1996 Ovation 30th Anniversary Collector Series Acoustic Electric Guitar

Up for sale, a 1996 Ovation Collector Series 30th Anniversary model in excellent condition and in good working order. This deep bowl dreadnought acoustic guitar was designed to deliver everything that players love about the original Ovation design, with a solid spruce top, ebony fretboard, and onboard active preamp that makes it easy to get a clear and powerful sound in live situations (without feedback!). This guitar has a surprisingly big sound and is very comfortable to play, having been freshly restrung with 12-53 phosphor bronze strings and dialed in with low action.

The five piece ebony/maple/mahogany neck is extremely strong structurally, with a well rounded medium C profile that borders on the more chunky side of things, with a smooth satin finish. The ebony fretboard is bound with abalone and has a very clean and classic look, with only the "30th Anniversary" inlay at the 12th fret, and white side dots to aid in fretboard navigation. The original frets are in fantastic shape, with virtually no wear and well rounded crowns. The guitar plays cleanly up the neck with no buzzing or dead spots, and the 1 11/16" wide nut provides ideal spacing for chording and fingerpicking. The headstock sports a clean abalone "Ovation" inlay, and the original gold Schaller tuning machines which turn smoothly and hold pitch well with original pearloid buttons.

The HexFX active acoustic preamp was introduced on this model, which combines a studio-quiet preamp and EQ, and via a piezo pickup design, the HexFX creates a stereo field for each individual string. This hexophonic version of the original Ovation preamp (six individual inputs - one for each string) used a CMOS switching system to assign the individual string outputs, placing them in a stereo field. Different left/right arrangements are available at the touch of a button, and there is even an auto-panning feature that moves alternating strings back and forth in the stereo field, creating a natural chorus effect.

Cosmetically, this Ovation is very clean, and structurally the top is quite flat and in great shape, showing little of the "bow" that sometimes affects Ovation tops. Aside from a bit of faint wear in the pick path, this guitar is near mint and a very well cared for example of one of Ovations more sought after Collector Series instruments. It should be noted that the guitar did come from the home of a smoker, so there is a particular odor to the case interior in particular. This odor clings to the guitar for relatively short periods of time if stored in the case, but otherwise the smokey smell dissipates fairly quickly.

The original molded brown Ovation hardshell case is included. The case is very clean, and we've put a couple dryer sheets inside and scrubbed the exterior to limit any smell of smoke to the best of our ability.