Frank Hasselbacher (Augustine), 1971

Only one man was ever allowed to build under the Augustine name. This is his ninth guitar.

Albert Augustine died in New York in April 1967, and the label did not die with him. The tools, the forms, and the right to keep building under his name passed to Frank Hasselbacher, the man he had taught, and for the next two decades a small number of exceptional handmade classical guitars left Hasselbacher's bench carrying that name.

This is No. 9, built in 1971. Documented examples of his work run to No. 21 in 1973, No. 31 in 1974, and only into the seventies by the mid 1980s, which places a single digit instrument from 1971 right at the beginning of the run. Very few of these guitars exist, and very few of those come up for sale.

It is a spruce top over Brazilian rosewood, seven fan braced in the Hauser manner, on a long 660mm scale with a generous 54mm nut. That is a serious concert player's geometry, and it is worth knowing going in: the long string length and the wide spacing give this guitar its tension, its separation, and its room to breathe under the right hand. Hasselbacher built inside the Torres and Hauser tradition rather than around it, and his instruments have a quiet reputation among the players who know them for clarity, sustain, and a bigger voice than traditional construction usually delivers.

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The main air resonance sits at F#, a half step below the G that most traditionally built classical guitars land on. That lower tuning of the body cavity is exactly where you hear it, in the fourth, fifth and sixth strings, which carry real weight and fundamental rather than sitting politely underneath the melody. On a seven fan spruce top over Brazilian rosewood, that combination gives the classic profile of the school: deep, woody basses with a long decay, and trebles that sing rather than cut.

The 660mm scale is a real part of the character rather than a footnote in the specs. The extra string length raises tension and separation, and it gives notes a firm attack and a definition that shorter scale instruments trade away for comfort. Voices stay apart from each other in dense counterpoint. Chords stack up instead of blurring. It is the reason a certain kind of player will not consider anything shorter.

The 54mm nut follows the same logic. Wide string spacing gives the right hand room to work and the left hand clean access to close voicings, and players with larger hands tend to feel immediately at home. Together with the scale, this is a guitar that asks for a confident left hand and gives something back for it.

Then there is the thing that cannot be built in, only waited for. Fifty five years of playing have done what they do to a good spruce top over Brazilian rosewood. Is it the age of the wood? Is it the Hauser geometry underneath it? Is it whatever Hasselbacher learned standing next to Albert Augustine? Whatever the answer, the instrument is fully open, and the sustain and note clarity his guitars are known for are all here.

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The soundboard is spruce over a traditional seven fan brace pattern, the layout Hasselbacher worked from throughout his building life. He took his platform directly from Hauser, and the proportions, the bracing, and the general restraint of the instrument all point back to that lineage.

The back and sides are Brazilian rosewood, the wood of choice for this generation of American builders and increasingly hard to find by the time the decade was out. The tuners are Fustero, the Spanish machines that were standard on serious handmade instruments of the period.

Finish was something Hasselbacher took unusually seriously. His schedule ran shellac wash coats and a shellac undercoat beneath multiple coats of varnish, rubbed out with pumice and rottenstone to produce what one contemporary described as a deep, rich, dark glow. It was distinctive enough that other makers sought out his specification and wrote it down for posterity.

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Specifications

Label: Albert Augustine

Number: 9

Back & Sides: Brazilian Rosewood

Construction: Traditional, seven fan bracing

Condition: Good, with one repaired crack in the top and one repaired crack in the back

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Frank Hasselbacher (1922 to 1990) was born in New York to Austrian immigrant parents and spent his working life in the Bronx as a fireman and later a fire chief. Guitar making was the second act. He learned the craft from Albert Augustine, and after Augustine's death he was the one entrusted with the shop's tools and forms and with permission to continue building under the Augustine label.

He later moved his shop to Connecticut, where he built until his death in 1990. Output was small, on the order of a handful of instruments a year, which is why the numbering never climbed far past seventy in more than twenty years of building.

Alongside the building he was widely regarded as one of the finest restorers and repairmen in the country, and a number of leading concert players sent their instruments to him. Among American makers of his generation he belongs in the conversation with the best of them, and his guitars have a voice of their own rather than an imitation of anyone else's.

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The Augustine name on the label is not decoration. Albert Augustine was a Danish born luthier who settled in New York in the 1920s, and in 1946 he began the collaboration with Andrés Segovia and DuPont that produced the first usable nylon classical guitar strings. Gut was unreliable, expensive, and running out. The classical guitar exists in the form we know it today partly because that problem got solved in a New York workshop.

Augustine built guitars as well as strings, though very few of them, and when he died in 1967 the name went to Hasselbacher. A guitar like this one is the physical link between the two: built by Augustine's own student, on Augustine's own tools and forms, four years after his death, carrying his label.

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Good, and honest for a guitar of this age. There is one repaired crack in the top and one repaired crack in the back. Both have been properly addressed, and neither is unusual on a Brazilian rosewood instrument that has lived through fifty five years of seasons. The guitar plays and sounds as it should.

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