Glen Campbell and Ovation Guitars
Glen fan and guitarist Wayne Reid has managed to acquire some of the Ovations that were owned by Glen in the past. We will feature five of these Ovations over the next few months. The following section is being used with permission of the authors.
Glen Campbell and Ovation Guitars
“A major helicopter manufacturer loses his main client. It happens that the market is booming for a totally different product–the guitar. Coincidentally this man (Ovation founder Charles Kaman) had played guitar in his youth. He decides to apply some of the technology and materials he used in building helicopters to making a new kind of guitar. And it happens that as this new guitar is struggling along, one of America’s most popular entertainers adopts it. By the time the company celebrates its thirtieth anniversary, it is established as the biggest maker of acoustic guitars in the United States. This is the history of the Ovation guitar. Who would believe it if it weren’t true?” – from “The History Of the Ovation Guitar” by Walter Carter.
Through the sixty odd years Glen Campbell has been playing the guitar he has been seen with virtually every major brand of guitar at one time or another. However, the brand most folks associate Glen with is, of course, Ovation. Ask any 40+ year old guitarist to recount his first recollection of the Ovation guitar and it will almost always be having seen Glen play one on the “Goodtime Hour”. The procurement of Glen as an endorsee was a major coup for Ovation; fifty million viewers watching one of the world’s hottest guitarists and most popular new stars play these untraditional looking guitars literally contributed to the sale of thousands of instruments over the years.
Glen didn’t just play them. He had ideas about how they should be built. His likes and desires resulted in not only his own signature series model that was produced for over twenty years but his suggestions were sometimes implemented into other models and occasionally through the entire Ovation line. His long-time association with the Ovation company, (which continues to this day) has resulted in quite a number of instruments being built specifically for Glen. Many of these guitars were prototypes or “custom built” to Glen’s specifications or desires at the time.
Glen Campbell Signature Series 6 String Prototype
This guitar, from a historical aspect, is perhaps the most important Glen guitar of all. Although Ovation had given Glen a few guitars before this time, this was the first (in late 1968) Ovation guitar to be custom built for him. It is also the prototype for the Glen Campbell Signature Series model that would be produced for over twenty years. This great instrument can be seen on many of the 1969 “Goodtime Hour” shows. It was used for recording sessions, such as the “Galveston” album, during this period as well.
This example patterned the very earliest (50-100 in total) production GC signature series guitars. It has Ovation’s early “X” bracing pattern, the word “Deluxe” on the headstock, and the deep (5 13/16”) shiny bowl instead of the “Artist” depth (5 1/8”) textured bowl which were used on all subsequent GC signature guitars. It was the first instrument to have Glen’s initials inlaid at the twelfth fret, which was never done on any production models.
I often refer to this guitar as the “poster guitar” due to the fact that it was used in a Glen/Ovation ad campaign featuring several different photos, but all obviously from the same photo session, that ran from 1969 to at least 1974. In addition to these ads, which were placed in various music and entertainment publications, there are at least two different full sized posters, as well as a silk dealer promotional banner, all from these photos. It has also appeared with Glen on the front covers of Guitar Player Magazine (April, ’69) and TV Guide (June ’69).
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Ovation Bluebird 12-String Electric
1981 Ovation Adamas GC Prototype
Glen Campbell Classical Prototype
Ken
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