Roger Rossmeisl

Roger Rossmeisl (1927 in Kiel – 1979 in Berlin) was a German luthier who designed electric guitars in the 1950s and '60s for the US companies Rickenbacker and Fender.

Life and work

Roger's father Wenzel Rossmeisl (June 28, 1902 in Kiel – April 3, 1975 in Munich) was a German jazz guitarist and had learned luthiery in Mittenwald. Father and son made the first electric guitar in Germany in 1947 (a lap steel guitar).

Based in Berlin the Rossmeisl's were pioneers in Germany in the design and manufacture of electric pickups. In 1946–7 Roger rebuilt pickups for the jazz guitarist Coco Schumann. Meanwhile, electrical components such as coils and magnets came from headphones and other equipment of the German armed forces (Wehrmacht) ^[1] In the late 1930s Wenzel sent his son for traditional luthiery training in Mittenwald, a center of violin and guitar making. Wenzel Rossmeisl sold his products under the brand name Roger in the late 1930s, as one of very few guitar manufacturers in Germany, until 1962. He also distributed guitars by the Italian manufacturer Eko.

In September 1953 Roger Rossmeisl completed his business in Berlin and emigrated to the US.^[2] After a short time at the guitar manufacturer Gibson in Kalamazoo, Michigan, he worked for the California manufacturers Rickenbacker. At Rickenbacker he was instrumental in the development of new product ranges including the Rickenbacker 300 series of guitars, and the Rickenbacker 4000 and 4001 basses. Semie Mosely, later the founder of Mosrite, was an apprentice at Rickenbacker under Rossmeisl.

In 1962 he moved to Fender, where he was responsible for the development of archtop and semi-acoustic guitars in the style of the Gibson ES-335, such as the Fender Coronado. Characteristic of his designs for Rickenbacker and Fender is the distinctive form of the guitar top: While traditional archtops have a uniform curvature similar to violins and cellos, Rossmeisl's designs have a strong bead on the slab edge and an almost flat surface in the center of the ceiling. This design feature is in English referred to as the "German Carve".^[3] While at Fender Rossmeisl hired the young Philip Kubicki (who went on to found his own company) from a production line role to serve as his assistant in the company's research and development department.

Save for the enduring Telecaster Thinline, many Rossmeisl-designed Fender guitars proved to be commercial failures that were phased out by the turn of the decade amid the epochal resurgence of Gibson's solid-body models. Although Rossmeisl was assiduous in cultivating personal relationships with the likes of Wes Montgomery and Joe Pass, his archtop Fender Montego I/II and LTD lines (designed to compete with Gibson's upscale, jazz-oriented Citation and Super 400 as both the culmination of Rossmeisl's oeuvre and Fender's most expensive electric guitars of the era, notably exemplified by the hand-carved LTD) did not garner any prominent endorsers during the incipience of jazz fusion (which hewed close to rock's contemporaneous predilection for solid-body models) and could not compete with the more accessible price points of such Gibson hollow-body mainstays as the ES-175. He gave up guitar design upon returning to Germany in 1973 and died in 1979 at the age of 52.^[4]

Instruments designed by Roger Rossmeisl

Rickenbacker

Rickenbacker 300 Series

Rickenbacker 325
Rickenbacker 330
Rickenbacker 330/12
Rickenbacker 340
Rickenbacker 340/12
Rickenbacker 360
Rickenbacker 360/12
Rickenbacker 370
Rickenbacker 370/12
Rickenbacker 380L Laguna (discontinued)^[5]

Fender

Literature

Rainer Kordus: Roger guitars – success story of a German luthier family, in electric guitars; special issue of the journal Guitar

Resources

Erfolgsgeschichte einer deutschen Gitarrenbauerfamilie, in: Stromgitarren; Sonderheft der Zeitschrift Gitarre & Bass zur Geschichte der E-Gitarre, S. 112–115. MM-Musik-Media-Verlag, Ulm 2004. ISSN 0934-7674
Carlo May: Vintage-Gitarren und ihre Geschichten. Darin: Kapitel Alles Roger? – Die Rossmeisls und ihre Gitarren, S. 68–71. MM-Musik-Media-Verlag, Ulm 1994. ISBN 3-927954-10-1