The Arecibo area was a highly Europeanized cultural center in Puerto Rico at the turn of the century, where several violinmakers worked. It is possible that Hern ndez was inspired by the high-class look of the violins that he saw in Arecibo during the early 20th century. Several Yauco cuatro makers also built instruments that featured a single point projecting from the middle of their elegantly-curved outline, reminiscent of the outlines of some 19th century cellos and mandolins that we have seen. Cuatros with soundboxes made from large, domed gourds are fairly rare on the island but have been used in recordings by some of our greatest old cuatristas. The making of plucked stringed instruments from gourds was and still is fairly common in West Africa, suggesting that this was the configuration of cuatros originally made in the 19th century by enslaved Africans on the Island, and called cuatros de hig era or gourd cuatros.
Many factors affect how a particular instrument is to be strung and tuned.
Thus a researcher can make intelligent guesses as to the provenance, history, musical utility and playing techniques of a given stringed instrument for which little is known by paying close attention to the way it was strung and tuned. Or, it may not change-and thus become obsolete and slowly vanish, to be replaced by another instrument that due to its size, sonority or stringing is more suited to the evolving changes in the music and in changes in the preferences of the audiences. So it slowly lost favor and vanished over the first fifty years of the 20th century. It is a prevalent myth in Puerto Rico that the four-string cuatro evolved to ten strings. Actually, as mentioned previously, both single and double-string cuatros coexisted on the Island as far back as the nineteenth century.