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This is a rather mundane topic for such an eclectic audience, but here goes...

About twenty years ago, my wife found a new applause accoustic guitar for $17 at a tag sale. Seeing it's potential as a pet food bowl or a pizza paddle she brought it home.

While it has the action of a cheese slicer, it actually has decent tone. As you may realize, this little cream puff has an all aircraft aluminim neck -frets, fingerboard; right down to it's imitation wood grain neck.

I've filed the saddle and nut but the action remains what could politely be called 'challenging'.

This wouldn't be a bad starter guitar for my grandson...Does anyone have a suggestion on how to adjust the neck on this piece of guitar building history?

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Hi Creg, I have an ovation guitar that I just baught the body to on an auction on ebay-- it didnt have a neck at all when I got it and after looking arround till my eye balls felt like they were gonna swap apots, I stopped looking--- then one day my smart azz son in law said to me,
hey dad ( thats what he calls me ) since the neck pocket has a square pocket for the neck to go in, why dont you see if one of your bolt on necks fit the body,,, and sure enough, a martin style bolt on neck fit rite in the place that the stock neck would go.
I had to do a lil chizzle and a lil sanding to get it to fit perfict but now I have a playable flat top that has a real bluesey kind of sound ot it.

OK ___ now that I told yopu my story heres a question for you......
Does the guitar have a bolt on neck????
If it does then maby you could do the same thing that I did with mine..
Get bk to me on this and maby I can come up with an idea for you ok???

PS--- I call my flat top "the mart-vation"
Donald
Interesting idea...I'll check
I just ran into this a month ago. I consulted another guitar tech friend who's been in the biz longer than I. He told me that in the 80's when these were being built, the Ovation/Applause salesperson came by with these guitars and showed him how to adjust the neck. You simply put it over your knee and bend which ever way you need it to be adjusted. The salesperson told my friend to never do that in front of a customer, so that it wouldn't scare the heck out of them. A funny story, but that's the technique.
Hi Craig,

I used to build these rugged little babies years ago.
To tame an unruly fretboard/ neck - an arbor press, with the neck nestled in a cradle, and
some strategic "light pressure" ( you can actually crack the urethane neck) ,will give you the correct relief your looking for.
The bolt -on should come apart easily. Shims were placed at either the top or bottom of the heel / body joint to give you pitch and proper string alignment.

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