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Quintbass Story | Part One Our founder member and chairman of the Foudation Board, Klaus Wolfgang Wildner, may be assured of particular merits on this special topic. It´s due to him that today there are two Hauser quint bass guitars which have been restored in perfection by Hermann Hauser III. So the two guitars, manufactured in 1922 and 1924, may be used for many more decades. These wonderful and rare instruments impress players and audience likewise by an incredible depth of sound. Klaus Wildner argues that these instruments have to be taken seriously as solo instruments - without any restrictions. At the beginning of the last century quint bass guitars were used for quartets, especially in Prague, Vienna and Munich. Concerning this matter, our member of the curatorship Andreas Stevens already reports on considerable material of notes and scores. Probably Hermann Hauser I manufactured these two instruments only. Although there were other luthiers as well, only very few people know about the quint bass guitar, so the instrument is more or less reserved for specialists. As this situation has to be radically changed in the future, first studio recordings with two quint bass guitars were realized on Saturday, February 19, 2005. Klaus Wildner says : “A historical date for the history of guitaristic”, because the guitars have been in the hands of the virtuoso guitar duo “Gruber & Maklar” for the last couple of weeks, who intensely engaged in the possibilities and limits of the instruments. The studio recordings caused the two guitarists to be convinced that the quint bass guitars are very well appropriate to be solo and duo instruments. Outstanding results were achieved in combining a quint bass guitar and a prime guitar. First of all, the studio recordings are intended to thoroughly try out the possible fields of application for these guitars. A first CD production will follow – presumably in autumn 2005. With this production the Hermann Hauser Guitar Foundation will succeed in releasing an important impulse to the field of guitaristic. The recording session was great fun for Christian Gruber, Peter Maklar and the studio team of the Wildner company. Together we are looking forward to primarily publishing a groundbreaking piece of music production. A first live gig with these instruments is planned for May 11, 2005. This is the day on which the duo “Gruber & Maklar” will play a fund-raining concert in support of the Kinder des Himalaya e.V. The concert will take place in the Allerheiligen-Hofkirche, Residenz München at 8:00 p.m. http://www.gruber-maklar.de/fachwelt.htm February 21, 2005