Hauser's great act was an act of listening. He had built fine guitars in the Germanic style for years, and then he heard Segovia play a Torres-school instrument and understood, all at once, what he had been missing. He spent the next decade rebuilding his entire approach around that sound — and then surpassed it.
The guitar he finished for Segovia in 1937 is, by wide agreement, one of the finest ever made. It married the Spanish body and bracing to a precision of execution that the Spanish tradition had never quite insisted on. The warmth was Torres; the exactness was Munich. Together they set the bar for the concert classical guitar that has not really moved since.
“The warmth was Torres; the exactness was Munich.”
Chapter I
The lesson of his humility
What we take from Hauser is not a bracing pattern — it is the willingness to throw out a working method when you hear something better. He was already a master when he started over. Most makers, once they can build a good guitar, defend the way they build it. Hauser treated his own competence as the thing most worth questioning. That is rarer than any tonewood.