I used to write in my native language so far, but since there are a few fellas that read my blog outside of my country, I considered to make an edition in English language.
This blog entry is something special because this guitar isn't all about plugging into an amp and blowing your speakers out. This one is semi-acoustic, no, I meant semi-electric...that one doesn't sound right also...Well it's an acoustic guitar with a piezo unit and it doesn't need a battery. Weird, huh? Well that's the Piezo. Piezo is a special kind of rock (material, not music), which produces electricity when it is under physical pressure. Sooo, if you mount it on the right location on the guitar, you can get electrical signal and eventually sound out of it. Piezo isn't very good for producing sound that we are used to from magnet driven guitars (AC/DC, Metallica), but it reproduces surprisingly good amplified sounds of an acoustic guitar.
My Applause AE 26 guitar has a piezo unit under the bridge saddle (the steel looking kind of part under the white piece).
Oh, I'm so rude, I apologise... I haven't introduced you the Applause series acoustic guitars! An aircraft engineer (you read correctly), Charles Kaman, came up with an idea, a while ago, while serving his military service as a helicopter engineer. He was very familiar with molding and shaping of plastic and resin based materials, few of his fellow engineers were wood specialists, and so he thought of a guitar that would have less vocal feedback and also less wooden material. They made a guitar that had wooden front and wooden support structure, with composite back.
Regarding the sound characteristics, the Applause doesn't sound so clear and spanky as the traditional Western made guitars, but much warmer and smoother. It has it's own, specific sound. Most known artists that use Ovation guitars are: Yngvie Malmsteen, Nancy (from band Heart), Al di Meola, Melissa Etheridge...
I bought mine, second hand, and I must say that I am more than pleased with it, even though it is made in Korea. It features a V-shaped mahogany neck, doesn't use 9V battery (as most of electro-acoustical instruments do), I believe it has 9.5" neck radius, because it's not so flat as the modern necks are - feels very comfortable. Even with old strings (I believe they were 11's but it was hard to tell due to erosion of sweat and oxygen they were exposed to) it had that soft touch of the sound and smoothness of playability. I'm not a very good player so I can't say much about the use of it...
I decided to make it look good and sound a little better since I had a spare GraphTech TUSQ acoustic guitar nut laying around. I simply wanted to restring it, replace the nut, but then I found out that it also needed fret levelling. It's a common thing on guitars that are being really Played - it's like changing oil filter on a car, really... Here is what happens at repeated use of favored chords:
Well to make a long story short, i decided to give it a touch of fret leveller and found out that it wasn't such a bad decision afterall... Here is a video of the nut replacement, but you will have to wait for the fret levelling video.
Anyways, thank you for reading/following/taking notice...!
stormerSLO
