Ovation Guitars | Guitar Collecting

After my post about the Ovation Breadwinner guitar, I found a couple for sale in London last week.

Both were in the Music Ground shop, and both priced at Â£899.Â

Ovation Breadwinner guitar for sale Here is a photo of one of them; it seems to be in pretty good condition and original, but I can’t vouch for that.

The shop also had a pair of Hamer Phantoms, one white and one metallic red. Again, these both seemed to be in good condition and were alos both priced at Â£899.

Music Ground definitely has the most obscure collection of guitars in Denmark Street, everything from old Guyatones, Burns and Ekos through to Arias and Hamers from the 80’s.

I’d recommend a leisurely browse if you are ever in the vicinity!

The Ovation company is best known for its acoustic guitars, although they had a very good crack at the solid electric market in the early 1970s (1972 to be precise) with the UKII, the Preacher, the Viper, and the subjects of this article, the Deacon and Breadwinner.

Ovation Breadwinner guitar While the former three were fairly normal in design, albeit with traditional Ovation touches in the shapes, the Deacon and Breadwinner seemed almost mutated in comparison, with their bodies shaped somewhat like axes. They also had active mini-humbuckers, rare in the 1970s.

The difference between the Deacon and Breadwinner was not immediately obvious to the casual viewer.

The Breadwinner was the more basic of the two, with dot inlays, no binding on the fingerboard and a larger scratchplate. The Deacon had diamond inlays, binding, a smaller scratchplate, and was only available in natural finishes.

The Breadwinner and Deacon were often seen in the hands of Â Jeff Lynne of the Electric Light Orchestra, Steve Marriott and occasionally Ace Frehley of KISS.

On a recent trip to Denmark Street I found a white Breadwinner for sale for around Â£800.

They are rare and quite collectable even though sales never took off originally.