The sales rep's rap was that Karl Hauser was trying to introduce a "low end" German classical guitar line into the US market to see if they would sell here, but the gold standard -- relatively speaking -- was any guitar made by Hermann Hauser which would be priced in the thousands. My memory of our conversation that day is he told me Karl and Hermann were brothers. What did I care? I got a beautiful classical guitar for an unbelievably low price, and I've never regretted the purchase. I've made hundreds (if not thousands by now) of recordings for radio, TV, albums (remember them?), CDs and live gigs of every stripe and color that you can possibly think of. I just returned to my home in Rhode Island from a concert in New York City where I played a seven minute samba on the Hauser 730 that brought the house down. This guitar apologizes to nobody. It paid for itself within months of my purchase, and eventually allowed me to make enough money in royalties and residuals to buy the house I live in today.
Whether Karl is or isn't related to Hermann (spelled with two Ns as I understand it) is irrelevant to me now. My own Model 730 has provided such great sounds through all these years and proved to be so incredibly reliable (only now, after 27 years do I have to deal with an intonation problem -- and a very small one at that -- around the fifth fret) that I was actually talked out of buying a newer, pricier guitar to record a samba album just for the sake of having a distinctive "Hauser sound" for the sessions. And those tracks are absolutely beautiful to listen to.
So that's what I have to add to this conversation: I think the Karl Hauser Model 730 was imported into the United States in the early 1970s, and was a relatively low-priced classical guitar experiment that was eventually pulled from the this market due to a lack of high-volume sales. While I'm astounded that this guitar might fetch a price of close to $1,000 today, I can honestly tell you that mine has easily made 20 to 30 times that amount over the years I have played it.
Does anybody know if Karl Hauser is still in the luthier business today?Statistics: Posted by vincent pasternak — Tue Jul 28, 2009 10:45 pm
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