IN 1966, AERONAUTICAL PIONEER CHARLIE KAMAN did what few have ever succeeded in doing - he revolutionized the acoustic guitar. Ovation guitars arrived on the scene with their round backs and new ideas. Professional musicians hailed the guitar's performance and purists shook their heads. AS CHARLIE HIMSELF PUT IT, "IN HELECOPTERS, the engineers spend all their time trying to figure out how to remove vibration. To build a guitar, you spend your time trying to figure out how to put vibration in. But vibration is vibration." Two years and many prototypes later, they brought the first production Ovation to life - the Balladeer. With the now-famous roundback, the first Ovations raised a lot of curious eyebrows in the music industry.