old Tele’s and Strats from the 50s and 60s and I’m pretty much crazy about anything Leo Fender built from 1950 to Dec 31, 1964 when he sold the company to CBS.  For this reason my vintage collection is really heavy on the electric side and rather light on the Acoustic Side.  My friends say that light is not the word to use to describe any of my group of instruments, but it heavier on the electric side with basses and guitars than on the acoustic side.  When it comes to new instruments, however, I am much more into the acoustic instruments and I have been blessed with loving the instruments and the music and can really find some great things about almost any brand from anywhere. 

On another day I’ll write about why I think Martin is building the best instruments today of their 175 year history, but I do think it is true and I have some from all the great eras of the past 100 years.  So, Bobby likes old electrics and new acoustics.  I suppose one could say this true, with few exceptions. One of the reasons for this is the biggest issue of all on a guitar, even before tone and that is ACTION.  Old electrics almost always have a great action, or it can be made great rather quickly and easily.  Old acoustics almost always have an action high enough to run a large cat under the strings at the 12th fret without touching the fingerboard or the strings.  What difference does it make if something has awesome tone, if you need an orthopedic surgeon for hand work after you play it for a few minutes.  Feel and tone are both super important but both must be present for me to get excited about a piece.  This is why I am all over the new Martin guitars and Gibson and Taylor also.  Taylors have a great neck and super feel, and the action can be so easily set to almost play itself.  One of the reasons I love the new Martins is because the necks are so improved in the last 25 years and they can be set to play easily and to my ear they have an awesome tone.  Gibsons are fun and pretty and sound good and they can be set to play really nice, and back to the pretty, they are just so interesting and yes, ornate and pretty.

At this point I’ll stir up a hornets nest and say, Ovations are also among my favorite pieces.  Wait, wait, just a minute, before you who are of the opinion that a guitar must be made in PA or CA for it to really have its roots in Heaven, let me caution you not to narrow your vision so much that you miss some of the finest pieces in both tonality and playability of all time.  I’ll go out on a limb right now and say it.  Here it comes.  But before I do, remember I am a guy who owns 3000 guitars at this very moment and I have been collecting and playing for over 40 years.  OK, I’ll say it.  The very best sounding guitar I have ever had in my hands is and OVATION.  What!!!!  You now say, I just lost all my credibility as a musician.  Well you just ask anyone who played one of Charlie Kaman’s old #47 Adamas guitars and they will either have to admit it or lie to you because their sawdust friends are present.  By the way, the body of the old #47 didn’t have an ounce of wood in it.  My whole point is that we should be careful not to box ourselves into a brand or a style of instrument and miss out on something that we could use to greatly expand our music.

This brings me back to the G&L guitars.  The L stands for Leo, yes, Leo Fender founded the company and these electrics are just oozing with quality and history and the wood and finish are so gorgeous and they sound so good plugged in.  We should have all 100 of these up and looking good within the next week.  Thanks again for your time and your comments.

Have some good music tonight.

Bro Bobby

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February 23, 2009

Why Buy a Fine Musical Instrument in a Time of Economic Stress

I know some are asking, why buy a fine or even an expensive musical instrument such as a Martin Guitar during a difficult economic time as this.  Actually there are many reasons why many intelligent people are buying instruments such as this at this time, who have never bought them before.  One is they are a better investment than the stock market, which seems to be fluctuating wildly these days and is ebbing ever downward.  Not just in modern times but over the centuries fine musical instruments have never lost their value.  Even empires have risen and fallen and civilizations have come and gone but the fine instruments of music of those civilizations have transcended the timelines of economies and social structures to remain timeless in their value and to the point of sacredness to many.  Like the instruments of Rome and the Violins of Stradivarius, for 175 years Martin guitars have become timeless treasures transcending the bubble and bust of economies and have remained valued treasures throughout the generations.  Even the instruments made by Martin during the worst economic time in the history of our country, the Great Depression of the 1930s, still have a super high value today reaching into the hundreds of thousands of dollars as proven by actual sales in many instances.  Thus proving that economies can slump and even crash, yet the fine musical instruments of the day can soar and even seem immune to flitting and faltering of the values placed on the paper any society calls money.  Why is this true?  I believe it is true because music and art defines a society much more than money defines that society.  Music tells who we are and expresses our eternal soul within while money is just the paper we exchange to be able to decorate the external things of our life not the internal meanings of life, like music and art can express.  For this reason, fine musical instruments become sacred to any society because they are used to express the inner man like few other material items. 
Another reason to buy a fine musical instrument at a time like this is that it is an investment you can enjoy with your own hands.  A guitar can bring families together and give joy in a time of sadness.  It can give new meaning to a life that has experienced great loss.  This is why little children 2 or 3 years old flock to an instrument with great joy and those 90 to 100 years old still smile when hearing the notes of an old favorite. 
The housing market will bubble and bust, the automobile companies will come and go and oil prices will climb and dive, but the music is constant and comforting, and even an escape, at times, from those rough times that seem to surround us.  Thus, when asked, "Why would you want to be in the Guitar Business at a time like this," my answer is always, "what could be a better time to be handling the instruments that soothe the soul and transcend our cash society, than in a time when souls are troubled and cash seems to be becoming worthless."  Today more than any other time in my lifetime, Americans need something they can hold in their hands and value, something that makes them smile and something that makes them sing.  They need something that brings them together rather than tearing them apart.  I can think of nothing better to do this than a fine musical instrument such as a guitar.
Thanks for your time,
Dr Bobby Boyles
Oklahoma Vintage Guitar
 

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