Rickresource Rickenbacker Forum

Just saw this:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/251084211251

...and wondered if maybe Roger could have made it at Fender. The German carve, gold guard and banjoline-ish features strike a chord.

Well, I'll agree on the weird part...

I had the same vibe. Mahogany, German carve, strange pickup choice and Fender acoustic headstock all are possible clues.

jingle_jangle wrote:I had the same vibe. Mahogany, German carve, strange pickup choice and Fender acoustic headstock all are possible clues.

Cool Paul, glad I'm no seeing things! The seller says they are selling for the original owners family. Maybe they would have some idea who the employee was that built it?

Another clue is the dark strip in the neck. Doesn't appear to be a truss related skunk stripe as it's too skinny and goes through the headstock portion as well. Also, the double binding!

I'd rock it.

Awesome!!

A stand up electric plucked dulcimer?

As far as I can tell the dates potentially fit -- my understanding is that Rossmeisl started working at Fender in 1963 and returned to Germany at some point in the 1970s before his death in 1979. I've seen one source saying he left the US in the early 1970s and another saying it was the late 1970s, and have no idea which is correct. But it's at least possible that he was still at Fender at some point in the 1970s, which is when the seller says this was made.

The resemblance between the body shapes of this and a 5002V58 is striking, and when you add the German carve I'd say you've got a pretty strong circumstantial case.

This reminds me that in reading the Richard Smith book about Rickenbacker, there is very little in it about Roger Rossmeisl; when in fact it seems that he is responsible for most of Rickenbacker's designs:

http://www.vintageguitar.com/1939/rossmeisl-guitars/

'For the next eight years, Roger was largely responsible for the design of the majority of the Rickenbacker guitar product line.'

This is a strange omission, like leaving Leo Fender out of a Fender book.

Crazy cool

egosheep wrote:

jingle_jangle wrote:I had the same vibe. Mahogany, German carve, strange pickup choice and Fender acoustic headstock all are possible clues.

Cool Paul, glad I'm no seeing things! The seller says they are selling for the original owners family. Maybe they would have some idea who the employee was that built it?

Another clue is the dark strip in the neck. Doesn't appear to be a truss related skunk stripe as it's too skinny and goes through the headstock portion as well. Also, the double binding!

Actually, the skunk is truss related. The truss in this is not "Fender" because it has a bolt rather than a screw tip. Whilst the neck would have been small enough for a single Ric sized truss nut, this one is actually a bit larger and uses a Gibson sized truss adjustment nut. Not sure weather A Fender screw would have worked, but the hole is definitely wide enough.

I wish I had more on Rossmeisl's work. The link to VG archive link is broken. There's ZERO marking inside the cavity areas, but there's no doubt that this was made by a proper C&C machine. I cannot get the back plate off, it's settled down into the nitro so well that I'm afraid it'll crack the finish. Someone with good forensic skill might even be able to prove something more substantial, like, from what type of machine - but that's just silly.

Here are some more detailed pictures. They're not great, used a phone. I left my DSLR camera at my girlfriend's bar, so I couldn't take the quality shots I wanted.

https://picasaweb.google.com/1077826298 ... 87gw96V7AE#

And here is some of the the raw evidence I've compiled so far. Be sure to check out the photos.

http://dumb.org/instruments-and-amplifiers/banjoline/

It was made by some heroin-using imitator(heroin was big in the 70s, right?); Rossmeisl would never carve anything in that ugly of a silhouette; it looks like a swollen gingerbread Christmas tree cookie. . .

paologregorio wrote:It was made by some heroin-using imitator(heroin was big in the 70s, right?); Rossmeisl would never carve anything in that ugly of a silhouette; it looks like a swollen gingerbread Christmas tree cookie. . .

So we should ignore the silhouette of the Ric 5002?

sangandongo wrote:

paologregorio wrote:It was made by some heroin-using imitator(heroin was big in the 70s, right?); Rossmeisl would never carve anything in that ugly of a silhouette; it looks like a swollen gingerbread Christmas tree cookie. . .

So we should ignore the silhouette of the Ric 5002?

I do; it's too small.