My first guitar was an Ovation Balladeer which I got as a birthday present in 1980. I have owned scores of U.S.A. and Asian made super-shallow bowl Ovations over the years. I was set to buy another when I came across a video by one Tomek Stężalski on YouTube in which a Harley Benton HBO 600 is compared to an Ovation costing several times more.
Through my headphones, the HBO 600 was a better Ovation than the Ovation was.
As inexpensive as the HBO 600 is, my expectations were frankly not very high.
What I received exceeded those expectations.
My instrument delivered to me in flawless, blemish-free condition. The only other Asian made Ovation I've had with no blemish from new was a late 1980's Korean made Celebrity model. The HBO 600 I received was up to that standard of build quality.
Even the inside of the bowl was neat and tidy and more so than even some US made super-shallows I've had over the years.
The setup, out of the box, was perfect. That's not hyperbole. This instrument shipped set up to have the neck relief, string height at 1st and 12th frets, that I would have adjusted it to had it not already been "dialed in."
No fret sprout. No need to dress fret ends or polish frets.
The only adjustment I had to make was the spacing between the D and G strings and the application of lemon oil to an overly dry fingerboard.
It was literally as perfect as one can imagine human hands and machines being able to make such a thing. It looked like an Ovation. It was built as well as the better ones I've had. It practically plays itself like the better Ovations I've had did. And it sounds exactly like these things are supposed to.
I like Roundbacks because the good ones have very even volume and sustain response up, down, and across the board, with no dead spots or wolf tone areas, and they respond well to variations in picking attack.
They don't sound like Martins. They don't sound like Taylors.
They sound like Ovations. Thank God. It's a balanced tone that sounds great on record with nothing more exotic than an SM-57 microphone. And they don't run out of volume or sustain when your brain takes you to what is the "dusty end" of the fingerboard on most acoustic guitars.
That's what my HBO 600 NT sounds like.... It sounds like the best super-shallow Ovations I've had did. And mine came out of the box with a better set-up than ANY Ovation I've ever had.
Ah, but all is not sweetness and light.......
The plugged in sound was a disappointment. A major, massive, horrible disappointment.
Then, on day two of owning the instrument, it wasn't a disappointment, anymore, because there was no plugged in sound to be disappointed by. The preamp died.
Thomman, of course, offered to make things right. I elected to take matters into my own hands, though. I bought a new Belcat 505 preamp for less than ten bucks from Amazon and had it swapped into the guitar in less than a half of an hour.
As delivered, my HB 600 NT was nearly impossible to get a useable plugged in sound with before the preamp totally died.
With a properly functioning preamp, though, I got a very good sound with the instrument EQ centered on all three bands, the instrument volume at 3/4, and the EQ on the Trace Elliott model of my Peavey Vypyr set flat.
Lush chords...... Piano-like lead lines with long sustain for an acoustic guitar... And tweaking EQ just made things better from there.
It's one of the best "Ovations" I've ever had over decades of playing them and my favorite of the lot due to how spot on it was set up right out of the box.
How it is possible to get this much of what some of us still love about Ovation guitars for so little money is mind-boggling to me, but there it is. Mine isn't just a good guitar for the money. It's a great guitar, period.
I absolutely could not possibly be more pleased.
