Ovation Factory Tour

hey gang this is Charles for premier guitar we're in New Hartford Connecticut at really one of the epicenters of American guitar history this is a building that started at and remains the Ovation factory even though it's gone through some other changes I'm here with Jason from ovation and we're standing here with a whole range of ovations from across the years and we're going to check out the factory and take a look at what's going on and what they have going on now and what they have in plan for the future in store for the future rather right Jason that's right and we hope to you know after you walk through the factory I get to learn a little bit about our guitar a little bit about our processes most importantly about the people behind these guitars the vision that they carry on every day I hope you get a good light of what ovation is and you'll see where we've come from and you'll come to understand where we're going which is basically mastery of materials to create a tonal palette that suits any type of player true lutherie real people real hands on the machines and ultimately artistry advanced you know taking innovation taking technology along with you know some of the ghosts of the past putting them together and making fantastic instruments yeah you're going to see a lot of surprises and a lot of folks in this factory that have been here for a long long time with their hands on these guitars so let's go check it out so I'm here with Jason and Darren and we're in the wood room this is where ovations begin in this beautiful wood room here with all this beautiful wood and tell me what we're looking at here fellas this is our wood room where we store all the the stock for making the guitars and this is mostly spruce and we also have some other top woods for ovations koa we have cedar as well for some models that we've you know custom models and so on the the key for this room is that we keep it climate-controlled and we keep all of our material at a 70 degree and 45 percent humidity a range in that you know so that it acclimates in that way you know when it leaves here it's going to be it's not going to want to fluctuate too much up or down and more stable so right over here we have our brace stock now this is a this is all red spruce which we have started to use on some of our ovation models we like red spruce you know it's a it's very very consistent in stiffness you know from you can see here that there's wide grain and there's very tight grain and the good thing about red spruce is that you don't have as much variation from from piece to piece and stiffness and so it makes a very nice brace material and we have started using that let's grown in the north-northeast job most of this stuff comes from from North East and up into Canada over here is our Sitka we use this we predominantly use that you know I mean for years I mean we've we've used that on most ovations and it's a very good wood I mean you know Sitka spruce has a great stiffness to weight ratio and that's what makes it ideal for it's very light but strong but strong but you know and we are dabbling with different materials Darryl what are we looking at here it looks like some very nice wood yes this is a this is our we call it a supermarket basically but this is our supermarket for our tops and backs in size for some of the other brands we do over here we got different grades of spruce we'll have five a Sitka we'll have you know master grade stuff red spruce we got Engelmann Carpathian those are all things that we can draw from cedar as well they're seated anko 5a koa and so what we've got Deborah Ives here and she's the one that processes all the wood and chooses the material for each guitar based on her her specifications and she also has quite a few other operations she'll she'll bond in rosettes and apple that's as well we do an inlaid epaulette and to make those components she's actually getting ready to laser the parts on our laser machine it's almost like they're there look like little puzzle pieces so to speak and what we'll do is we'll pocket the area in the in the spruce top and then we cut out all these little parts and we use four different types of wood this is the Paducah and we've got the teak here this is what black walnut and right here is Texas Mesquite and so all those little parts are inlaid into a cavity and then once there they're cured then we sand it off and rout the holes who's responsible for this design by the way this goes back to the very early days of ovation and adamas and and you know I really didn't know where where the idea for it came from until I was really digging through old prints and this is these represent grapes on a grape leaf yeah and so that's that's where the original design came from and what's nice is you get a certain size of cavity and then you also have the strength between all these as well so it it really works nice and when you add all these holes up it comes to the same area as a regular Center sound hole right here what we're doing is in laying 1777 in lace in a very nice hop I might add on that's that that Sitka top and so what Deb will do is she'll she'll use the epoxy and inlay it and go from there material we're looking at here on the rosette this is a this actually on this one is a black acrylic and then this material is an acrylic pearloid okay whereas on this one it's also a black acrylic for the main part of it but it's got abalone for the little these are called oak leaves so the oak leaf design is abalone on these this is for a custom legend that's actually something from aerospace these little clamps are called cleco clamps and that comes from the aerospace background you know the first time I ever saw those we're actually in aerospace for a production but i I've rarely ever seen anybody use that in guitar manufacturing other than here right now the thickness of the top is a little thicker than we want and we give it enough extra thickness so that when we send it through our wide belt it'll bring it down to the proper thickness that we want to do and then before the thing is completed we'll bring it to our final dimension but you have to clean all of this up and fare this down so it's nice and smooth all right we've moved on to what looks like bull world here here what are we looking at we're looking at the bodies that we use on the Ovation product as you can see here we have some different things we have some mandolins with the rings already bonded here and basically we're using two different styles of Bowl currently we're using this this is our SMC Bowl which stands for sheet molding compound and what it is is it's this is really the essence of what makes a Novation and adamas different we should remind everybody right here it's it's what it's what sets it apart but it's not what defines it I think I think what defines ovation is our openness to use whatever we need to use to what make what we want so whether that's you know in my view this could be something completely different than what it currently is if that's what we wanted it to be but currently this is where we're at and this is what we want to use so that it might it has definitely changed in form over the years definitely this this one that we're looking at is a fairly new design goes back to about 2005 and we've got a patent on this and this is we call this the contour bowl and what this has is it's got this this nice contour to it and also this leg cut and that leg cuts it's very nice be on your leg so the guitar will not fall that was a complete with very early ovations way back in the 60s oh that that's it's a common complaint but I challenge anybody to try one of these and then still complain about it falling off your lap this is a kind of a hybrid in that regard we wanted to go back to the early style hand laid up bowls on our higher end you know this is a much higher performance body and it's very resonant okay again and consequently it's more expensive as well this part is is a fiberglass it's hand laid up in a mold and it's cured in an autoclave which is a very high-end aerospace way of manufacturing but we like the way it performs and so this is what's used on on much of our highest end stuff the Adamas the that 2098 we've been talking about has this type of bowl what Joe's doing here is he just installed this ring and again we see these Cliquot clamps the aerospace thing but Joe you want to tell them how you do this yeah we're just epoxy around the outside and then we clamp about every inch apart this particular model has a was a 32 foot radius or 30 foot radius so it's got a little bit of an arch to it so when we put in and we just make sure we lift that Center up a bit the next step is to flip it over on a big plate sander so you want to make sure that we're going to get that nice uniform arch all the way around it it'll sit here for a good six hours before the next step is that you'll see is you'll see this here in the center these runners and what that does is that helps retain the shape so when we install this we leave this in place and then it'll help retain the shape that we want around here then after everything is dried we'll clip that out we recycle this we chop it up and send it back to the to the vendor that makes this part and they reuse it now let's look at this he's routing for electronics right here this is part of that that bulb process we have a very nice system that for electronics where it loads from the outside yeah here this is for a multi sound hold so on the multi sound home models we will put a rear access door actually yeah go ahead and put that in so we'll do a rear access door so that you can get in there and work on the guitar on the interior this is pretty done in dirty stuff it's just a couple drills and getting right in there that's right doing what it takes to make this happen we have these of what we call doublers that he's going to then install so that you can put the the rear access door now this is another thing that kind of goes back to the aerospace days in helicopters and aircraft there are many access panels that you need to have to be able to inspect and to look at stuff so when when Charlie command wanted to do this he he was like well we'll just put a rear access and that way we can get in there and do what we want to do with it bonded Joe has to flush trim it so here's here's a top that's been flush trim and we'll use a shaper here for do it we turn it upside down and just go around and flush out this edge these are diamond hip cutters and they're specifically made for us you can see they have multi shear to them and they also have different steps so that for our perp leg you have the correct widths for the for the different profiling that we have so that would be the next step and we just go around the perimeter of the guitar and we'll put that little rabbeted edge one of the reasons that that we do a rapport word and a reverse cut is that we want to ensure that we have no tear out around the the perimeter of the guitar now the spruce the way the grain the vertical grain and the spruce is as you come around the edge if that rotation of that cutter is going the wrong direction it'll blow that and so we don't want that so what he's doing is he's he's skip routing so he'll route a section he'll move to another section he'll skip the next one and then after he'll go all the way around the perimeter with the other cutter and that ensures of a much more consistent and better route now what he what Joe is doing here is he's going to go ahead and route the rest of the perimeter after doing that skip routing but what he's done is he's actually reversed the spindle direction on this router after we're out I'm just going to go ahead and and sand it lightly to make sure there's no bumps until when we put the binding on it looks nice and smooth all the way around once I get it in there I'll set that machine up and we'll put somebody on it this is satisfying to you still that you get to actually get in there with with your hands and do something old-fashioned the block as yeah as a woodworker and a guitar player yeah so this is an air logic system for installing the binding and what you know the installing binding can be very hard on your hands and so we developed this years ago to help help make it a little little easier on the guys and as you what you'll see is these are all air cylinders that Joe will will after he applies the adhesive he'll turn each one on and it'll clamp the binding into place and it works very well so this is very unique to the Ovation manufacturing process you don't often see this exact kind of type of machine I've never seen this type of machine at any other manufacturer and I've been to all the major Maine now right here he's just he's just dry fitting it and he's going to cut it to length so that he has the proper length before actually applying the adhesive yeah they're still they're still even with it with anything like this you still have to have a certain amount of finesse and understanding of the requirement so that you know if something goes slightly at a stray an air cylinder whatever you know how to deal with it and that's the kind of thing that the Jo has that experience with you know you got a lot of folks on the crew here that have been here a long time it's yes yes you know for the good thing for the Ovation line I would say the majority have a minimum of 20 years it's impressive and some some have more I like I said before I've got 20 years with Ovation Joe's got 18 we're new we're new guys the kid yeah all right Joe we're looking at some net well necks in various states of completion here yep a couple of different models we do a five-piece model a walnut model we get the mahogany in its plantation grown we mill it ourselves to the size we make our own veneers that Center laminates that go down the middle we bond it all up and what we do is we nest out two necks out of each block we'll rough cut it on the band saw we get one here one there so that state pretty much stage one from there it goes into the big CMS machine we'll do three different cycles on it depending on what type of neck it is whether it's an LX that has a two-way rod both on attachment or the newer neck with a dovetail at the end for the the K bar which originally you know was the big the big thing for us when we first started all of them will go through what we call a first cycle and it will prep the neck from this to accept either the k-bar the to a rod the support block for the LX with the two graphite rods we're just going to duck down once all the rods are in it whether it be a K bar or to a rod we'll flip it over on the same machine and we'll hit it with a bunch of different cutters primarily a ball cutter to get the shape what division is there in terms of production numbers what do you see which method are using those right now with duck tails is pretty much across the board for a lot of stuff we still run out Lexus we got some custom orders people still prefer the LX so we're running some of those right now boards to them we use fire hoses that have been clamped up on both ends and air fittings in them and we pump it with 40 pounds of air and that really forces you know force of stuff together gets real all the little hand clamps that we used to have to do each nook by itself now we can lay out ten of them at a time and bond ten at a time we line them up with type on two hours in the clamps we pull them out and then they're ready to go to the carving yes so I keep saying this in this factory i I see a lot of versions of these construction methods and other factories but a lot of them aren't quite like this a lot of this a lot of the processes here innovations still seem very specific to what you guys do a lot of the tooling was specifically made for Ovation of course it was all I mean we're on by aerospace so we had some of the best people in the aerospace business doing a lot of our engineering stuff looks like we're working on some fret boards here yeah we actually have we have Kathy Buddhist here who's been with ovation for 42 years and she's worked on everything from from doing what we did we saw Deb doing with the Spruce and she'd grade it spruce and processed that for many years she's been doing fret boards for longer than I've worked here which has been 20 years so she knows a lot about fret board and what she's doing here is she's slotting she's putting the fret slots in these boards and we're you know we've had various methods over the years we had these Arbor saws with all the individual blades but this method works really nice because you're cutting every slot with the same cutter and so you have a higher degree of consistency that way each slot is the same width and we really want to have that so that you don't have issues with Brett pop and so on so as you see this is going to go back and it's going to cut every one of them and at this point the fretboard is is not profile so one of the the after this is this is done the next step is Kathy will profile the boards which you'll end up with a part that looks like this this is an autonomous fretboard depending on what model it is Wilke will install binding like this Adamas doesn't have binding but this is a an Aldi Meola fretboard and so that'll be the next step after profiling is will we'll do our cove we call that the cove or mustache and then we'll bond that then we'll take that down and put the side binding on and then after that we'll we'll smooth all the surface on these Mills Kathy is installing the tortoiseshell binding on our 2098 model the koa top guitar and very quick she's a very efficient worker and so she'll chillin saw this it'll have to sit overnight to cure okay so what are you up to here I'm starting to fret Al Di Meola fretboard this doesn't look very high blood pressure at all this looks pretty real like quiet work though takes many years of practice do you have a favorite part of the process yeah putting abalone in the polls why is that your favorite it's challenging things are starting to take shape seeing some finished guitars here in Sherwood is going to tell us about some of the finishing work that goes up well when they come up off out of the detail shop they come to various stages here right here everything gets prepped up depending on the model it is the UV fill with a filler paste sanded and scuff this type of model is sealed more like a rosewood sealer from that point they go into the spray booth and they're given a four coats of polyester at that point they come back out here again and then they get real Evald and depending on whether to turn natural or a sunburst or a black then the stain is put on the bindings re scraped again and then they go back in the final three coats of another type of polyurethane finish the next are the same thing they come up the UV filled just like the tops and then they go in for polyester that's what this is here they've got four coats of polyester on them at that point they level them all out and again a level of faces get it all nice and flat make sure your bindings are clean and what-have-you then they'll black out the face and put the Ovation logo down this log or whatever particular model it is aldini Ola and then they go on for three coats of another polyurethane type finish and then they going through the cure bank over there where they have to set for a minimum of four days and then they go from that point to go on to sand and buff which is battle that into the shop we're in the Ovation paint shop here and we've got Ken Ives here he's got this 2098 Cola and we were saying earlier that koa can be a difficult thing to finish so the very first thing we'll do on this is we'll put what we call rosewood sealer and so he'll shoot this this sealer on and then that will give us a good foundation to build our top coats so much more detail and relief and yeah you can see you can see how much porosity there is and that's part of the thing with koa Coe a has very very large pores and it'll actually go all the way through the top and we we do not use the UV filter because it will actually soak all the way through and so we avoid that so we'll we'll put this this on then we'll go over with polyester and then top coat it with our high-performance clear you urethane when they come to me they come as a top and bowl and as a neck and normally the neck is finished like this one but the bowl isn't painted but the top is finished and what I do is there's various processes of doing this but I'll attach the neck to the top and Bowl and you have to get the correct neck angle you have to get the correct centralisation and make sure it'll be good for playability and after that said and done I dress the frets get them nice and flat get them looking pretty much like this which is probably the best-looking frets in the business because I did it and that's how it goes and from here I put the bridge on and again there's different ways to put the bridge on depending on the type of top we have graphite tops which I use in epoxy we have like this is a koa top wood top I will up put the bridge on with a wood glue and then it sits and that's pretty much it over here from what you just saw me do over there the bowl goes to get painted okay so once the bowl is painted it comes back to me and I will install the nut right here I install the machine heads and I put the other hardware around the strap knobs I put the electronics in I put the pickup in and I hook up all the electronics and from here I put strings on and once I put the strings on it's all set for setup from here I take it with the strings on it I bring it up to the sound room and I set all the string height and the actions and the bridge height doing everything all the way up to setup I am mr. ovation they call me making it a guitar that's it so tell us what you do here this is the Adamas cell as I'm told and adamas is very important the ovation line and has been historically it's a an entirely different thing but what is it exactly explain to our viewers Beco pretty much of the whole thing is all custom made it's all hands on work hand sanding the lay off fiberglass layouts for different style models that I'll be making put fiberglass resin into this material okay we will work it in a wet layout by hand and he'll he'll paint all the resin into here as well and then he'll go and put this in place like that okay and then once everything's laid up and cured he he puts a intensifier in there clamps everything down and lets it cure so it's a catalyzed product you usually cures a couple hours overnight and then then the next day we've got actually a release agent that we put into the mold and so the next day he'll he'll take this mold apart it splits right in the center and then he'll be able to pull this part out and you can actually see it it has a little ledge built into it right here now this can't be easy to do this detail work either nor this this level of precision here this looks fairly working it's not easy that's why we have Howard do it but so yeah this is all in very important parts of this thing because what what this does this is what we call a flex edge and there's a patented thing the whole thing but this fiberglass has a little this art bonding surface for our carbon fiber tops which we'll look at and so the idea behind this is that that is a flexible edge that helps the guitar diaphragm pump and so we have to build that into it we have to also build this which is the bonding surface for the side of the bowl and then this this little ledge here stops the Bolton the ring from going down so that that's where the bowl actually butts up against there so helps index the part there's a very different construction process at work that's independent from the Ovation line that's belongs to Adamas in a very unique way totally unique and it was developed in the 70s by Charlie Command and in a number of his his engineers and works very well it's it's got a very unique sound so you can see this is one of those autoclaved hand laid up fibreglass bowls and then the ring has been bonded and all that there's a lot of trim work that has to happen because you've got a lot of flashing that's left after the bonding so that's all cleaned up and trimmed and then Howard goes back and meticulously just fix all what I call dental work it's all this little detail so he has to fix all that stuff if there's little any imperfections or air bubbles and so we take care of all of that and then after that then we'll take it to the next level where we we paint the interior of the guitar we we we color this now there will be additional paint work that gets done but right now this is just stained to accept the the topcoat later we use a digitizing arm to actually digitize the inside of this and cut it on a seat cut the top on a CNC so it fits precisely now for years we actually did that by hand and this is more recent technology that we've you know embraced and and it saves hours of time for us and so that's that's a nice a nice change and what this is actually comprised of is this is a it's it's one layer of five thousandths thick graphite carbon fiber it's unidirectional so all the toes they call them toes it's like little fibers run this direction okay and then there's a wooden core that we have oriented at a different direction and that can also change the tonality of the guitar as well so we can we've got that that we can play with and then the backside is one more layer of 5,000th graphite and so when you really think about five thousands it's like a human hair or something you know and so it's super thin and but where you get the strength is you've got a sandwich basically a very thin carbon fiber on each side with a core a thicker wood core and that core is very lightweight and once it's sandwich in there is basically becomes like a nerd you know is it it's it's it's there and it it acts is just a almost like a spacer between the two outer layers that's how this factory to her ends thanks Jason it's been a pleasure ma'am signing off from New Hartford Connecticut as Charles for premiere guitar you

Channel: Premier Guitar

Views: 476,819

Rating: 4.7770152 out of 5

Keywords: Ovation guitars, Ovation Guitar Company (Business Operation), acoustic guitars, composite guitars, adomas, applause, premier guitar, Guitar (Musical Instrument)

Id: UWB22iSrD98

Length: 32min 32sec (1952 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 24 2013