Ovation Adamas Longneck (built for Preston Reed) Around 1997 - Blue Green

This is my blue-green Adamas longneck (headstock serial #12397) it was the second guitar the factory made for me (around 1997). The only differences between it and the coral red longneck were “sparkly” top paint and a flush top edge (the coral red top edge was slightly raised).

This was my main touring and recording instrument for 14 years. Much of my development as an artist (including the entire album Handwritten Notes) happened on this guitar.

Two facts:

1)The guitar fell over on stage while on a tour in Brisbane, Australia in 2009, snapping the headstock off. Luckily it was a clean break and was expertly repaired (with splints and glue) by a nearby guitar shop. The break is nearly undetectable.

2) There is a small area of damage on the back of the guitar near the output jack, from another stage accident. The guitar is completely playable, in fact I didn't notice the damage for a long time due to its location.

There are a number of modifications to the guitar. If you have seen how I play guitar (there are many videos on YouTube) you can imagine why the modifications were needed. The Ovation factory back then (1996) had a very good custom shop and worked with me to optimise the guitars for my playing style.

It is important to point out that the guitar works perfectly well as a “normal” guitar — and with the special electronics and fiberglass back, certainly sound better than the stock Adamas. 

As Bill Kaman — the head of the company back then and the originator of the longneck — put it in a recent email, the Adamas longneck is a “rare animal”, which makes these three customised — and definitely improved — variants special, exotic, one-of-a-kind instruments.

 The guitar is a cutaway, with a  “deep bowl” back and comes with a custom made case.  Custom modifications to the guitar include:

• Smooth top edging (to accommodate right arm percussive movements without scraping)
•  No sound holes on the front half of the upper bout (holes were left uncut to accommodate left hand percussion hits)
• Custom pickup system combining the Ovation piezo bridge pickup and a Seymour Duncan SA-2 piezo contact pickup (glued to the inside top 1.5 inches behind the treble end of the bridge) controlled by an Ovation-made onboard blender. The dual pickup system was my idea and the first issue that needed to be worked out when I signed on with Ovation. Bill Hudak, the Ovation tech guy at the time, modified the existing “OptiMax” pickup system to work as a blender between the two pickups. Both pickups are “active” and work off of the same 9V battery. The output jack is a normal mono guitar jack.
• Front strap lug placed in the center of the the base of the neck rather than the side of the neck to avoid strap interference with left hand percussion 
• The pickup blender console and battery compartment may have been moved (?) to a more out-of-the-way location on the top side of the guitar.
•  Special back made of fibreglass (outsourced from a custom plant in Ohio, I was told by Don Johnson, the factory head at the time) rather than the “Lyracord” plastic, for improved sound.
• A round steel counterweight inside, attached to the inside end of the guitar strap lug, to compensate for the added weight of the longer neck