Part 2 of 2:

Ovation guitars have wood tops, and round backs made of fiberglass composite — developed from Kaman's expertise in composites, used in helicopter rotors. Charlie Kaman was also a gifted guitarist who turned down an invitation to play with Tommy Dorsey's orchestra.

Glen Campbell was an early endorser of Ovations, and Carly Simon, Melissa Etheridge, and many other musicians have relied on Ovation guitars.

"One of the things about Ovation that a lot of great players appreciate is that the notes are balanced all the way up the fret," Wallace said.

Bill Xavier, head of sales of Ovation, said when Bon Jovi's lead guitarist played a custom, double-neck Ovation on an MTV awards show, it inspired the MTV Unplugged series and caused a spike in sales.

Xavier, who did sales work for Ovation guitars decades ago, said it means so much to him that New Hartford is running again. "There's people in that building that felt like they didn't finish what they started," he said, and now they'll be able to."

Wallace used to be a full-time musician in a Cajun band, Filé, and met the woman who is now his wife at a Hartford show. She followed him to Louisiana, but wanted to return to her home state.

Although he's a fiddler, he had been hand-building guitars in Louisiana, and when they moved to Connecticut, he applied to Ovation in 1993.

Wallace still plays fiddle in a Cajun band, called Jesse Lege and Cajun Brew. "A couple of weeks ago, I played the Falcon Ridge folk festival," he said.

Since the news got out last month that the plant had reopened, he said, "I'm getting hammered by people wanting jobs, and I can only hire two" more.

Many of the people who were laid off have found new jobs — as furniture makers or machinists — but Wallace said he's heard from more than a dozen, all re-employed, who want to come back to Ovation.

In Connecticut, they'll build some 50th-anniversary limited edition guitars and some Adamas guitars, which have carbon graphite tops; other models are yet to be determined. They'll also continue to do repairs.

In the last year before the plant closed, the crew of 47 was generally making 14 guitars a day, but most were Guild or Fender; only one or two were Ovation. Though production will be low in New Hartford, it still will be higher than two guitars a day. Full production will start in October.

Ovation has an active fan club — there have been 600,000 unique visitors to that fan club's website — and there used to be factory tours. Wallace said those tours would draw 40 to 60, some from Japan and Europe, and included a small banquet.

He hopes those restart. "We may be able to tie that in with the restaurant next door," he said.

The Parrott Delaney Tavern, which opened just two months ago, is in the old Greenwoods mill. Wallace said that building, the oldest in the historic brick complex, is said to date to the 1860s. The restaurant is where Ovation's engineering department used to work, and the sports bar is the old conference room.

Ovation used to rent 80,000 square feet of space at the building, which is owned by the family that owns the Hurley Manufacturing Co., a spring maker. Now Ovation occupies just under 18,000 square feet.

Hurley refurbished some of the space in the same building as the tavern, making glossy-wood-floored artists' studios, flooded with natural light from the tall windows.

Two of the men laid off from Ovation did the construction work this winter.

The company started making guitars in South Korea in the 1980s, and it also has factories in China and Indonesia. Budny said those guitars use lower-cost materials. "They're not bad guitars for the money," he said. The imported guitars tend to cost $500 to $800. The American-made Ovations cost $3,500 to $5,000, and have ebony or walnut frets, decorative inlays and sometimes wood with elaborate grain patterns, such as figured maple.

The fiberglass shells are made in Ohio, and Xavier said that factory will begin making the backs for all the guitars, even those assembled in Asia.

In all, a guitar takes 15 to 25 man-hours over two to four weeks, because of glue curing time.

"You want a lower price offering for customers that can't afford the more expensive stuff," Budny said, and the U.S. product can be "something to aspire to."

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