Hartford Courant and Ovation

Website wants me to subscribe at $.99 to read it. I assume the article talks about Ovation production resuming in New Hartford?

fronobulax said:

Website wants me to subscribe at $.99 to read it. I assume the article talks about Ovation production resuming in New Hartford?

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Probably because we get the print version and are automatically sent to this site. Must be a workaround, but I can't do it because the subscription info is automatic on my computer. Maybe through the IPL link:
http://www.ipl.org/IPLBrowse/GetSubject?vid=11&cid=5&tid=8949&parent=8771
Brad

fronobulax said:

Website wants me to subscribe at $.99 to read it. I assume the article talks about Ovation production resuming in New Hartford?

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I just registered for free, and it gives you five articles or something like that. Annoying for sure, but it was great to get a bit of Darren Wallace's bio, and see him back at work and looking happy.

Woo Hoo! - they have been hinting that they might start rebuilding Breadwinners, too... hope so!

FWIW asking me to register for five free articles is the functional equivalent of making me subscribe. Either way is a more hassle than I care to take on. That said I did a Google search for "darren wallace ovation" and selected News and the first result was http://www.courant.com/business/hc-ovation-guitars-reopening-new-hartford-20150830-story.html and coming from Google apparently let me bypass the paywall.

The story of what was sold and when is news. I see references to a hardware auction that took place before Cordoba bought Guild and a (untrue) rumor that Drum Workshop would outsource Ovation production to California in Oxnard.

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;

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So it seems reasonable to say that New Hartford never made more that 5000 instruments per year and not all of them were Guilds. I think someone - either Darren or Ren - said in casual conversation at LMG III that one guitar per employee
per day was an efficiency standard to be striven for although not at the cost of quality.

There was a "Not right now" black tag under "Subscribe now" and I didn't have to subscribe and after "Enter Reader View" in Firefox I was able to read all text.
I found the comment interesting that Drum Workshop’s CEO Chris Lombardi initially wanted to move Ovation to Oxnard (where Drum Workshop is), most likely contracting with Cordoba to make Ovation guitars, mandolins and ukuleles. Good for NH that he revised his decision. I didn't know that DW's headquarters are also in Oxnard.
Ralf

The Hartford Courant is struggling to survive in a digital age - but hasn't hit on a business model that works just yet. As the oldest continuously operating newspaper in the country, they are a good credible source of news. There appears to be a few ways around the subscription issue, just not easy ones. Like Guild or Ovation, I hope they figure out how to survive.

The Boston GLOBE has an Associated Press article on Ovation in it's Business section this morning...could it be the same one from earlier?

http://www.bostonglobe.com/business...tars-resume/2ikMabz1vq0tBMtF1aD81J/story.html

Bill Ashton said:

The Boston GLOBE has an Associated press article on Ovation in is Business section this morning...could it be the same one from earlier?

http://www.bostonglobe.com/business...tars-resume/2ikMabz1vq0tBMtF1aD81J/story.html

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Looks like an edited version of the Courant article. Different picture of Darren, though.

Looks like the old factory is humming, at least to a limited extent...

http://www.acousticguitarforum.com/forums/showthread.php?t=405753

The Ovation press release also had info about what they plan to built now: http://www.letstalkguild.com/ltg/sh...New-Hartford&p=1702371&viewfull=1#post1702371
Ralf