This bass just came back from the luthier with a fresh fret level and dress. The tonewoods are, ash body, mahogany neck and ebony fretboard. There are also string volume trimmers for balancing the output of each winding under the cover that is accessible from the front of the pickup. The Ovation pickup itself is quite unique and powerful being a multi-coil design with one AlNiCo V pole wound for each of the 4 strings. This bass also has the same active electronics powered by two 9v batteries that power the preamp and tone shaping controls in the Magnum II and IV. This means better sustain while also providing better playability given the carved away heel area. A little research leads me to believe it is a Magnum 3, since it has the WACKIEST active electronics I've ever seen, but a more normal (Fendery) body shape. With it's big pickguard and big chrome pickup right in the sweet spot, and notice the doweled and glued, carved neck joint that effectively gives it neck-thru quality vibration transmission. I'm not sure if it is the coolest bass ever, or a combination of the worst ideas the 70's had to offer, but a friend of a friend just walked in with the weirdest Ovation bass I've ever seen. While there were 22 prototypes in all, this particular PF model stands out with all of the bells and whistles which may have made it the flagship model for the basses in the series. However, this is a fascinating example of late 70s, early 80s visual and sonic styling which make it a very cool piece of vintage gear. Interestingly, they never went into production. Based on the Magnum IV, the story goes that, Ovation was looking to go head to head with Peavey's T-series solidbodies and developed a small run of prototypes to shop around at trade shows. Please don't encourage this bunch of cynical knock-off merchants.This is a rare, one-of-a-kind, prototype Ovation solidbody bass built 1980. I think there's every reason to assume an Aria SB copy would be a similar inaccurate travesty with an eye-watering price tag. As it happens, McGeoch used several different, but completely standard SGs so this is hardly a "tribute". It's also a bit of an insult to attach the name of a deceased musician to this piece of tat, which I think is how they're trying to validate it. And at nearly £900 it's about what you'd pay for an original '80s SG1000. They seem to have stayed surprisingly (and annoyingly) unscathed over their dodgy knockoff of Yamaha's SG, which is still in production.Īnd a good example of only bearing a passing resemblance to the original - this is basically an SG-shaped LP copy, with generic components entirely unlike the in-house hardware & electronics Yamaha used on the classic SGs. Also given what the majority of the other Eastwood instruments are like, there is no guarantee that what they produce will have more than a passing resemblance to any of the previous versions. Personally I think that Eastwood would be on dodgy ground trying to make an exact copy of an instrument that is still in production by company which has a reasonably strong link to the one that originally made it. Whether that is due to the current pandemic or simply a symptom of over-ambitious deadlines I don't know. However I can say that the delivery date for this instrument has continually slipped back from being late March when the bass was first announced, to at the moment late July when I expect to get mine. I'll post in detail about my experience and how good (or not) the bass is when it actually arrives.
OVATION MAGNUM BASS EARLY MODEL PRO
I have a Hooky Bass 6 PRO on order and apparently both the bridge and pickup had to be custom made for this model as there was nothing even remotely right in the parts bin. The very worst example is their take on the Ovation Magnum bass which doesn't even manage to get the body shape right. As LeftyJ says they tend to use standard parts, so what you end up with is something with roughly the same body shape as the guitar or bass it is copying but not much else. How close they get to the original version is very variable. If they are it will most likely appear on the Eastwood Customs site first. I love Aria SBs and might consider one if they go into production. The straps that once held up the case lid have broken from years of use, and the interior of the accessories compartments fabric is coming off the lids, but everything functions good. With all original working latches, no breaks or missing. What's the quality like? What is the company like to deal with? Here we have a 1970s Ovation Magnum bass case Its in great shape for its age. Any fellow Basschatters know anything about Eastwood guitars?įrom their website they obviously recreate some old classic guitars.