same notes? can not fix.

Possible causes - fret 15 is sitting high and needs re-seating.

Your action might be set very low and you can fix it by raising the bridge

Or your neck might be warped - most of us know how to fix this with a truss rod adjustment but we'd want to see photos taken down the side of the neck first of all because doing it wrong is an easy way of messing up your guitar. Any chance you can get us something to look at? A photo taken looking down each side of the neck from the bridge to the nut is what we need first of all

A :-)

Deep breath, and don't start doing anything in rage. :wink: It'll probably be fine.

Second the need for photos and or more information though. If you've got a digital camera, get photos of the neck as greybeard describes. Heck, take some closeups of what it does while you fret the notes, if you can. Take a closeup of the 15ht fret as well.

If you haven't got a camera, start doing some simple measurements. Take a ruler, preferably with the smallest fractions you can find on it, and measure how far from the tops of the frets the strings are. Take measurements from several different frets. How high are teh strings at the sixth fret? The 10th? (Especially) the 15th?

I'm trying to visualize this one- it really sounds like something is out of whack with your neck.

Another question might be what happened. Has it started doing this gradually? Little by little? All at once? If it happened suddenyl while you were playing, did it make a funny noise? Has it been dropped?

Where are you keeping it? What's the humidity like?

Are there any visible changes in the guitar? Look at it carefully, all over- has anything changed that you can detect? Are there any visible scratches, cracks, bends, bulges or dips?

But don't freak- guitars are mostly fixable!

Ande

yeah, the strings are pretty low.

here's a video.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PEPfi5tFcAI

I live in New Jersey, it's been cold, not much humidity.

I've had the ovation for 3 months, I don't know how old it is though. When I got it, it sounded fine. The strings were kinda low compared to my other guitar but it didn't seem to effect the sound.

It just kinda happened randomly, I suppose. I wasn't having any problems with it and then the other night it did the whole same note.

There's only one string on currently, but all the strings did the same thing. I removed them in a fit.

I don't know what the nut is to take a picture, but if this isn't enough. I will post more.

I just can't afford GuitarCenter or SamAsh, they always try to over charge me for everything. and my brother isn't around anymore to tell me when I'm being taken advantage of.

I never dropped this ovation or did any real damage it to it. It stays in my room, in a case, if not being played, and I'm very careful with it.

if anyone can help or tell me what's wrong, how much a repair should cost - if I can't do it myself, please do.

I don't know much about guitars phsyically, but I love to play and I get really upset when I'm like "I'M SO FRUSTRATED I COULD JUST PLAY GUITAR FOR 9 HOURS" and I can't.

The strings aren't clearing that 15th fret. That seems clear enough. But your strings seem really low for an acoustic guitar. And I doubt whether it's anything you can't fix yourself, adequately & inexpensively.

Here are some simple checks to help figure out what's going on:

- Hold the guitar in playing position. With one hand, fret the string at the highest fret; with the other, fret it at the first fret. This gives you a straightedge along the fretboard. Squint down close to the neck around the 15th fret, and the string & surrounding frets will give you a frame of reference that might help you tell if that fret is improperly filed or sprung in some way.

- Fretting as above, look about midway between the fretted points. There should be some clearance between frets and string. Not much, but some -- maybe no more than the thickness of a Fender heavy flatpick. If the string is lying right down on the frets, you might have a backbend in the neck. This could mean an overtightened truss rod, a gift to you by a previous owner who I bet was trying to give the guitar super-slinky electric-style action.

- Release string at the upper fret & keep holding it at Fret One. Look at the string clearance over Fret two. Now release the string and look at open string clearance over Fret One. The distances should be roughly the same -- I use the Fender heavy flatpick gauge here, too. If the string is way higher from Fret One than from Fret Two, your nut is too high. I suspect your nut has been filed too low (possibly another memento from someone who didn't realize that acoustics & electrics are different -- the world is full of them).

- With the string open, check string height from fret where neck meets body. If it's much more than 4mm, your saddle might be too low as well.

That's all I can think of. Check it out and let us know what you find -- it could be any or all (or none) of these issues. Nothing you can't handle, and the more you learn to do your own work on the instrument, the more free you will be from predators at Guitar Center. :)

I've just taken the pic into Gimp and looked more closely at the neck.

It looks to me as if the clearance between fret and string is about what it should be when you're checking the action (i.e. fretted at first and last fret). It looks far too low, to me - seems to be about 1mm, but difficult to tell from that angle.

you could shim the saddle. the saddle is the white thing the strings run over on the body of the guitar. pull it out, cut out some pieces of paper in the shape of the white piece of plastic and stick them in the groove. then put the saddle back and check the height. do it a couple of times until you get a height you like.

you could take it for a basic setup too. would run you about $40-50.

try using a business card, cut out three little strips and put them under the saddle.

I can not find any information on it's model. Ovation Celebrity CC148.
the notes all sound the same on every string from 6-15.

but the guitar smelled like basement,

but it didn't have any problems when I first played it. and I don't know how it got like this in 3 months.

I live in New Jersey, it's been cold, not much humidity

Sounds to me like the guitar was formerly in a very damp environment. Your home is much drier, and the wood dried out.

When wood dries out, it shrinks. This shrinkage would enhance the effect of the truss rod in the neck, and gradually flatten the neck and possibly induce a back bow.

My first action would be to loosen the truss rod a bit, restring, and see if things improve.

Here's a setup guide for Ovation guitars that diagrams what you need to do. it's not hard, just take things slow and easy and you should be fine.

http://www.ovationguitars.com/img/OVmanual.pdf

Sounds to me like the guitar was formerly in a very damp environment. Your home is much drier, and the wood dried out.

Humidity is relative (heh). I've moved from Kansas City to the Pacific Northwest to Colorado Springs, progressively drier climates each move. None of my KC guitars minded the move to Oregon. None of my Oregon or KC guitars mind living on the Front Range of the Rockies. All necks & tops & finishes are intact.
When wood dries out, it shrinks. This shrinkage would enhance the effect of the truss rod in the neck, and gradually flatten the neck and possibly induce a back bow.

If it's a humidity issue, we certainly should talk about stabilizing humidity in the guitar case (not difficult or expensive)....
My first action would be to loosen the truss rod a bit, restring, and see if things improve.

...but would humidity issues change the repair in any other way?