Our Musical Instruments Blog

This blog about our cherished instruments started in January 2022 and will be updated in each new post, until we cover all of our significant instruments. (We send the updates out through our monthly newsletter, so if you aren’t a member of our mailing list, you can join us through the link on this page below.)

AUGUST 2022

Larry's Guitar Collection - Continued

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Ovation Collector’s Series 1983-B

After working in hotels and tourism for 14 years, I made a big change and worked for nine years for Erroca, the sunglass store chain, in charge of sales, training, and recruiting. I always went together with the boss to our PR company meetings, in the promoters’ offices. One time (1997 or 1998), we went there, and I saw an Ovation guitar case on the floor behind one of the desks. I asked the PR guy who sat at this desk what it was doing there. He said that he was selling it.

I had always been intrigued by the Ovation guitars, because of their special, round-backed design, and their excellent sound. After looking at it, I asked him how much he wanted for it. He said ₪1000. I immediately gave him a check and became the proud owner of this beautiful guitar.

I took it in to the Marom music store in the Diamond Center in Ramat Gan, just to find out how much it was worth (Marom were the sole importers of the brand at the time – now Klei Zemer is) and was quite blown away by their response – ₪ 9000!

When I started performing professionally in 2004, this was the guitar I used. And - this is the guitar I played when Mindy first saw me performing!

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Ovation Standard Balladeer 1771 LX

After performing with my first Ovation for two years, I was beginning to run in to some challenges with it. It has beautiful sound, but not exactly functional for performing. It had two main problems – it didn’t keep its tuning well (even after writing to the company, and them sending me a new set of tuning pegs at no cost), and more significantly was that because of where they placed the volume button, when I moved my arm in a certain way, the volume button spun all the way to off, or all the way to full volume! I couldn’t have that happen during performances, so I went to Klei Zemer, and found an American-made Ovation that was more functional. It was a newer model, with better design and better electronics. It even came with my first built-in electronic tuner. I used to make jokes about it on stage, saying it was the most expensive guitar tuner I ever bought – but I got a free guitar with it!

So, from January 2006 until January 2011, this was the guitar I performed with. January 2006 marked another very important change – It’s when Mindy and I met! She was in the audience on January 12^th at the Biblical Zoo where I did a solo tribute to James Taylor and Don McLean. We met on January 16^th, and the first time we performed together was February 10^th, when she joined me in the JT-DM show, singing “You’ve Got A Friend.” Later on, we added more songs that she sang together with me in that show.

On May 4^th 2006, Mindy and I did our first full performance together, and the rest is history!