Terminology: The German Carve

I was working on the history of the 381 when I fell down a rabbit hole around the term “German carve”. And the more I learned the more I realized that it really deserved a brief write-up of its own. So here we are. Trust me, you’re gonna be surprised and a little amused at the end!

So first, let’s define just what a “German carve” is. The German carve is a design feature that has a pronounced, concave, stepped edge (the technical term is the “recurve area”) around the perimeter of the body. Here it is on a modern Serus Novo T.

Novo Serus T with German carve top

As seen on modern guitars, it’s an adaptation of a style/technique that first began appearing on postwar German archtop guitars.

1949 Roger Junior by Roger Rossmeisl featuring a German carve top

Many of these postwar German luthiers had been trained as violin-makers—or at schools that had STARTED as violin schools and added plucked instruments. And this design element was an exaggerated adaptation of a design element closely associated with German and Austrian violin design—especially from the Mittenwald and Schönbach schools—wherein at the waist the top had a much more abrupt arch than the rest of the top, creating that stepped effect.

1765 Johannes Gäßler violin

So the etymology of the term German carve makes a lot of sense. But how did the term itself come to be? Surely luthiers in postwar Germany didn’t refer to this technique in as a “German carve”?

This is where Rickenbacker enters the conversation. Or more precisely, Roger Rossmeisl (click to learn more). Rossmeisl was a postwar German luthier who was the son of a German luthier and had studied at the Schönbach school…so he pretty much grew up at ground zero of the German carve. Rossmeisl immigrated to the US in 1953, worked briefly at Gibson, then made his way west where he landed at Rickenbacker in 1954. And as his 1949 Roger Junior above shows, Rossmeisl loved him some German carve.

Was Rossmeisl the first German luthier to build a guitar like this? I mean, there’s no way to say—it’s not like the German postwar archtop guitar business was huge or well documented. But probably not—you can find plenty of others out there. Did they take it to the extreme? Absolutely!

1957 Wenzel Rossmeisl “Roger Super Cutaway”

And so one of Rossmeisl’s first acts at Rickenbacker was to take the about-to-be-launched Combo 600 and 800–with silhouettes that had been designed by a Hunt Lewis from an outside design firm—and give them some of that sweet, sweet German carve.

1954 Combo 600

And so the German carve entered the US guitar market. But Rossmeisl wasn’t done spreading the gospel. He went on to build several prototype guitars for Rickenbacker with German carves…but apart from the low-volume Combo 850 none made it into production.

1957 Combo 850

There’s a pretty good reason why that’s so. When I say Rossmeisl built these guitars, I mean he literally built these guitars. Pretty much by hand. There were no CNC machines to cut a German curve in the 1950s! And among the apprentices he took on to help him churn these things out out was a young Semie Moseley. Semie learned how to do the German carve from Rossmeisl, and when he left Rickenbacker to build his own guitars, they too featured the German carve.

1964 Mosrite Ventures

The design spread from there to become part of the design lexicon. In the years since, many companies have had guitars with a German carve. It’s almost a signature feature of Dennis Fano’s guitars. Heck, even Fender had one!

1971 Fender LTD

That’s cheating a bit, if I’m honest. Why? Because the Fender LTD was designed and built by Roger Rossmeisl during his years at Fender!

Funnily enough, the most famous German carved Rickenbacker didn’t appear until seven years after Rossmeisl had left. 1969’s 381 isn’t technically a Rossmeisl design—he never built a guitar exactly like it—but all of its components are pure Rossmeisl, just put together in a new way.

1969 381

So why do we call it a German carve? In the pre-internet age nobody knew the history. Nobody knew it was a traditional German/Austrian violin design feature that had leapt to postwar German archtop guitars. What people DID know was that nobody in the US had seen anything like it until Rickenbacker hired this German dude to design their guitars. So really, by “German carve” people really mean “The German’s carve” or, more precisely, the “Rossmeisl carve”. And so the term is derived not from where the technique was born but from the nationality of the man who introduced and popularized it in the US market. Thanks, Roger.

Roger Rossmeisl with Rossmeisl carved 1957 390 prototype

In going down this rabbit hole I learned a LOT about Rossmeisl—a lot of which contradicts his “official” story! It’s a fascinating story that includes running from the East German secret police (and banks!) and a fake background story to gain entry to the US. The story deserves to be told, and it deserves more than to be tacked on to this article. Watch this space!

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