Guitar Review: Ovation CK-047 acoustic-electric

Since I referenced my Koa topped Ovation in the previous review, I thought I should provide an overview of that guitar as well.  There are a couple of Ovation CC-28 guitars in the family, but the one in this review is my CK-047, which is a mid-depth Korean-made Ovation that I bought a few years ago.

This is another extremely beautiful guitar, I have to say.  And it's quite special to me particularly because it played a primary role in reinvigorating my interest in guitar.  I've had guitars around for most of my life, but was not playing too regularly for the past 20+ years, and was certainly not progressing in my abilities.  I'm really not sure what caused me to buy this guitar, frankly.  I had a bit of extra money at the time, and was visiting a Long & McQuade music store, and somehow came home with this lovely creation.

My only acoustic guitar before that was a pretty beat-up steelstring that my parents had bought me as a kid, after having given up on piano lessons.  That guitar kind of sufficed, but it isn't a great quality guitar, and in retrospect I believe I might have played a lot more guitar in my life if I had splurged for a better guitar after reaching adulthood.  At around $650, the Ovation was by far the most expensive guitar I had owned, and the resulting improved tonal experience thrilled me.

The Ovation is a really nice sounding guitar, both acoustically as well as through an amp.  It's a mid-sized guitar, without a huge bass end, but very nicely balanced tones across the full range.  The intonation is very good on this guitar, and it sounds good open as well as playing high on the neck.

The OP20 electronics on the guitar are good, with a tuner that I find quite accurate and easy to use.  However, the tuner makes use of labeled LEDs to indicate what note is being sensed, and I find the labels for these lights hard to read [need reading glasses], and impossible in dim light.   The pickup system has a three-band equalizer that provides flexibility to get the desired tone from the guitar.

The Koa top on this guitar is spectacularly pretty, and nicer than I've seen on any other guitars.  The mid-depth body has a nice rich tone compared to the shallow body Ovations.  However, it's somewhat less comfortable to play this guitar than either a standard body or a thin Ovation.  Standing up and playing with a strap is pretty comfortable, but it's taken me quite awhile to find comfort in playing the guitar on my lap.  The convex back doesn't exactly mould to my somewhat convex belly, and the guitar tends to want to slide off my lap.

The guitar neck is comfortable in mid-sized hands, and the rounded profile is comfortable to play.  The finish of the frets is pretty good, but I find my cleaning cloth leaves lint caught in the ends of a few frets, so there's a bit of a gap that isn't really noticeable when playing.

I think I've had this guitar for about 2 1/2 years now, and I really love it.  It encouraged me to start playing almost daily for that whole period, and although I play some other guitars as well, I regularly come back to this Ovation and revel in the beautiful tones.  And others in the family liked this guitar enough to go out and buy Ovations for themselves.