10
Maintaining Your Ovation
Your Ovation instrument ships from the factory with all setup
parameters adjusted to exacting tolerances and ready to play.
As with any fine instrument made from wood, environmental
conditions like heat, cold, and humidity will cause dimensional
changes that can affect setup and playability. Ovations are built
to allow easy readjustment of key parameters that allow you
to keep your instrument easy to play and sounding great.
Built-in Tuner
3-Band EQ
EQ Pre-emphasis
Phantom Powerable
•
•
•
•
OP-Pro
Built-in LED Tuner
3-Band EQ w/mid shift
EQ Pre-emphasis
EQ Defeat switch
•
•
•
•
OP-30
Built-in LED Tuner
4-Band EQ
EQ Pre-emphasis
EQ Defeat Switch
Tunable Notch Filter to
tame feedback
•
•
•
•
•
OP-50
Built-in LED Tuner
3-Band EQ w/mid shift
EQ Defeat
EQ Pre-emphasis
Tunable Notch Filter to
tame feedback
•
•
•
•
•
OP-40
11
Strings
One of the easiest things you can do to keep your Ovation
sounding terrific is to replace your strings often. If you feel
that your instrument sounds muted, does not sustain well,
or is difficult to tune, it may be time to change your strings.
Your Ovation steel-string guitar comes equipped with
Adamas Phosphor Bronze Light Gauge acoustic strings. We
recommend your continued use of these strings because of
their high quality, consistency, and tone. For the same reasons,
nylon string players should use Adamas Century Classic
4444 strings for optimal performance. Bass, mandolin, and
mandocello strings will be discussed later in this manual.
For those of you new to guitar ownership, what follows is
a short pictorial primer on the correct way to string your
Ovation. Remove the old strings by loosening the tension of
each string until it's pretty slack. Then cut each string near
the bridge with a string cutter or diagonal-cut pliers. Carefully
remove the short, ball end pieces from the bridge avoiding
scratching the finish. Unwind the remaining string segments
from the machine pegs and discard.
Insert the new strings into the
holes in the rear of the bridge
as illustrated in
fig. 1
. The
string order from left to right is
E6 (low E as shown), A5, D4,
G3, B2, and finally, E1.
Pull the strings through the
bridge until the ball end of
the string is snugly fit into
the groove on the rear of the
saddle as shown in
fig. 2
.
Once you have brought the
strings through the bridge
and over the saddle, they
are routed over the nut and
attached to the tuning pegs
and brought to pitch.
Fig. 1
Fig. 2
