Richard Jernigan -> RE: For anyone who's built the Romanillos design (Apr. 12 2013 2:53:38)
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By 1973 Romanillos himself recognized five different design iterations, based on various instruments he had examined. Of the two that I'm familiar with, the fourth design iteration was "based on" a 1950 Hauser. To what extent it followed the Hauser, I don't know. The ends of the fan braces are scalloped on at least one of this series, #407 from 1973. The fifth iteration began with Bream's famous #501, based on a 1933 Hauser that belonged to Sergio Abreu. Sergio and his brother Eduardo performed as a duo. Sergio asked Romanillos to make a copy of his Hauser, and sent a detailed drawing from Brazil. According to Kevin Aram, who saw the drawing, it was very detailed. He mentions that tiny asymmetries in the fan bracing pattern were depicted on the drawing. Aram attributed the microscopic asymmetries not to some arcane design process by Hauser, but to the braces slipping very slightly when they were clamped for gluing. Who knows? Since Romanillos has said that Bream's guitar was a "trial run" for Abreu's, I would think he had followed the drawing pretty faithfully. Romanillos did remark that he put more doming in the top of #501, to "get more tension into my guitars." After 1973, Romanillos developed at least one other design, somewhat larger than the 5xx series plantilla. Whether that was the end of the evolutionary process, I don't know. RNJ
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