So it appears that the Reverb posting which claimed these guitars were made in the 90's is incorrect as MBT only gained the license to sell them in the year 2000 but they only lasted for at most 2 years before going defunct.70's HARMONY STELLA H6128 Made in USA Rare Model Parlor GuitarAC114 The conclusion I'm drawing from this is that MBT International produced the reissue Harmony and Stella guitars for only a short while before deciding to no longer pursue the venture and two former employees attempted to revive the brand again but were pressured out of it. Subecz dropped the project as soon as MBT threatened Malm about his experience being involved in a lawsuit over a brand, and said that 'if anything like that ever happens again, he's pulling the plug and he's not going to be involved.'. At that point, however, MBT sent a cease and desist letter and threatened suit, claiming that it owned certain artwork associated with the guitars. They developed samples of the guitars and worked with manufacturers on producing them, and were nearly ready to begin selling the guitars.

Malm, who left MBT in July 2001, began working together to bring the guitars back to the market on their own. In either event, MBT's sales of the guitars were rather short-lived, as it terminated its license and ceased its sales at some point in 2001, or possibly 2002. Thomas Malm was the Vice-President and General Manager of the Harmony product line at MBT at the time. International acquired a license to market reissues of instruments originally sold by the Harmony Guitar Company, including the Stratotone.

In case you couldn't tell, I'm partially researching this as I'm writing it. They were involved in a court case involving their use of the term 'Stratotone' on their guitars and that case's proceedings actually has a decent amount of information concerning these guitars. The Westheimer Corporation is another music store (still in business as of this post) in a different area in Illinois.

Spreading my search to the Harmony Wikipedia page has this snippet of info In the early 2000s, an unrelated company, the Westheimer Corp., based in Lake Barrington, Illinois briefly imported 'reissue' Harmony guitars. This goes further as the page states 'Distributed by MBT International under exclusive license from Harmony Industries Inc' and that business name brings me to another defunct music store in Illinois.

Stella acoustic guitar identification