The story of the Viper is much the same as that of the Preacher. Ovation had learned a hard lesson with the failure of their groundbreaking Breadwinner and Magnum. In the 70’s ergonomic design was out of place, what the guitarist wanted was conventional [Gibson and Fender] design. So in the late 70’s Ovation introduced a new set of guitars – the Preacher, the Viper and a remodelled Magnum Bass. The body shape of both the Viper and the Preacher was essentially a downsized version of the Ovation acoustic outline - ie guitar shaped.

The Viper had an asymmetrical two piece body with a single cutaway. Initially a variety of woods were used - ash, maple - but eventually settled to maple. It was fitted with a pair of single coil pickups, with single volume and tone controls, and a three way selector switch.. [choice of bridge, neck or both pickups.] The neck pickup was set at an angle It had a large pickguard, which included these controls, and earlier models had the name Viper engraved on it. The two octave neck was a single piece maple with an unbound fingerboard and dot inlays. Depending on the colour of the guitar this fingerboard was either ebony with pearl dots inlays or maple with black ones. It had a 25½” scale length, slightly longer that usual (23¾”) for Ovation solid bodies. The bridge/tailpiece assembly was a tri-mount system, similar to that on the earlier Ovation models. This evolved over the lifetime of the guitar from a mixture of plastic and metal to an all metal one. The pickups were Ovation’s own development and, like the humbuckers of the Preacher, were smaller than was usual,

In 1979 Ovation introduced the Viper III. This had the addition of a middle pickup with controls to match. The selector switch was replaced by individual on/off switched for each pickup. The same tone and volume controls were retained but these were not connected to the extra pickup.

It is a little ironic that Ovation having conformed to design pressures of the marketplace that they should fail here because of an unnecessary bit or “difference” Ovations pickups were smaller than standard and although all their pickups were interchangeable, other brands of pickups would not fit into an Ovation. That was Ovations the design aim, but it backfired. Companies that spe­cialized in after-market pickups, like DiMarzio and Duncan, were fuelling a fad among guitar players for changing pickups frequently. A guitarist couldn’t put any pickup into an Ovation guitar except another Ovation pickup, and it greatly hindered sales of Ovation electrics and ultimately to the demises of both the Viper and the Preacher. 1983 .

Ovation used the Viper to experiment with new materials and designs. Prototypes were built with “plastic” bodies developed from thier work with their acoustic bowl back guitars. The Baron Collection has several interesting variations, including a Viper Deluxe. At first glance a Viper III with gold hardware but closer inspection reveals a lyrahord body and different body shape. It could be said that the Viper did not die but evolved into the UK II.