If you’ve played guitar for any time at all, at some point you likely had your hands on a Harmony “Stella” acoustic. Once the nation’s leading guitar manufacturer, Harmony’s Stella was a top seller. They were cheap, a bear to play and could be found stuffed into closets and propped up in corners of suburban bedrooms from sea to shining sea.
While they lacked aesthetics and playability, they imbued charm and inspiration. It’s fair to say that many great guitarists were motivated to pursue their dreams, at least in part by the Stella.
Scott St. Dennis can speak to the magic of that humble guitar. He was an experienced and accomplished guitarist when he was “gifted” a beaten and battered version in 2013. It was an acquisition that would change his life.
“A drummer who I had played with gave me the guitar and said if I can repair it, I can have it,” St. Dennis says. “I didn’t touch it for years, but after he passed away in 2018, I said, ‘I’m going to fix that guitar, see if I can put some strings on it.’”
He repaired the peghead, replaced the nut and “reset the chunkiest neck you’ve ever seen,” he says. “I sold it [online] to a guy in Vermont and packed it in a soft case, but the guitar was damaged in transit.”
Fortunately, the shipment was insured, and, upon its return, St. Dennis took it to several Nashville repair shops. “They all told me that they could fix the cracks, but they couldn’t do the finish; I had to take it to a restoration guy for that,” St. Dennis recalls. “Then a lightbulb went off in my head: ‘I’m that guy. I know how to do restorations.’”
At that moment, Harpeth Guitar Restoration was born. It’s a one-man show that St. Dennis performs out of his Bellevue home where he repairs, restores and refinishes everything from coveted vintage instruments to those that are rich with sentimental value. His business has grown primarily Google and his YouTube channel, @HarpethGuitar, that has over 10,000 subscribers. He has no qualms about sharing his tricks of the trade.
“If you have a Taylor guitar, you can find a certified Taylor technician,” St. Dennis says. “But there are so many weird guitars from a century ago that have no support like that.”
His life journey prepared him for the moment. St. Dennis grew up in Michigan where, due to harsh winters and the presence of the auto industry, high school students were taught how to care for the finishes of salt-encrusted cars. He played in bands (Madonna’s brother, Mario Ciccone, was a bandmate) around Detroit and eventually moved to Southern California where he played in clubs on the Sunset Strip. “It was a great time,” St. Dennis says. “I had a great job in plywood and lumber sales and my wife, Casey, got her degree and began working in healthcare.”
That’s where he began tinkering with guitars, first on his own instruments, then those of his bandmates. As his skills evolved, his reputation grew.
By 2007 the SoCal grind began to wear them down, so Casey and Scott moved to Asheville, then to Nashville in 2014 (“I still haven’t gotten used to the humidity,” he says. “It was almost shocking when we got out of the car in August!”) where Casey took a job as a professor at TSU. Scott was able to find work there as an administrative assistant.
And then, the Harmony Stella entered his life.
“I turned 50 in 2019 and decided that was the time to try to start this business,” says St. Dennis. “I figured I could always go back to working in an office.”
At any given time, St. Dennis has dozens of guitars in his shop, sent to him from all over the country.
“Sometimes bad things happen for a reason,” he says. “It was almost like a message from God that the 'Stella' got smashed.”
“Sometimes bad things happen for a reason. It was almost like a message from God that the 'Stella' got smashed.”