mandoloony
Tele-Holic
I'm not the first person to say that Ovation's electrics were underrated. Maybe the early ones with the Hofner-made bodies weren't up to the same standard, but their solidbodies from 1972 to 1984 were excellent. Solid but not exceptionally heavy, they had modern features but didn't cost an arm and a leg. They played nicely and sounded great, especially once they switched to building pickups in house. They kept trying new ideas and improvements, too, like a better bridge ca. 1980 and a fully synthetic body in the UKII.
Players must have agreed with me, because most original Ovations have been played hard. Rarely do you find one as clean as this, and it still has a few bumps. Rarely do you find one of the 12-string models to begin with, though that's not surprising considering what the demand was like at the time.
But this is indeed the best-playing electric 12-string I've found. The nut is a whopping 1 7/8" and somewhat thin, but not cramp-tastically so. Ovation reinforced their 12-string necks with carbon fiber, as visible from the back. I haven't had to touch the truss rod on this one, but something has kept it very straight. The Preacher Deluxe features an onboard preamp with volume and tone knobs (the standard Preacher is passive and has conventional 4-knob controls). The tone knob is clearly designed to be used around halfway up, as the 5 on the dial is replaced with "normal". Indeed, it can get quite bright, even shrill, on 10, but doesn't mud out at 1 except on the neck pickup. In addition to the pickup selector, there's a 2-way switch that introduces a notch EQ filter; it's sort of like a Strat-vs-Tele switch. The pickups are humbuckers which have fairly high output on the passive Preacher, but with the preamp there's a ton of output available. And with that active circuitry it retains all the treble as you go down in volume.
Not many electric 12-strings were made after the late '60s, but this is probably as close as anyone came to the next generation of design. I won't be leaving my '66 Starfire XII for it - they're just totally different sounds - but it's nice to see someone putting more thought into the instrument.
Players must have agreed with me, because most original Ovations have been played hard. Rarely do you find one as clean as this, and it still has a few bumps. Rarely do you find one of the 12-string models to begin with, though that's not surprising considering what the demand was like at the time.
But this is indeed the best-playing electric 12-string I've found. The nut is a whopping 1 7/8" and somewhat thin, but not cramp-tastically so. Ovation reinforced their 12-string necks with carbon fiber, as visible from the back. I haven't had to touch the truss rod on this one, but something has kept it very straight. The Preacher Deluxe features an onboard preamp with volume and tone knobs (the standard Preacher is passive and has conventional 4-knob controls). The tone knob is clearly designed to be used around halfway up, as the 5 on the dial is replaced with "normal". Indeed, it can get quite bright, even shrill, on 10, but doesn't mud out at 1 except on the neck pickup. In addition to the pickup selector, there's a 2-way switch that introduces a notch EQ filter; it's sort of like a Strat-vs-Tele switch. The pickups are humbuckers which have fairly high output on the passive Preacher, but with the preamp there's a ton of output available. And with that active circuitry it retains all the treble as you go down in volume.
Not many electric 12-strings were made after the late '60s, but this is probably as close as anyone came to the next generation of design. I won't be leaving my '66 Starfire XII for it - they're just totally different sounds - but it's nice to see someone putting more thought into the instrument.
