How the guitar turned electric
The first pickups produced in Germany

Workshop with Rainer Kordus, expert on guitar history (22. August 2004) Where does my guitar come from? If the name on the guitar’s headstock is not one of the famous ones the question arises where the instrument was built and how old it is. On August 22nd, Rainer Kordus answered these questions for visitors who had come especially for this event. The expert, who specializes on guitars made in Vogtland, did not spot a rare instrument among those which were brought to the event. But this does not mean that just because it is not a collector’s item it does not sound good. The workshops with Rainer Kordus will take place once a month on a Sunday. See the programme on this website for details.

There is plenty information on the history of early US-American string instruments with pickups. The first off-the-shelf pickups were built in to a series of lap steel guitars by Rickenbacker between 1931 and 1932.

In 1935, Gibson produced a refined and more elegant version. A pickup which was now open towards the guitar strings was build into the top of a jazz guitar body. Today, this Gibson model is regarded as the first acoustic guitar with one pickup build in series.

Early versions of both instruments can be seen in the exhibition STROMGITARREN at the Technikmuseum.

But when did the history of the first pickups produced in Germany begin? When where they used and on which German instruments? And what is probably the most interesting question: who built them?

Prehistory
German luthiers copied pickups invented in the USA; just as they did with the first arch top guitars and solid body guitars, which were built a few years later.

This process of copying had a late start in Germany: During the 3rd Reich, so-called „ungerman“ cultural and musical influences were proscribed; this led to a different development in Germany until 1945. It was not until after the war that free access to new musical styles and encounters with American music in clubs and on the radio paved the way for the adoption of new technical inventions. Musicians and audience alike listened curiously to the new and different amplified guitar sounds of the American music scene.

The development in Germany
After the war, Coco Schumann, one of Berlin’s first jazz guitarists, returned to Berlin from a concentration camp. His curiosity for the sources of the new guitar sound of Charlie Christian and other recording artists led him to a luthier in Schöneberg. After the war, a small shop on Martin-Luther-Street 27 in Berlin had started to build jazz guitars again. Wenzel Rossmeisl, a jazz guitarist of his own, and his 18-year old son were building American-style instruments. Coco Schumann knocked on the door hoping to find out about the secrets of the new guitar sound.

Wenzel’s son Roger was able to help. The new guitar sound of American recordings was achieved with a so-called pick up, Roger explained. He offered to build one of these new pick ups for Coco’s guitar; an offer Schumann did not decline.

He used this Roger Rossmeisl pick up on live appearances of his band including Helmut Zacharias, a soon to be famous violin player. These early recordings can be heard on one of Coco Schumann’s CD’s (Coco Schumann, 50 years in Jazz, Trikont US-0238).

Pick up production
Roger Rossmeisl used magnets from a headphone of the Wehrmacht to build the pick up. In those days, it was not easy to get all the necessary materials; but young Roger knew how to improvise. Discarded technical army equipment could be found on every corner, remembers Coco Schumann.

Roger took the magnets and the material for the coil from the headphone’s auricles. Then, he sealed coil and magnets with a wax-like substance. These early pick ups had three magnets in a row – one magnet for two strings. Because of the size of the headphone’s magnets, this was basically the only possible configuration. Roger installed the unit on the guitar’s top at the end of the fret board below the strings. Volume was controlled by a knob at the bottom of the pick guard.

Roger’s construction made Coco Schumann proud owner of the first German built jazz guitar with a pickup.

Other producers of pickups
Fuma, a company from Berlin, manufactured pickups in the early fifties. Those pickups mostly bore the brand name of the guitar company. They can easily be recognized by their large Phillips pole screws. Höfner, a famous guitar company from Bubenreuth, also equipped there first electric guitars with Fuma pick ups. It was not until later that they started to produce their own pickups.

Another small company from Berlin, which was specialized on building transformers, started building pickups for Roger guitars. The company’s boss designed and built a series of amplifiers which were sold with the Roger logo. Mr. Bremer had achieved his skills by working for a company in Berlin maintaining and building amplification systems for movie theatres. After this company had gone bankrupt, he started his own business supplying electric equipment under the Roger label for Roger jazz guitars.


Rainer Kordus