Saturday, October 4, 2008

Ovation Breadwinner



A very special guitar with a very special story... I don't know how it started its life more than 10 years before I bought it (it was made between 1971 and 1979, can't say more) but I first saw it as a dismantled carcass hanging behind the desk of my favorite guiter shop in Lille, Broc'n'Roll - and it stayed there for a few months. Then one day I saw it completely restored, like a ageless dark creature from outerspace, calling me silently: "I'm yours, I'm yours!" I had bought a few months before my Rickenbacker, my amp and an Ovation electro-acoustic, exhausted thus my music material budget for the next 10 years and enslaved myself to the bank that lent me the money for the same amount of time.

I left the shop under shock and didn't sleep that night and went back the day after and told Rodolphe - the owner, bless him - that the guitar was mine though I could not pay for it and that I swear i would find the money within 3 months if he would let me take it right away. And the benevolent and generous man handled me the guitar, I did any jobs on my student time and paid my debt in due time, it was something like 1989 and I'm still grateful to the man and happy with the guitar...

It was sold to me as a Viper - the name fit to the design, and it was not no easy to have information about this guitar that was in it limbo phase at the time - and I called it like this for a long time... Then came internet and vintage cult and easier access to information and I learned not only about the guitar but about who played this model... yes that was a good meeting.

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