Back in the Stone Age when I took up the guitar, Stellas were the cheap Harmonies. They were the guitar to buy when you couldn't afford a Harmony (or a Sears Silvertone).
Mason Williams, the guy who wrote Classical Gas, wrote a song titled "Thirteen Dollar Stella" that's a double-entendre love song to his first guitar.
The Stella that really tipped me over was one Jon Lundberg made, a copy of the old Stella 12-string that was made before Harmony bought Stella. The guitar couldn't be tuned to A440, but it sure sounded good, far better than the price indicated. Lundberg really admired them a lot, and he never tried to improve the build quality; he left all the braces rough-sawn and square, just like the old guitars.
Jon also loved to remove the top from a Harmony Sovereign and re-work it. He would thin the top, remove the ladder braces and replace then with shaved X-bracing, and some of those guitars were real cannons.
He sold one to John Sebastian, who used the Sovereign as his warm-up guitar on the road. It was the guitar he played at Woodstock as a solo artist after the rest of his band couldn't get in due to the rain, and none of his other gear could come.
He was in the same boat as Richie Havens- no bands, no gear, with 500,000 eager for a show to begin. Their acoustic guitars were all they had to keep that crowd happy. Sebastian and Havens had to go on with what they had brought with them. And then made some history.